I have always loved Cat Stevens (who now goes by Yusef Islam). Last night my flatmate Jen and I got last minute half price tickets (awesome!) and went to see 'Moonshadow' a new musical using his songs.
The set was incredible, very kind of Tim Burton crossed with old-school Disney, and it was really beautiful to hear his music covered by the performers who were all quite strong. The best voice for me, hands down, was Jolyon James who played 'Moonshadow.' James definitely would have benefited from a few more solos.
However - (I'm not sure if this is a trend in musicals that are trying to fit in as many songs by a particular artist as they can), but the storyline was pretty confusing and hard to follow. 'Moonshadow' is set on a distant and troubled planet, where the dark shadows have taken over and everyone works night and day just to buy embers to stay warm. No one can remember a time when people were kind to one another. The central character is Stormy, who goes on a journey away from his parents to get back the sun. He is encouraged on his journey by his Moonshadow who is invisible to everyone but him.
The premise has obvious parallels to Cat Steven's spiritual journey to Islam, and you can certainly see elements of the whole pilgrimage thing, there was even a scene with loads of hippies in it who are kind of following a cult. The problem was that there were too many scenes and a lot of them went by too quickly but us to know what was going on. Stormy got arrested and was in a prison (it reminded me of the torture chambers from 'The Princess Bride') but escapes and that whole scene can't be longer than two minutes. Then there's this woman wearing a kind of 'Lost in Space' outfit who turns out to be the evil queen who is stealing the sun, or something. She made me think of the evil queen from Narnia, or Mad Max or a kind of female Bowie from The Labrinth. Lots of intertextuality. Then there was a lot of Lord of the Rings kind of Mount Doom things going on and some very Orc-like bad guys. Then Moonshadow disappears, re-appears and then disappears again. And then everyone is happy and sings. I was feeling a little devastated when at the end they hadn't sung 'Peace Train' which is my favourite, when they did it during the applause, which was an excellent solution to the lyrics not at all fitting with the storyline. So I was happier after that. But generally the storyline didn't flow particularly well and we were a little confused.
One thing to factor in though was that having bought cheap last minute tickets, if we had been any higher up we would have gotten altitude sickness. Looking down on such a wonderful set is definitely not as involving as being right in front of it, and perhaps we would have felt more absorbed in the storyline had we had a clearer view of the stage. All that said, I wasn't bored for a moment (and I have a pretty appalling attention span), so it definitely wasn't a wasted evening. Just a slightly confusing one.
So after that, I would say Moonshadow is probably only for Cat Stevens' fans.
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