Back To The Future – Orpheum Theater – Minneapolis MN – September 10th 1985

***Spoilers below***

I’ll start with the positive.  When it began, I had to keep reminding myself that it would never be exactly like the movies.  There is no way it could be.  I really enjoyed the musical numbers, although it was the popular opinion that some of them could have been cut.  It was something I heard repeatedly when walking out after the show.  I rather enjoyed “Hello – Is Anybody Home?” and “Pretty Baby”.

The acting overall was great.  It was refreshing, as we’ve been to a few in the last year where bad acting was truly obvious.  Knowing these characters as well as I do, I loved what they brought to them.  And finally, the effects were top notch.  It was really fun watching them, especially during the scenes with the DeLorean.  Oh, and the DeLorean was AWESOME.

All that being said, there were several things I didn’t care for in this take of one of the most famous franchises ever.  So I’ll say again, spoilers are below.

To begin with, and I feel many people agreed with me, was the song “21st Century”.  It should have been cut, plain and simple.  It was just bizarre.  Had it been cut, the next scene would have made sense regardless.  The other song I heard quite a bit about was “My Myopia”.  It’s the song that George sings while sitting in the tree peeping on Lorraine.  The whole set design was strange and the song seemed to go on way too long.

Now I’m going to get into the differences from the movie.  One thing I noticed right away was the lack of Einstein.  Anyone who has seen these movies loves that dog.  And I get that you can’t have a dog on stage, but they could have at least mentioned him.  Another big one – Doc Brown wasn’t shot by terrorists; he died of radiation poisoning.  There was no reason to do this.  I could see people saying they didn’t want to show shooting in the play, but they could have done it in a slighter way.  Plus, radiation poisoning is a worse death, in my opinion.   That’s just plain awful.

The very popular scene in which Marty rides the skateboard was excluded from the musical.  Considering how that scene was in all three films and has been parodied numerous times, it seems something they should have kept in.  They literally could have put that in and taken out the “21st Century” song, which followed the scene it would have been in.  The scene with the farmers finding Marty at the beginning was also not included, which I always found to be quite funny.

Since I don’t want this review to go on forever, I’ll mention one last thing.  The DeLorean was hooked to Doc Brown’s voice, in that it would only start or change the date and time through voice command.  I just found no reason for this.  I’m not a big fan of taking existing material and adding things to it for no reason.  Especially when you are taking major scenes out.

So that’s my review/rant.  Did I find the musical enjoyable? Yes.  Would I go to it again? No.  Coming home and rewatching the films is how I will continue to enjoy this series for year to come.