This past Saturday, March 4th, we went to see Dreamcatcher at the Hulu Theater.
The Hulu Theater is also known as the Theater at Madison Square Garden, formerly knows as the Felt Forum. I go to MSG all the time, but I don’t clearly remember if I’ve ever been to this theater before.
I have a memory of my family going to see Sesame Street Live in the '80s. All I remember was that it was in Manhattan. I think we took the subway to get there. The Count had a cannon, which was awesome. Wikipedia does confirm that Sesame Street Live! played at the Felt Forum many times. Either I saw the show at a different theater in Manhattan, or I did indeed go to the Felt Forum in 198X. I’m reasonably confident it’s the latter, so there was a sort of personal sentimental value in going back to this venue.
The venue itself is pretty good. It’s basically an indoor amphitheater. Even the furthest away seat can see clearly. The acoustics are great. The only thing I could say is the seats were a little tight. Makes you feel a little bit like you’re on a commercial flight. One cool thing is that the ceiling has a lighting arrangement that mimics the famous MSG ceiling.
As for the Dreamcatcher concert, in brief I would say that it was very unsatisfying. Imagine going to a fancy restaurant and paying a lot to get just an entree, no appetizers, no dessert, no sides. It tastes delicious, but you leave still hungry despite paying so much.
Including the taxes and fees the tickets for the show were almost $200 each! That’s a lot more than I pay for regular season hockey tickets, an the Rangers are one of the most expensive teams in the league. For that price in a small venue, you expect some really great show, and they sadly did not deliver. While their performances in the recording studio and on YouTube are great, I would not see them live again.
The setup on stage was very sparse. The backdrop was one big video screen. They also had some run of the mill stage lighting. I thought maybe at different points of the show they might bring some stuff out and make a fancy set. They didn’t even have a fog machine or a laser or anything. They didn’t even change their costumes other than doing the customary KPop thing of putting on their own merch for the encore. Without anything extra, the performance had to carry the show.
What was the performance? Well, they came out and performed a few of their hit songs with full choreography, just like if they were on a TV music show. They performed well, but it wasn’t very emotionally impactful like their music videos can be.
Then they took a little break to talk to the crowd. Very very full of fan service. The name of their fan club is InSomnia, and that by far was the most common word uttered on stage. Every cliche in the book. We love you InSomnia, we are always by your side, etc. During the talk segments we were looking at our phones instead of paying attention to what they were saying. I didn’t time it, but the show probably could have been cut in half if the talking was removed. Understandable, though, they need to rest between songs and have to fill the time.
Then they performed a few more songs, but singing only. Now, I expect KPop groups to lip sync when performing full choreography. It’s pretty standard practice. Nobody wants to hear all sorts of heavy breathing noises on the mic. However, I’m not all that confident they were really singing during the songs where they weren’t dancing. If they were singing, there was still a significant backing track boosting them up. Like hey, that’s fine to not sing live on TV or other places. But at a live concert where tickets that aren’t close to the stage are almost $200, I expect fully live singing when not dancing.
Now it’s typical for a concert like this to alternate between songs with dances and songs without dances. They didn’t do that. They alternated between singing and talking. They didn’t dance again until the final few songs. So many performances with singing only. And some of those songs they sang do have choreography. They just didn’t perform it! So not only was there nothing special to listen to, since it wasn’t fully live, there was also usually nothing to see!
It’s also typical at these concerts for their to be special stages. Members might do solo performances. They might break up into smaller groups and perform something special that they prepared. Perform literally anything that I can’t already see on YouTube. They didn’t do any of that. The only thing they did was sing a single song by the group MINX. Basically the group MINX is what later became Dreamcatcher, so it’s still their own song.
In the end, it was more of a listening party than a concert. Not worth anywhere near the price they charged for it.
If someone is a Dreamcatcher superfan, there is value in this. If the price is much lower in other cities besides NYC, there is value in this. For anyone else, I highly recommend checking out Dreamcatcher on YouTube/Spotify/Apple Music/etc. and I recommend staying away from their live shows. Not a good group to see live at all.