Phineas and Ferb in Connecticut this weekend: pointy, weird and live

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour Ever, Saturday the 19th at Hartford's XL Center.

Disney’s done all right on Broadway for a couple decades now, but they’ve ruled the stadium touring circuit for much longer, maintaining high standards despite having very little competition. Disney road shows are often produced by Feld Entertainment, the folks who bring you Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the monster truck show Monster Jam, the motocross madness of ArenaCross and the daredevil Nuclear Cowboyz. The insane schemes of Phineas & Ferb are right up Feld’s three-ring alley.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour Ever first hit the road in August, with plans to hit over 80 cities. Demand for the Hartford XL Center stop on the tour led promoters to arrange three performances on a single day—this Saturday, Nov. 19. At first only two shows were scheduled, at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.  A couple of weeks ago, a 7 p.m. performance was added. May seem like a busy schedule, but on their TV show Phineas and Ferb have been known to built a moonrocket, or the world’s largest roller coaster, in a matter of minutes. This is child’s play by comparison.

Besides, when you’re dressed as a platypus, nobody can see you sweat.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour fits the genre of “Big Head shows”—events in which the lead players’ faces are entirely covered by gigantic masks. But technically, most of the actors simply have big eyes. There have been tours of shows such as Dora the Explorer where actors’ real faces are exposed in the middle of otherwise cartoonish monkey or backpack costumes. I’m not sure which distortion is creepier.

The talent assembled for tours of kids TV phenomena can be extraordinary. When the Rolling Stones are not on tour, their road crew goes out with Barney the Dinosaur. Playwright Gip Hoppe, known for his political satires A New War and Jackie!, has scripted the live adventures of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Danny Herman of the original cast of A Chorus Line directed and choreographed Rugrats: A Live Adventure in 1998. Rupert Holmes wrote an original multi-part Goosebumps musical.

The creative team for Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour includes: director choreographer, who worked with Madonna on her “Sorry” video and Confessions World Tour and with Feld Entertainment previously on Let’s Rock the Mouse; writer Bradley Zweig, who wrote and produced Sid the Science Kid and has created live shows for the Los Angeles Zoo and the Smithsonian; scenic designer Rick Papineau, who’s risen through the Feld ranks to become the company’s Vice President of Scenic Elements; costume designer Cynthia Nordstrom, who’s done dozens of projects for Walt Disney World but also Off Broadway productions of Jewtopia, Silent Laughter and Evil Dead the Musical; music director Mike Avila and lighting designer Sam Doty.

As is the case with most of the Feld/Disney tours, the live performers mime to precorded dialogue spoken by the same actors who regularly voice the roles on TV or in movies. In this case, that means Vincent Martella, Ashley Tisdale and Thomas Sangster as sibling Phineas, Candace and Ferb, Dee Bradley Baker as Perry the Platypus and Dan Povenmire as Doofenshmirtz, to name a few. The live cast is made up largely of dancers adroit enough to maneuver gracefully in baggy clothing and giant fake eyeballs.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour apparently features a Broadway showtune medley, including “One” and “I Feel Pretty,” as sung by the show’s resident supervillain Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Original songs include “Gitchee Gitchee Goo,” “Everything’s Better With Perry,” “Truck Driving Boy,” “Truck Driving Girl” and “Squirrel in My Pants.”

Don’t underestimate kids’ show tours. They adapt cartoons to the stage, add singing and dancing, and perform in 5000-seat stadiums. That’s commedia, Broadway and Greek drama rolled into one. Phineas and Ferb themselves could barely have the imagination to conceive that.