Because of mankind’s wicked nature, God’s servant, Noah, is given a long-range plan to build an ark in the desert. With it he’ll save his family and the animal kingdom from an impending, world-destroying flood. There are threatening overtures from a neighboring cursed city. And an evil leader tries to set the ark afire. But Noah and his family rejoice in the grace of God.
Nearly five decades ago, rural Pennsylvania dairy farmer Glenn Eshelman, shifted from producing milk to producing multimedia presentations with Sight & Sound Theaters. He and his wife, Shirley, eventually transitioned to staging live, biblically focused musicals with huge ensemble casts.
In 1995, the first version of the NOAH musical was created. But it was only after a huge fire decimated the original Living Waters Theater that NOAH became the stage production that it is now.
Sight & Sound built a new 2,000-seat, state-of-the-art theater featured a massive, 300-foot panoramic stage that wraps around its audience with sets four stories high. And the company’s signature production NOAH was the first show to fill that enormous playhouse wall to wall.
An updated 30th anniversary version of that musical—packed with huge multilevel sets, staged choreography, scores of live animals and Disney-like animatronics—is the show that Sight & Sound is presenting in theaters over the next week.
What’s this cinematic version like?
Well, having seen a live presentation in Pennsylvania myself, I can attest to the fact that absorbing something this big, with an incredible lighting system, multimedia screens, sweeping orchestral underscore, and animals running up and down the aisles is undeniably impressive in a live setting. And frankly, it’s a challenge to fully capture that same scope and visceral impact on a movie screen.
That said, Sight & Sound Presents: NOAH – Live certainly captures the heart of this book of Genesis story if not its theatrically seismic side. The musical fills in the Bible’s ark-building time gaps by extrapolating the story of Noah and his family’s tenuous relationship with the wicked neighboring city of Nod. (It’s a cursed and warring city descended from Adam’s son Cain, who rejected God.) But that’s the only slight extrabiblical conflict added to this very recognizable story.
Ultimately, the tale drives home the point that God’s plan and love for we mere humans is truly so much larger than we can imagine. It proclaims that despite our sinful struggles—our anger and fighting, impatience and grumbling—our heavenly Father is loving and just. And the show powerfully highlights all the many parallels between Noah’s story of judgement, struggle and redemption and God’s eternal plan for our salvation through His son, Jesus Christ.
That powerful redemption connection is presented clearly in a content-free exhibit that your whole family can be part of and enjoy. The elephants may not seem quite as impressive, but the godly message certainly is.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
