Sunday afternoon I went with my mother and middle sister to see The Bodyguard at our favorite semi-local regional theatre. My mother and I had gone to see part of the tech rehearsal for this show a few weeks earlier. I wasn’t 100% sold on seeing The Bodyguard because I barely remember the movie. I think I saw it once shortly after it came out, and I’m not a huge Whitney Houston fan. But I do appreciate Whitney’s talents as a singer, and I’m familiar with a lot of her songs due to the fact that I grew up in the 80s. That plus the fact that this theatre does kick-ass shows 99% of the time, I figured it would be a fun time regardless of whether it was a show that I was super psyched about or not. And I was correct.
The show was great, and a good use of my mother’s two free tickets. My sister renewed her yearly theatre membership and decided to upgrade it when we arrived, so we got snuck into the new Spotlight Lounge for more elite level members. You literally have to go across an alley to get to it, but I think it will be nice once they’ve finished sprucing it up. It only just opened a couple of weeks ago, so it’s still pretty barebones. Since my sister drove, I finally used my free drink ticket that I got three years ago when we went to see Kinky Boots around my birthday. I got the signature cocktail: some sort of pink sparkly thing with cranberry in it. I feel like every time I consider getting the signature cocktail, it’s something with cranberry and I’m really not a big fan of cranberry. It was still pretty tasty in spite of the cranberry, BUT I hated having to hold a drink through the show, and then I had to pee so bad at intermission, so I’m definitely going to nix on the drinks at a show again, even if I get another free drink ticket.
This is a jukebox musical, and I don’t have anything against them at all, in fact Mamma Mia is one of my favorite musicals ever. BUT, I have noticed a tendency for audiences at jukebox musicals to often not have the best theatre etiquette. Yes I get that you know all the songs, yes I know that you love the artist, but this is a musical and not a tribute concert. There was a group of ladies in the row directly behind us who were clearly HUGE Whitney fans, they were wearing t-shirts, and talking about her LOUDLY. I was worried they were going to be AWFUL during the show, but thankfully they mellowed out some after the show started. They still talked far too much for my taste, but they were tolerable, and thankfully they didn’t sing along!
So for those who haven’t seen it (or like me didn’t remember a damn thing about the movie), the bodyguard is about a superstar singer named Rachel Marron, who has her life threatened by a stalker. They hire this ex-military guy named Frank Farmer to be her new bodyguard and overhaul how they do security, and Rachel is pissed until she learns about this crazy stalker and the things that he’s been doing because EVERYBODY in her entourage has been keeping it a secret from her! She also has an older sister Nikki who acts as a sort of assistant, a flamingly gay publicist named Sy, and a ten year old son named Fletcher. Nikki gets sweet on Frank, and is crushed when she finds out that Frank and Rachel have slept together. Immediately after Frank is full of regret and cuts things off, but it is strongly implied that they’re in LOVE, but he can’t PRoTECT her and DO HIS JOB if he’s in LOVE! The stalker tries to kill Rachel but winds up murdering her poor second banana sister instead. Rachel wins an Oscar, the stalker tries to shoot her on stage, Frank saves the day but gets shot, but HE’S OK! Then Rachel sings that song everybody knows as they part ways for good. Apparently there’s only one stalker in the world and now Rachel is totally safe and no longer needs a bodyguard. THE END.
The plot is pretty silly and doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but it’s basically just a vehicle for all of the Whitney Houston songs that are featured throughout the show as Rachel Marron songs. Basically every song by Whitney you might have casually heard on the radio is in this musical, and since Rachel is the main powerhouse performer through the majority of the show, performing it well really hinges on finding someone who can emulate Whitney’s vocals. Thankfully they definitely had her for this show. Apparently she had performed in a Whitney tribute show about five years ago called Queen of the Night. It was their first show after the pandemic caused every theatre to shut down, and numbers for it were terrible. Probably mostly because of the fact that everybody was still freaking out about being in enclosed public spaces. I’m glad they got to invite this woman back, and have her play the lead in this role and get the butts in seats that she deserved, because damn can she sing, and she played the part really well too. Don’t take my word for it though, you can listen to her here!
The only other person who sings much is Nikki, Rachel’s sister who spends her evenings performing at bars while her sister plays in sold out arenas. The sister also had an incredible voice, and sang a few Whitney songs on her own, along with harmonizing together with the woman who played Rachel. The song where they harmonized was really beautiful.
They had a little girl playing Rachel’s son, and she was very cute, but I thought it was funny that they had to have Fletcher wearing a hat in literally every scene in order to hide her longer hair. The kid literally is supposed to have just come from his bed because he’s too scared to sleep, but he’s still wearing a backwards baseball cap. It made me chuckle.
The guy playing Sy was very funny with his over-the-top mannerisms, but I’ve seen this same actor playing similar flamboyant roles so many times, and I’d really love to see him in something more serious sometime. I’d love to know if he has the range to play outside of his usual type.
Frank is mainly a non-singing role, although there is a scene where he sneaks Rachel out to a karaoke bar for a date, and she goads him into getting up and doing one song. He winds up singing a half-assed rendition of, “I Will Always Love You,” explaining to her afterwards how it was a song his dead mother liked to sing. So at least that gives the song some meaning when she sings it later at the end of the show. The guy who played Frank was pretty good, and I definitely bought the chemistry between him and Rachel.
One of my favorite parts of the show was the scene at the karaoke bar. It opened with three girls drunkenly singing a Whitney/Rachel song into a microphone together. Then later on when Rachel takes to the mic singing one of her own songs, they made a big show of slowly recognizing her, then going crazy taking selfies and screaming. They were absolutely hilarious.
As goofy as the storyline is, they did a VERY good job giving the whole stalker storyline the gravity that it deserved. There were occasional scenes that flashed to the stalker guy, on stage by himself. He wouldn’t say a word, but his actions combined with the lighting and sound projected SO much menace. His scenes were genuinely chilling to watch, even though there were a few technical hiccups.
There was one scene where a wall of photos of Rachel are behind him, and he turns with a gun and points the laser sight at all of her heads one by one. The stage was supposed to go dark after he shoots the gun, but something went off with the timing, and the stage went dark and he ran off before the gun sound effect happened. I think the guy who normally controls the board wasn’t there that day, and someone else was handling it. I only remember because the guy who they said was in charge during the tech rehearsal was actually one of my favorite ensemble dancers, and I know he wasn’t there for the Sunday matinee. There were also a few screens that had error messages on them for a split second, and a couple of lighting cues that were late or flickered. They were tiny blips though, in an otherwise solid production.
The show ends on a bit of a down note since her sister’s died, Frank’s been shot, and they break off their love affair, so they very smartly made the decision to have a bit of an encore performance that turns into a dance party after everyone comes out for their final bows. The ensemble have a whole additional bit of choreography that they do, and everybody takes a turn singing and dancing. It was great because everyone was already on their feet for a standing ovation, so it was just natural to keep on dancing along with the whole cast. Even the stalker guy gets a funny little moment where he breaks out into song and it gave the actor a break from being so menacing and terrifying. It reminded me a lot of the Waterloo ending of Mamma Mia where everyone just gets to have fun and feel good right at the end.
The songs are definitely the star of the show, and it’s not something you can pull off without an absolute powerhouse of a singer to play Rachel. I’m not surprised that they went with someone who they knew could sing Whitney, and had already worked with before. The show is only on for one more week, and the fact that she still sounded so solid after doing that show several times a week for almost a month is just WILD. I think someone with a set of pipes like that is rare, and I think they’d be hard-pressed to find another singer who could do Whitney justice as well as this woman did. She really was incredible. It got me wondering who played the role for the first time on Broadway, I’ll have to have a listen to the soundtrack.
Afterward we had a nice dinner at the new restaurant called Bravo that opened up right across from the theatre. It was good, but the atmosphere wasn’t nearly as nice as my old favorite restaurant The Birch, and the food wasn’t nearly as interesting. At least there’s a decent place nearby for dinner though, and I’m sure we’ll eat there again.
Loading comments...