www.broadwayworld.com: As a son of Poseidon, Percy Jackson has newly discovered powers he can't control, monsters on his trail, and is on a quest to find Zeus' lightning bolt to prevent a war between the Greek gods. Based on the bestselling novel by Rick Riordan and featuring a thrilling original rock score, with an onstage company of seven playing more than 47 characters, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical is an action-packed theatrical adventure about accepting that normal is a myth and embracing the superpowers inside all of us.
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And so let the worrying about another re-imagining begin. I remember how excited I was when the Lightning Thief movie was coming out, and then how brutally disappointed it made me to watch the world work completely differently than I imagined it, to see the story I felt power to create my own world from the brief details that the author wrote from the page. Now, while I know Broadway has a tendency to create immensely cool productions out of classic stories (see Beetlejuice, Frozen, and Anastasia), they also create some clunkers that don’t make a worthy experience comparable to the source material - cough, cough, King Kong, cough, cough. Ultimately, I hope that the creators of the show don’t just bullshark their way through the show with little to no respect to the source material, because it’s a really interesting story and it would be a real shame to see it massacred again :(
Wow, these reviews are rough on the show. I personally have never read the Percy Jackson series, but I appreciate that the article links it to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Broadway and other big producers seem to be trying to capture the millennial generation by appealing to our sense of nostalgia for the things we grew up with. I mean, who would deny the opportunity to see Harry Potter onstage? I would do whatever I could, even though I have read the script and it is poorly written, in my opinion. I am sure those who read Percy Jackson would be interested too, although the movie flopped, so there may be more trepidation. I think the big producers should give us millennials and Gen Z a bit more credit; we also like to see new things! We don’t like to see our childhood revived just to be slaughtered in the reimagining.
I love the idea of taking one form of story and portraying it in other forms. This is done well with making musicals movies, particularly live movies and other than that it doesn’t usually work well. Books are particularly hard for anyone that has read the book. The imagination and visual expression of the world is left to the reader and when it is put on a screen or stage, it can’t ever match that readers version of it. While I do like the movie of Percy Jackson, I never read the book. I am also skeptical about the musical even though I love the idea. Based on the critics, it appears my skepticism was on point. It is just disappointing. Although one comment caught my eye. One critic explained that the musical was overpriced and under produced, I think this is a key critique. Maybe it can be better, but this version isn’t worth it.
I read all of the Percy Jackson books as a kid, so I was very excited when I heard that they had adapted the first book into a musical. It’s very unfortunate that the reviews have been mostly negative. It’s so sad that this book series has such a rough track record with adaptations. The movie that was made in 2010 was also a bit of a let down. It seems like it’s been very popular to make musicals that are based on popular movies or books, but I kinda wish that broadway would come up with exciting new material instead of just recycling old stories. It seems like this has been a very popular thing in Hollywood recently as well. For example, Disney is in the process of remaking all of their popular animated kids movies into live action films, but they’re not changing the stories at all so it’s almost like watching the same exact movie.
I honestly can’t say I’m surprised by this at all. When I first heard about the show, my expectations were pretty low. I was happy to hear there was some love behind it, but overall nothing grabbed my attention, so I can’t say seeing these critics tear into this show was a huge shocker. What does disappointment however is hearing that the stage designs and effects look “cheap”. Greek mythology is a cool concept that can bring some fascinating ideas, but not even the designers could save this show it seems. Perhaps as a hardcore fan the show is satisfying but it appears that the show fails to reach any audiences beyond that. I do feel bad for the staff who dedicated their time and work to the show only to have it destroyed in reviews, but if the execution was off, then that’s show business I guess. At least it’ll make some money off name recognition alone.
As a fan of the Percy Jackson series, it hurts my heart a little to see the musical flop so greatly. Am I surprised? No. But do I wish it had done well? Obviously. Percy Jackson has such an innovative plotline and it's by far one of the funniest books I've read. Riordan has such a teenage sense of humor that reading this in late middle school I found myself actually laughing out loud. Given the mythical beings, I figured the execution for this show wouldn't come across the way it does in the books. With your imagination, anything is possible and the crazy sights seen in the series are easy to visualize but making those visions real sounds hard in every way. Even the movie wasn't able to deliver the magic that viewers expected from such a visual series. If movie magic can't represent I feel like it should be expected that the live form of theatre may have difficulties. Reading the extremely harsh reviews I was at least happy to see that someone gave credit to the actors' ability to work well with what they were given. It was obviously cared about but sometimes things don't work out.
This is a pretty harsh critic of a show I kind of had high hopes for. As a kid, this series was one of my favorites for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, the movie did not do the story any justice at all, and it seems like the musical has not done it either. That is really too bad, because it is a story that has so much potential for a fantastic Broadway production. There are monsters, magic, elemental manipulation, fun props, and all kinds of special effects that could be worked into it. It is interesting that the critic says it worked in its Off Broadway house, but just could not make the transition. For a show that has the potential to have a huge scale, I find this surprising. It seems like if they had really produced it well, it could have been a huge success, even bigger once it got to Broadway. But I guess it just was not meant to be.
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