Ima Castro agaw-eksena, lumebel pa kay Whoopi Goldberg

IMA Castro stole “Ghost The Musical”. We wanted to watch “Ghost The Musical” because in its short stint both in West End and Broadway it was able to secure three Tony nominations so we’re intrigued.

It’s Friday performance was almost celebrity night with Pinky Amador, real couple Sam Concepcion and Jasmine Curtis-Smith, managers Girlie Rodis and Ricky Gallardo plus several colleagues.

It was full seating capacity and thanks to Ten Bridges Media Corp., a new company established by the APT Entertainment Group, we were able to get very good front seats kasama ng mga kasamahan namin sa panulat.

Based on the Oscar award winning movie of the same title, “Ghost The Musical” is all about Sam Wheat (Christian Bautista) and Molly Jensen (Cris Villongco) whose happy life together was cut short when Sam got seemingly killed by a random violent act of Willie Lopez (Altair Alonzo).

But Sam’s spirit remains and good thing he “discovered” Oda Mae Brown (Ima Castro) that it’s his best friend Carl Bruner (Hanks Eckstein) who masterminded the crime for the ten million dollar account of one of Sam’s clients.

Now Sam had to secure the help of Oda Mae to get into Molly and the ghost of the subway (Jaime Wilson) so he can get vindicated.

Hindi na kami nag-spoiler alert dahil this is a movie nga before it became a musical so most who will watch the musical must have seen the movie.

The good news is that halos walang pinag-iba ang treatment ng movie and musical which surprised us dahil we’ve seen a lot of movies transformed into musical at maraming binabago tulad na lang ng “Mary Poppins”, “Sister Act” and “Priscilla Queen of the The Desert”: all three napanood namin ang original cast sa Broadway.

That use of the iconic song “Unchained Melody” is also a plus dahil kapag pinanood niyo ang “Sister Act the Musical”, all songs are original and no songs used in the movie were included.

Kung may nawala sa original movie, it’s the dime na pinaandar sa pinto but we can let go of that tutal in a way nailagay naman ang pottery making ni Molly kahit hindi niya nabuo ang pottery.

The production design is simple but good specially the house in Brooklyn and the office in NYC. One twitch here and it changes perspective. The songs are okay too, nothing outstanding or memorable but not bad.

We like the first song “Here Right Now” and “Three Little Words” dahil hindi nga masabi ni Sam ang katagang “I Love You” at “ditto” lang siya ng “ditto.”

( Photo credit to ima castro official fanpage )