The Hunger Games: The Musical – What the Original Should Have Been

District 13’s large cast for this production (over a dozen) pumps a lot of energy, talent and celebration into the thin, but iconic, love and resistance story that is The Hunger Games. Laced through this musical production are references to pop singers (Taylor Swift) and local culture (Tim Horton’s) but if you aren’t particularly tuned in to these, you’ll still enjoy this show if you like well-performed musical comedy.

The production I attended was sold out — lots of young people — and Pacific Theatre was the ideal setting for the very robust and energetic choreography by Andrea Loewen and musical direction by Rich Colhoun and Oker Chen. Riley Qualtieri’s performance as Peeta started quietly and bloomed as the production went on, culminating in a very exuberant and talented rendering of “Hey Sweet Strudel.” And the closing chorus by Katniss and Company was a truly grand finale. Most likely, the emergent, transcendent quality that I felt from the show was the result of script, choreography and musical direction working effectively together with the voices and bodies of many talented performers.

Jennifer Pielak was steady, (beautiful!), funny and appropriately complex in the lead role of Katniss, and some of the minor character roles, like Chris Lam’s Cinna, and Matthew Simmon’s Caesar Flickerman were incisively and memorably performed. There were also some lovely little touches hard to characterize, except that they worked — the body hair stripping scene, the bee scene, the exiting of dead bodies from the stage, etc. I got distracted occasionally by Katniss’ bow-bending technique—is that really how you do it? I feared for anyone downrange from her—although there were no arrows, and that worked well.

But it was the whole ensemble that was best. This troupe can sing and move, and when they all sang and moved together they produced a great, harmonious sound and presence! On the focused stage of the Pacific Theatre the fun was palpable, even for a geezer like me, and judging from the audience response, even more fun for those moving out of their teens into the older, youthful world.

The Hunger Games original has a storyline like a cross between Romeo and Juliet and Doctor Zhivago, but The Hunger Games: The Musical infuses that sad old story with life, and the District 13 theatre company does it full justice. Kudos to Frank Nickel (producer and co-director) and Mark Vandenberg (book and lyrics, co-director and sound design) for creating and leading this energetic production. And kudos to the ensemble.