Worst Side Story - Istanbul, Turkey
2 Stars This place was Poor visited Nov 23, 2005
We've discovered the opera here! The Ataturk Cultural Centre (the performing arts complex here) has an opera theatre and a program full of famous names, and the most expensive tickets are only AUD10! And it's a quarter of that for the top balcony! Not wanting to splurge that much, or sit up in the gods, we've decided the mid priced 1st balcony is our favourite spot! Tonight we saw West Side Story, figuring that whatever language it was in, we both knew it well enough to follow, if not recite the entire thing ourselves! It was with some excitement that we took our seats in the 'Big Hall' (such an original name for a theatre)and took a moment to appreciate the 70's decor (It's very similar to QPAC in Brisbane - both inside and out) and get freaked by the gold face of Ataturk leaning out of one wall at us (that guy is EVERYwhere). The appreciation started to wain when the orchestra started playing the overture. And then the 'dancers' came on and it wained further. And then they opened their mouths. Oh dear. We didn't leave. It was sort of compelling - in a 'how much worse can it get' sort of way. The dialoge was all in Turkish, but the songs were in English - with Turkish subtitles on an electronic signboard above the stage. For some odd reason they had significantly changed some of the words - even the ideas of the songs, and some of the new lyrics were definitely not written by a native speaker. The oddest part was where they changed the song 'America', which is originally a sort of musical duel between the Puerto Rican men and women, into an all-girl event, with one lone female playing the men's anti-US part. Very odd. Apart from that, the orchestra were sloppy and the dancing all over the place, which is odd cos the performers certainly weren't singers, so they must have been chosen for their dancing. The 3 main characters were definitely singers - Anita in particular was excellent - but the lovers themselves looked more 40 than 14. All in all it was an interesting experience, but we're really hoping that next week's performance of Carmen is a whole lot better!