Media and Trailers
Riverdance Inglewood Theatre reviews
Not what I expected
Me and my family are big fans of Riverdance. We were watching Riverdance back in time on DVDs willing to visit one of those performance to see in life. Finally, I had an opportunity to go and see it myself. The show was good and dancers were doing their best. However, I was very disappointed with the sound. I was willing to hear how dancers create their own rhythm, while the music is only a background for them. On this show it was direct opposite. The music was way louder than the knocking sound dancers were creating. Moreover, it seems that in order for people to be able to hear it - they have implemented the knocking sound into the music itself. I can certainly tell so because I was able to hear a small delay between the actual sound on the stage and the sound from speakers. Musicians were doing a great job too, especially the woman who was on drums. To be honest, she was the one who was doing most of the job on that night. Nevertheless, I could definitely tell that the sound musicians were producing was also filtered and adjusted digitally. I couldn't say if the whole thing was prerecorded, but the music was definitely adjusted. It can be easily found out by following musicians' play. There were sounds in the music which they simply can't make as there was no such instrument on stage. For example there were piano sounds and there was no one who played on piano at that time. Or there could be no musicians on stage at all and music would still be on for the performance. This is the moment when I realized that everything we hear pretty much look to be pre-recorded. Even when the singers were singing I could not tell if that was real voice or not. At certain point I was praying they could sing a capella without microphone because I stopped believing it was not prerecorded or filtered out(digitally adjusted for better sound) during the performance.
Anyway, once again, even dancer's shoes' knocking sound seemed to be prerecorded making performers just to follow the pattern. I wouldn't say performers were doing a bad job, but it was not that great either compared to what we have seen back from 90s. The only reason I am giving 3 star instead of 2 is because of two men in the beginning of the second act where the was no music accompany and you could clearly hear what they were doing. Big thanks to them for making this play way better than what it was.