Sight & Sound Theatres, with venues in Ronks, PA, and Branson, MO, specializes in family-friendly musical extravaganzas inspired by stories from the Bible. In this videotaped recording of the titular stage show, God instructs Noah to build an ark, stirring conflict between Noah and his clan and the wider society, which views the family as kooks. The highlight is the arrival of the animals—a mix of live creatures and inventive puppetry—along with an imaginative staging of the rains that bring about the great flood that engulfs the world and sends Noah’s ark on a 40-day journey. The production admittedly shares some issues that plagued earlier Sight & Sound mountings such as Jonah: The Musical (VL-1/18) and Moses (VL-1/19)—namely, wildly uneven acting from the large cast and a score (credited to four composers) that often feels like a second-rate riff on old-school Broadway melodies. But the style here more than compensates and the sheer spectacle of the ark’s massive interior with its zoological occupants is a truly stunning feat of engineering in contemporary theater. Presented in 5.1 surround sound, extras include featurettes on Sight & Sound’s history and the development of Noah. Recommended. (P. Hall)
Noah
(2019) 110 min. DVD: $19.99. Virgil Films (avail. from most distributors). Closed captioned. Volume 34, Issue 5
Noah
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