Or my relationship with Google Alerts
warning – this a ramble and a rant
La Jolla Hunchback Poster
Everyday at about noon I get two google alerts. One for news on Hunchback of Notre Dame and the other for the Notre Dame de Paris Musical.
Now the Notre Dame de Paris alerts doesn’t always bring in news stories about the musical but mostly news stories about the cathedral, which is fine though I tend to ignore them.
Prior to the regional productions of Hunchback, the other google alert focused on a lot stories that mentioned the Disney movie or the Lon Chaney movie to some capacity. There was a lot alerts about craiglist listings for old Disney merchandise. The point is the alerts did come in everyday an there wasn’t a lot to them.
Now with the regional productions, I get a lot of news stories about the many, many, many productions or even past productions of the musical. While yes it’s great that there is an interest in the shows it does come a bit of a cost.
First off even with the La Jolla and Papermills productions, there is no real version of the show. Every production changes things or puts its own spin on the show. There is no central production to really look to as a benchmark.
Also I can’t review every version of the show. There is too many and they not available to me to review. I have reviewed five iterations of the production, six if you count the movie though maybe 7 if you count in the book. But of the staged productions I have reviews the 1999 German version, the King’s high school production, the Lajolla/Papermills versions, and the Ogunquit playhouse version. I should note that the Ogunquit version is that I saw live. If there was a version close to me I would try and see it.
The point is while it’s great that there a lot of interest in this show on a regional level the result is that it’s all fleeting. That the news of regional productions clogs my news alerts so that any news that might come in about maybe a new movie version can get lost for a few days, till it clogs my alerts and then petters out to be replaced with more news about regional productions.
It’s just hard to get excited about news about production after production for a relatively small audience. Now if the show went to a bigger venue say like Broadway, or the West End or just done on a bigger scale for a bigger audience that would be something but does not seem like that will happen.
In the end I get actual news alerts for Hunchback and not just craiglist stuff but it just the same type of news everyday that I can’t get excited about.
side note- I’m not going to turn off the alerts because sometimes I do get news that is related to upcoming movie/tv versions.