The Sopranos Last Supper Tickets

The Sopranos Last Supper
In this day and age, no one would open a mere supper club. It has to be presented as an inauthentic experience, a genre known as interactive theater.

The Soprano's Last Supper at Krave nightclub offers such an experience. Sir Harrison Birtwistle gave the music to the English, and Robin Blaser to the Latin libretto to the opera, The Last Supper. Birtwistle wrote and composed the music in 1998-1999.

The Berlin State Opera gave the world premiere on April 18th, 2000, with the production directed by Martin Duncan and conducted by Daniel Barenboim. It was subsequently performed by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera on November 30, 2000.

The story of the opera is a contemporary retelling of the Last Supper story. It involves a character (Ghost) that represents ourselves/the audience. Ghost invites Christ and his disciples to supper. The ensuing drama juxtaposes the old and new, Jewish and Christian to raise questions about the myth/story of the Last Supper and its meaning in our modern context. The opera ends in the Garden of Olives with Christ asking, Whom do you seek? and then a cock crows.

The edge that this opera has is due to the fact that the room feels like a genuine supper club, not a multi-purpose convention hall. This makes it a fun scene, one that's hard to find on the modern-day Strip, or anywhere else for that matter. There's a band onstage, and a crooner belting out I've Got You Under My Skin. Some people are up dancing, while others sit back and sip wine or let the pasta digest.

The genre of interactive theatre was first popularized by Tony ?n' Tina's Wedding. In a letter to Dillstar productions, HBO agrees that it is postured as a parody of The Sopranos, stating that the dinner show has adequately distanced itself such that it is clearly a parody thereof.

But fans of the addictive HBO drama should know the attempts to spoof the series are the worst part of it. The more the dinner show moves away from parody, the better it gets.And it does try. As he's done in many season openers, the fact that the Tony character (Lou Diamond) is walking down in his boxer shorts is very attention grabbing. He scratches himself down south as he opens his mailbox and retrieves a letter, then yells an expletive that becomes the show's first spoken word.You then meet the rest of Tony's guys at their pork store hangout, and witness a session between Tony and his shrink, Dr. Melfi (Kelli Karl). You watch dances by the girls of the Ba Da Bang club. You find out Tony has been indicted, and that we all will be at his going away party, where a successor will be named.

Because the comedy isn't burlesque enough, nor is it nuanced enough to be sketchy, nothing much happens in these parody sequences. It does little more than establish which character each actor is pretending to be, and revel in the fact that some of the players resemble their TV counterparts.

Fortunately, it comes time to hit the buffet. The roast beef, chicken and pasta all hit the spot, and the actors who work the room in character say funnier things than they do in the scripted scenes. Eventually, it turns out to be lot easier to turn more and more of the show over to singer Janien Valentine, a charismatic Las Vegas pro who starred in two theatrical musicals on the Strip, even if Dancing Queen and We Are Family don't have much to do with The Sopranos.

In an attempt to reduce the running time of 2hours, 15 minutes, the supervising director, Tony Carro has been editing the pork store scene. That, plus continued attempts to sharpen the comedy could make the effort rise to its quality setting. But so far, a wise guy wanting to eat while listening to Italian stereotypes shout at one another should opt for the original, Tony 'n' Tina. Unless the Rio show has gone downhill since I've seen it, it just seems less forced and unfolds in more of a natural arc.