Profile for levineds

I saw this a few days ago with several other theater friends. Of us, I think I liked it the most. They thought it was terrible. I thought it was merely not good. This show needs a lot of work. It runs too quickly to develop much of the needed characterization to make us understand/care for these characters. If we had more time for the characters to flesh out their thoughts/feelings about their situation, it might be significantly better. I didn't actually realize this was a jukebox musical until I read things after (we're local so we see a lot that comes through Berkeley Rep, particularly musicals). That makes a lot of sense as the songs seem to poorly fit the plot/characters and don't propel the show forward or fit into any kind of real narrative. The songs were mostly nice and catchy and the casts' voices and acting are great, but they don't make a coherent musical. The sets are amazing (we all praised them) and the choreo and directing were good. Ultimately, the book was just too bad to compensate and the lyrics do not help.

Detailed comments with spoilers below (after shifting all letters by 13 (e.g. https://rot13.com/ )

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