Riverdance

Not really a review. Because who the hell am I to review something I know very little about? But still….Riverdance gave me the feels. So I feel like telling you all about it. And I feel like making this piece free, in the hope that maybe you’ll like it and decide to sign up as a paid subscriber to get all my posts?

Here’s hoping….

Riverdance.

It's not that I didn't want to see it. It's that the timing was really really bad. I am a college basketball freak, and the NCAA tournament is sacred time to me. You don't ask a priest to go golfing on a Sunday morning, and you don't ask me to do anything other than juggle my remote through 4 games at a time during the last 2 weeks in March.

But my wife asked. For 30 years she has more than tolerated my March Madness fixation. I love her dearly, so this was the absolute least I could do. She really wanted to see this show. And timing aside, I really wanted to see it too. So Pitt / Xavier and Kentucky / Kansas St would be pushed aside.

So we grabbed great seats at the last minute, headed into town, parked illegally in a permit-only lot because the luck of the Irish was upon us, and settled in. The place was packed. The vibe was great. The Scranton area Irish were representin' on a Sunday afternoon. And there wasn’t even any beer. You knew this was serious.

(I looked at the tour's schedule...and not only did Scranton get the coveted St Patrick's Day show, but we're one of the few upcoming cities booked for multiple shows. Five shows over 3 days. Most of the other cities on the itinerary were one and done. Kinda like Purdue in the NCAA tourney.)

I knew Riverdance by reputation. I'd seen clips of it. There was no way to avoid it in the 90s. It kick-started (sorry) an Irish step dancing craze in the States. I recall my niece Anna-Claire becoming a fairly badass Irish step-dancer herself.

And I’ve loved Irish traditional music my entire life. When my Father passed away, I listened to nothing else for a solid year. It made me feel connected to him in a way that nothing else could. Nothing conjures up benevolent ghosts like Irish airs….and nothing lets you dance all over the scary ones like an Irish reel.

I had heard the stories of Michael Flatley, the initial star of the show and its main choreographer, turning diva. With the show on the brink of catching fire, he issued the producers a curt list of 40 demands.....and being Irish they told him to fuck off and fired him. A new lead was brought in, and the show has gone on to become one of the most successful dance productions in the world. Flatley went on to create "The Lord of the Dance", he being the Lord, presumably. It too was wildly successful, although all I recall of it was Flatley's insistence on wearing an extremely unnecessary headband, looking like Brothers in Arms era Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits.

But back to the show at hand.

It was pretty extraordinary. The stage was literally shaking with humans who have won the gene pool lottery. Even the drummer was good looking. Mostly all were 20 somethings. Younger than the 25 year old show itself. The men whip-thin, all abs and guns, with the kind of glowing faces you might see in toothpaste ads. The women all impossibly gorgeous, smiling radiantly and breathlessly through movements that would put the rest of us in the hospital. These are world class athletes, at the absolute peak of their powers. Living their dream in real time. And I'm telling you.....watching them.....you really felt honored to be there. It's hard to explain. But watching talent at this level is like watching a magic show. It's like you're a kid again and the magician is repeatedly pulling a quarter out of your ear.....

They sing. They dance. In their spare time they are also world class musicians. Sitting there with my jaw seemingly wired to the floor, I was reminded of the Tom Lehrer quote...

“It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.”

Riverdance doesn't tell a story. At least not in the traditional sense. There's some voice overs.....mentions of Irish legends and famine and immigration and the like. Lots of thunder and lightning backdrops. But mostly you have no idea what they're going on about. Which doesn't matter a whit. At its core it's like a rock concert......paced accordingly. Ballads and slower numbers slotted in between the barnburners, giving everybody a chance to catch their breath. Some work better than others. There's a brilliant sequence showcasing American urban tap dancing alongside Irish step, and you can see how one borrows from the other. Another piece was more like ballet, and while it's marvelous, it's not quite what we're here for. We want the stomp from the Emerald Isle. Arms seemingly pinned to their sides…..their upper bodies barely moving….it’s said that this form of dancing was considered chaste by the always tight-arsed Irish clergy. Maybe so….but like Bruce Springsteen once said about looking into the sun, below the belt is where the real fun is, so I’m pretty sure the priests got it backwards. Spectacularly backwards.

And when the cast lines up on the front of the stage and cuts loose, it's impossible to tell if the thunder is coming from the feet on the boards or the hands of the audience. There was nothing perfunctory about the standing ovation at the end of the show, and nothing obligatory from a cast that must have done this show hundreds of times, and in fact were about to do it all again a few hours later. They left everything they had out there. For themselves. And for us.

We only stood because we couldn’t fly. Or dance.

In a bit…

—tf