Shrek The Musical (2013)

When a bunch of fairy tale characters are expelled to his swamp, a green ogre (Brian D'Arcy James) and a talking donkey (Daniel Breaker) go to the Lord (Christopher Sieber in the show's best performance) responsible and demands his swamp back. The Lord agrees if the ogre will rescue the Princess Fiona (Sutton Foster), who is guarded by a dragon and bring her to him. Disney had great success in bringing some of their animated musicals to the Broadway stage using actors, notably THE LION KING and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. So no doubt DreamWorks animation thought it might be a good idea to do the same with their mega hit SHREK ..... it wasn't. THE LION KING and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST had the advantage of actually being musicals before they made the Broadway trek so in that respect, part of the work was already done. SHREK was not a musical so it had to have a song score written for it. For the most part, it's a decent score (written by David Lindsay Abaire and Jeanine Tesori) in a generic "belt it out" Broadway show tunes kind of way. But with two exceptions (and one not in a good way), the songs are forgettable and one would be hard pressed to recall them after it's over. There's a winner in the second act I Got You Beat but Freak Flag is so awful that only someone who hates musicals could appreciate it. The choreography by Josh Prince isn't bad and provides one of the highlights, a number with Princess Fiona and tap dancing rats. But the show also shows how important voice acting is. Particularly in the case of Breaker as the donkey who doesn't have Eddie Murphy's comedic timing and whose line readings just fall flat. Directed by Jason Moore.