The best part of the show is probably the visual aspect and marketing of the show. The show lets viewers relive the typical life of the northerners from the past to the present with many cultures such as royal examinations, regional examinations or ancestor worship, buffalo herding, dragonfly catching... all are quite pleasing to the eye, the lighting and sound are all quite good.
However, everything is only at the "fair" level when compared to similar cultural shows such as Hoi An Memories. The show has many minus points:
- The stage of the show is a very large lake (?), the whole stage for the audience is up to 2000 people so it must be said to be super super large, half of the audience will not see what the actors are doing on stage. Most of the performances are aimed at the center of the audience, that is, the gold and platinum classes, some boat rides only stop on the 2 sides, I wonder if the middle classes will pay attention. The platinum class is very far away so those with poor eyesight should not choose it. Silver class is needless to say, if you can't compete for a place near gold class, then you don't know what the actors in the middle of the stage are doing.
- The whole show has many different acts but they are all very short, the audience is just sitting and pondering the previous story before moving on to the next act. Overall, the whole show, although all about northern culture, is very disjointed, lacking connection, the end of the show is about the students finishing their exams and turning to go to the festival, suddenly the show ends in the audience's confusion. I think the director of the show should invest more brainpower to make the story more coherent. For example, we can take the setting of a northern family in the past, recreate their life and incorporate a story about culture, still keeping those acts but adding the main character, conveying the story in a timeline from the past to the present. That is, rearranging the order of the acts, adding a central character, the show would be much, much better. - The show I went to was advertised as a special show for the Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day 4/30/1/5, but the only difference from the regular show was that at the beginning of the show there was a flag salute, at the end of the show there was a short video + flag waving, of course it was very disjointed and had nothing to do with the rest of the show. Unfortunately, I also went on the same day as the special circus show of the Central Circus (the brothers and sisters created a new show, combined with some old acts, paying tribute to the soldiers from the foster brother, the girls at Dong Loc intersection, the people, the heroic Vietnamese mothers... very good and touching) so when put on the scale, Tinh Hoa Bac Bo did very poorly.
It would be too long to say more, but even though I know the show brings people back to the traditional Northern culture and creates jobs for the people of Quoc Oai, I really, really hope that the show's management board can change some of the above points so that everyone can enjoy it more fully. Honestly, I came because of the strong advertising, and partly because of my love for national culture, but the show made me a bit disappointed.