Sesame Street Live: When Elmo Grows Up

[Daffyfan4ever]

Wow. Let's Play School seemed like a really interesting show. If I'm correct, Jim's Ernie was in this show wasn't it? And I didn't even know they used the Firefighter song in this show. I wonder if the Big Bird performer was the fire hydrant in that scene! lol.

So, they do have the actual muppateers do the voices while others play the characters. That sounds interesting. I'd like to see one of those some day.

 

[StarrFilter]

Well Let's Play School actually came first. It debut for the 90-91 season. And then the first When I Grow Up was in 93, remounted in 98... and then When Elmo Grows Up for the 07 season. I've seen it (obviously from the videos I took, LOL!) So yeah, I noticed all those changes too. It's funny, in some scenes you can still hear Roxy Marie and Grundgetta's voices singing on the tracks, even though they're just understudies now.

 

[SSLFan]

You can also tell the show is old by how Elmo's voice sounds. It sounds more innocent and cuter than today's Elmo!

 

[SSLFan]

Well Let's Play School actually came first. It debut for the 90-91 season. And then the first When I Grow Up was in 93, remounted in 98... and then When Elmo Grows Up for the 07 season. I've seen it (obviously from the videos I took, LOL!) So yeah, I noticed all those changes too. It's funny, in some scenes you can still hear Roxy Marie and Grundgetta's voices singing on the tracks, even though they're just understudies now.

Yeah it's funny. I wonder...do people still know who Roxy is? I know in some places i've read, most people mention her name, even though she is retired from the actual tv show. I have to admit, I was quite fond of Roxy. They should really bring her back on the show.

This may seem crazy, but Roxy was another reason why I LOVED going to SSL in my earlier years. It just didn't seem like SSL without Roxy. hehe.

 

[StarrFilter]

Prairie Dawn was always my favorite girl. I'm glad VEE's got her talking in the shows again. Not just being the small u/s

 

[RedPiggy]

Wow! Just three minutes! That's pretty impressive. After all the bird costume does look pretty big and heavy(iv'e heard it's the most expensive costume), I thought it would be impossible for a person to go in and out of the costume.

I'm sorry ... I just have to nitpick ... but 90 seconds is a minute and a half, not three whole minutes.

 

[SesameStreetGuy]

Hey everyone, finally crawled out of my rock.

I remember Let's Play School as well. The show was interesting, yes. Funny thing is I saw it back in 1998 at the Lowell Memorial Autotorium here in MA, and the show toured way before that back around 90' and maybe 95' too. Sometimes the tours at the Lowell MA theatre were randomly chose, or took a long while to get there. I remember Big Bird & The ABC's came in 1994 to that same theatre and I thought it stopped touring by 91'.

Anyway, I actually remember going to that show, I can't believe it was already 10 years ago. I know when I saw it Barkley nor any Honkers made an apperance, guess the peformers for them were absent. Weird thing was they included Zoe in this version I saw, but she had no speaking lines, neither did Elmo if I recall.

I remember the part about Professor Grover coming out, and the characters pretty much were all 'What?', and Grover proclaims he was in charge and was gonna give a 'Gold Pickle' to all the students if they did good on their spelling tests. Poor Grover mixed up as usual. LOL

That 'Whatta Whatta Name Game' was a sick song, I wish I could hear it agian. I actually thought they were singing 'Wubba Wubba Name Game' LOL.

During the Music Class part, I remember Grungetta picked some guy from the audience to come up on stage and she had him assist her by playing some large cymbals.

I also remember after Bert and Ernie singing about Q & U, the curtains closed on them and these two random anything muppets, male and female, came out and sang something like a small duet, and I know it lasted like 15 seconds before the curtains opened and everyone came out, and the two AMs dissapeared, although the male AM did appear in the 'Hand Jive' parody number later on.

The Count's blackout number rocked, I remember the 'dream' sequence where it had some Cirque du Soleil type feeling to it. I just remember these two 'headless' basketball players running out past the stage and a giant butterfly, hahaha, and knowing that was suppose to be the 'Math Class' number, god knows looking back, what the heck it was I saw. The Count always, and will always be the best.

The finale was sweet, I do remember Big Bird listening to his hear, and he opened up the curtains for the whole Let's Play School cast showing a giant curtain illustrated with a portrait of 'My Friends', showing all of Big Bird's friends on it leading to the last song.

Yeah, good times, funny thing I remember, it was in Jan of 98, and the roads were real slippery that night, and alot of people didn't show up to the show even though the show itself still went on, so my mother assist we move to the other side of the room for a better view, and boy, did we.

It would be cool if it came back, probably would have alot more modifications so it might be better if the show was kept in vault.

 

[StarrFilter]

Each SSL show tours for 3 seasons (sometimes 4). The 1st and 2nd years are the big full-scale arena tours. The 3rd (or 4th) year of each show is the smaller scaled-down, "theater version". The theater tour sometimes combines characters into one track (like having Cookie Monster and Count played by the same performer). And sometimes characters just get cut all together in the theater version. That would explain why you didn't see Barkley or one of the Honkers. The other Honker was an understudy character, so that's probably why you didn't see him. Zoe was the small understudy character for that show, that's why she didn't talk. The understudy characters never have lines so, that the performer inside can easily jump into a different role at a moments notice, without having to use a seperate vocal track.
I remember the Q and U duet in that show was actually sung by costume character versions of the letters Q and U

 

[SesameStreetGuy]

Yeah, the Q & U was probably the duet I saw, but for some reason they didn't use the letters to sing it, but two random Anything Muppets. Weird huh?

 

[SesameStreetGuy]

I'm pretty sure I isn't in the new 'Elmo Grows Up' version, but it bares asking. They they include that scene before 'I Love Trash' where there was kind of Nutcracker Ballet dance performed by Oscar and Grungetta. I vaguley remember seeing that back at the Lowell Theatre in Jan 95' when I saw the original version of 'When I Grow Up'. I just remember that part being a blackout and some creepy wooden soldier came out marching, and you can hear groaning about it.