The play was not funny. The actors screeched. No new insights were offered. If you are familiar with Van Halen, you will feel like you wasted your time. I believe that men dressed as women can be beautiful. Here, Val is laughed at by audience members. She is played as a caricature of a woman. I found this insulting.
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Guys, there was a third Van Halen singer and his name was Gary -
Gary worked for busfare and everything on the buffet table EXCEPT alcohol
In this play Gary is played by a rotating audience member, chosen at random and plied with free socks
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@cgb I don't understand this comment at all. I saw no such thing in the preview performance.
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@dem10003, Gary Cherone is discussed in the Van Halen section of his wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Cherone
A period of really good material, but no hit singles the label thought it could sell came of that work. Everyone shrugged, hugged and seems to have stayed friends. (I think that's what the comment by "cgb" was getting at.) If it were only about musicians making quality music, I bet they never would have parted. But it's hard to get finance and arena bookings at that stardom level without hit singles.
Cher's sister, and her children Chaz and Elijah don't appear in "The Cher Show" (to me, these omissions were essential there, because having them would have been enough drama for an eight-hour, two-part show); and if Joe Bean Esposito the magnetic lead singer of Brooklyn Dreams was in "Summer," he was never named but maybe (?) he was one of the guys packing up the instruments while Donna met her future husband Bruce. Gary and the band feels like a beautiful "are we about music or about hit singles the studio can sell" tangent. If the studio is financing the work, of course it's about business.
Time to put my mix of favorite VH songs in the car again.
Scenic Design by Reid Thompson, Costume Design by Montana Levi Blanco, Lighting Design by Jiyoun Chang, Sound Design by Palmer Hefferan, Original Compositions by Michael Thurber, Projection Design by Shawn Boyle
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"Van Halen’s fourth member, the bassist Michael Anthony, "
That split-off will surely be quite dramatic if there's every a Jersey Boys equivalent for Van Halen. Sammy Hagar always stayed loyal to Michael Anthony, which may say more about Michael Anthony than Eddie Van Halen's treatment of him.
A real-life aspect of Eddie Van Halen's marriage to Valeire Berttinelli that always touched me is that they were at each other's second marriages. As with the Sonny and Cher relationship, you can like someone and want to keep them in your life even after you can't be around them 24/7 any more.
(Thanks for that TV clip about Valerie Bertinelli. Seeing that "One Day at a Time" clip that's linked reminds me of my whole family watching TV and wondering if the show was going to be ABOUT this very young mother having had kids as a teenager and the kids were teens now. It was a Norman Lear show after all, and some edge was expected - and since when we saw Bonnie Franklin in "Applause" just a few years earlier, she seemed like a kid and now she was playing the mother of teenagers and it seemed nobody even tried to make her look older than 30. What can I say - with all the things my mind has forgotten and I have to refer to notes and emails to recall, I'll never forget the feeling when I heard Bonnie Franklin died, that it never occurred to me that she wouldn't be doing theater and concerts forever, that "Frankie and Johnny" would be the last time I'd see her onstage.)
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This is always eerie. "Siri" or "Alexa" must have sensed me typing or reading about Van Halen, and just brought me this article saying Sammy hafar will not be on the upcoming Van Halen reunion tour - but don't rule out Michael Anthony yet.
Thank you, "Siri/Alexa" - even while the technology knowing what I'm doing is a bit creepy, I'm often grateful that it gets me info that I want to know when I might not even think to look.
A sidetrack: How weird, that Valerie Bertinelli TV link got me recalling Bonnie Franklin in "Frankie and Johnny" maybe 12 or so hours before the Audra announcement. (I guess there is a parallel, that Bonnie Franklin pretty much first grabbed us in a showy featured role in "Applause" in the way that Audra first grabbed so many of us in a showy featured role at "Carousel." I suspect no one who only knows TV's Ann Romano, whose daughters and building superintendent just somehow got the better lines and funnier bits, could imagine what the actress was onstage.)
Though I've never been a Van Halen fan, I loved this exuberant play. No music is played, but Amy Staats rocks! It's a clever look at the personal side of rock stardom.
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