From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 02:26:03 -0400 (EDT)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure
Subject: Review: "Three Masters" in New Haven
cc: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

Here's my report on the "Three Masters" show in New Haven.  For those
of you who've been hiding in a hole lately, the "masters" are Scott
Hamilton, Brian Boitano, and Paul Wylie, and the supporting cast for
the show included Yuka Sato, Roz Sumners, Caryn Kadavy, Barb Underhill &
Paul Martini, and Renee Roca & Gorsha Sur.

The show started quite promptly (the reason for this will become
apparent later), with the three guys coming out and doing one of their
signature moves -- Paul did a big knee slide, Brian did a death drop,
and Scott did a back flip.  Then each of the other cast members came
out and did a little trick, and then the three guys came out again and
did split jumps in unison around the center of the ice.  It's a good
thing none of them are lefties.  :-)  The music for this piece was some
sort of rock guitar stuff.

Yuka had the first solo of the evening, the "It's So Much Fun" number
I saw her do at Chelsea Piers the weekend before last.  This time she
hit all the jumps, including a triple toe and triple salchow, but came
very close to falling out of a layback spin.  It was a nice upbeat
number to open the show and the crowd liked it.

Roca & Sur did their new "Maria" program next.  It's in their typical
style, with a lot of elaborate lifts but not a great deal of complicated
skating in between them.  (At least they didn't spend half the routine
lying around on the ice, as they've done in some of their previous
show programs.)  The overall effect was quite flowy and romantic.

For his first number, Paul dusted off that old chestnut, JFK, that seems
to contain every cliche' I've ever poked fun at him for: the spiral into
the triple flip, the running while looking over his shoulder, the split
jumps and spread eagles, the spin where he thrashes his arms up and down,
etc.  I admit I was choking back giggles through the whole program, which
probably isn't quite the effect Paul intended.  Performance-wise, Paul
put his hand down on the triple flip, and later slipped a bit on the
entrance to his combination spin so it came out kind of slow.  But the
lutz was lovely; Paul has such good technique on this jump.  I love the
way he *deepens* the outside edge on the approach, instead of doing the
opposite and flopping over towards the inside edge.

Roz came out next and skated her new "Fur Elise" program.  She was
wearing what I believe is the same lavender chiffon costume with the
flappy sleeves that she was initially wearing for "Remember Me This Way"
last fall, before she switched to the gold beaded dress.  It's a typical
kind of program for her, with her usual axels, walley, etc.  She also
did a very fast scratch spin that was nice to see.

Brian's first number was "Missing You", with the chair.  Typical Brian
stuff, with the 'Tano lutz, etc.  The most interesting part of the
choreography for me was not all the gymnastics with the chair, but the
sequence of walleys and half loops.  The program was well-skated on
the whole.

Underhill & Martini came out next to do "Have you ever been in love".
The program included all of their usual bag of tricks: a couple of adagio
lifts, a lateral twist, leap of faith, throw axel, etc.  The most
interesting technical element of this program was a forward inside death
spiral done with a hold on the opposite hand, so that Barb is even lower
to the ice than usual.  Again, the whole program was well-skated.  These
guys still look really good after all these years.

Caryn was next, skating her old "Tosca" program in the 2-piece
lavender costume.  (Actually,I wish she'd ditch this costume, because
I really *don't* like to see her ribs sticking out.)  Again, it was an
effective program and well-skated; she even hit the triple toe.

Paul came back skating "Carmina Burana", which is a program I actually
like.  Alas, he was a bit off in this performance, doubling both the
flip and the lutz.

Next up, Scott came out to do "Walk This Way" for his first number.
Believe me, in spite of the fact that this show was put together by
Boitano's production company, and that it was his fan club who got the
special ticket deal, there was absolutely no doubt that the "star" of
this show was Scotty.  A clean program got him the first standing ovation
of the night.

Brian's second number was "Music of the Night".  Once again, typical
Boitano stuff, this time including an especially nice spin combination
with a catch-leg camel for choreographic variety.  Brian is one of those
skaters who tends to make me snooze when I see him on TV, but in person
I'm always impressed by his speed, flow, and ice coverage, and the
strength of his basic skating technique.  Again, a nice clean program and
a standing ovation.

After the intermission, the second act opened with a rather hokey
sequence with Yuka, Roz, and Caryn making laudatory comments about
about Paul, Scott, and Brian (respectively), while the music from the
"Superman" movie played in the background.  Pretty cheesy, huh?

Caryn skated a program I hadn't seen before, some rock ballad with a
female singer.  (I'm sorry, I'm hopeless with identifying pop music.
What's the point of selling "programs" for the show that don't include
this kind of information, anyway?)  She was wearing a nice satin and
chiffon dress for this one.  She fell out of the triple toe loop but
otherwise I suppose it was an OK program, if you like this sort of thing.

Roz was next, skating to another rock ballad with a female singer.
Again, typical Roz stuff, cleanly skated.

Yuka's second program was her "Sozo" program in the yellow dress from
last year, and it was terrific.  I like the way the program is
constructed, opening with an extended sequence of edges and flowing
footwork, and then blam! a triple loop.  She also landed two double
axels and a triple salchow, and did a good change camel and death
drop.  She really seemed to be "on" for this show.

Roca & Sur were next with a program that's hard to describe.  It's a
Spanish song with kind of a tango feel to the middle section.  I was
rather distracted by trying to pick out the lyrics (si, hablo espanol)
and figure out what it was supposed to be about, and the choreography
didn't make a huge impression on me as a result.  Some parts of it
seemed to be a blatant rip-off of the French number that Punsalan &
Swallow were doing on the TOC last spring.

Underhill & Martini's second number was this Elvis medley.  Why do all
these Canadian men have such a thing for shiny leather pants?  I guess
I might have been more impressed by this program if it didn't happen
to contain exactly the same set of tricks as their first number -- the
same two lifts, the lateral twist, the "leap of faith", etc.  

Paul came out next for his third program.  Instead of another recycled
old program, he chose to do his new "Bring Him Home" program.  Kurt
Browning fans may cringe at this one, but I think I've only seen
Kurt's version once and it was long enough ago that I didn't carry any
preconceived notions into this, and I think Paul's version is good in
its own right.  Is that a one-foot axel he's doing?  It's also got one
of his nifty new spins in it.  BTW, someone who saw him do this at
"Halloween on Ice" said he had his hair painted grey there, but he
didn't do that here.

Brian's third program was "Nessun Dorma".  I'm sure everybody's seen
this one a gazillion times already so I'm sure I don't need to go
into details.  Again, powerful skating and a clean performance.

Those of you who have been paying attention may have noted that Scott
has only skated one program up to this point.  Well, he came out with
his bell-bottoms and wig, and that can only mean "Hair".  Ooops, major
wipe-out on the triple lutz.  It seemed that he hesitated so long on
the approach I almost thought he was going to do a Wanda Beazel on it.
And then he doubled the salchow, too.  After he was done, he got his
hands on a microphone and puffed and panted his way through a little
talk, introducing his next number as "a tribute to a very special
friend"; it was "One for the road".  We've seen this one before, of
course; a mellow number, a couple double axels, a change camel, and then
a nice series of open half loops.

Then it was time for the closing ensemble.  It started with some
rock-n-roll thing with only the supporting cast; the three women did
a short ensemble together (dealing handily with Roz being an opposite
jumper by having her mirror Yuka and Caryn), then they were joined by
the three guys for a ham-and-cheese rendition of "That's Amore".
Paul did a reprise of "How 'Bout You", including a duet segment with
Yuka; Scott skated "Bo Jangles" with Roz looking on; and Brian skated
"If I Had You" with Caryn as the object of his affections.  And then
the whole cast came out to take their bows in a group number.

But that wasn't the end of the show!  Yes, it was time for retakes for
TV.  The program was being taped by TBS; they said it would be broadcast
on Feb 11 and 17.  Peter Carruthers and Vern Lundquist were sitting
over in the corner, and I saw them get up in front of the cameras and
do their piece during the intermission.

So Scotty came out to give everybody a pep talk while the other
skaters were changing.  We got to see Paul redoing the flip and lutz
from "Carmina Burana", Scott doing a bit from the finale to cover a
spot where *Brian* tripped on his toe picks, Caryn redoing the triple
toe she stumbled out of in her second program; Scott redoing the lutz
and salchow from "Hair"; and Paul fixing the flip from "JFK".  Most of
the skaters took multiple attempts to get things right, and this
dragged on for quite a while.  It was getting on towards 11pm by the
time they finally finished.

Scotty continued to chat the audience through this whole process.
Apropos of the recent flaming on the net about the usage of this very
term, he repeatedly described what he was doing as "vamping".  And
when he was done, he told everybody "I love you, guys".  Do we have
another net.lurker here?  He clearly figured out the running net.joke
from last year's SOI tour, at least.  :-)

A couple general comments:  I likely wouldn't have bothered with
this show if it hadn't been in New Haven where I didn't have to travel
to see it, since the concept of seeing old programs for the umpteenth
time wasn't something that had a great deal of appeal for me.  But I
did enjoy the show; the overall quality of skating was quite high, 
there were enough new pieces to make it interesting, and it was the
first time I had seen a few of the older ones in person as opposed
to just on TV.

I understand that they actually were doing a little advertising for
this event locally (someone told me they'd seen an ad during the local
TV news), but the New Haven Coliseum isn't really a huge place and it
was certainly less than half full.  They even had the upper sections
of seats curtained off, and the place *still* only looked only half
full.  The Tom Collins tour manages to get the whole place pretty much
packed, but they advertise heavily on TV for months ahead of time, with
spots in all of the skating broadcasts.  I'm not sure if it's the
advertising that makes the difference, or the relative concepts of the
two shows, or what.

BTW, since I'm complaining about crappy programs, the ones for this
event surely set a new standard of crappiness.  $10 for a program
that's only about 10 pages, half of it for "Skating Romance" instead
of "Three Masters", and the pictures aren't even that good.  Harumph.

And finally, in case anyone other than NotDeby is keeping track of
such things, my cats did *not* leave me any, uh, gifts this time
around. :-P  They only seem to do that when I travel out of town!

-Sandra