Profile for The Bittersweets

Of course, I will echo Joshua Henry in Ragtime, the ending (and stairs scene) of Appropriate, and the calibrated lunacy of Oh, Mary! A few other highlights I’d be remiss not to mention:

• Most of Terce stuck with me, but I will forever wonder how they were able to tune that vacuum cleaner to the song!

• Andrew Durand commanding a room without moving a muscle in act 2 of Dead Outlaw.

• Dave Malloy’s gorgeous score for Three Houses, particularly t

I wouldn’t call this terrible, like the above posters! It’s not my favorite of Jen’s work, but it supplies the audience with interesting characters and some memorable moments. Mia and Patti take this show and make it into something both humorous and heartfelt. It’s a subtle, strange, at times stupid play. At times these characters feel a bit entrenched in their writing, but I still was able to connect and resonate with this show below that! Definitely some honing requi

I think some of Galt MacDermot’s post-Hair work qualifies! For Two Gentlemen of Verona, he had just won a Grammy a couple of years prior for Hair, and John Guare had House Of Blue Leaves running off-Broadway. While the show ended up winning the Tony for Best Musical, it beat out both Grease and Follies for the award. This was an upset at the time, and now it’s borderline unthinkable, given how much Follies and Grease impacted musical theatre canon. Perhaps Verona on

From a creative standpoint, I think it’s a race between Suffs, Days of Wine and Roses, and The Notebook so far. Much of the outcome depends on how much Suffs has been reworked in its downtime: I thought it had high highs and low lows off-Broadway. I still can’t imagine Best Score going to anyone other than Guettel (even having heard quite a bit of Notebook), but I don’t know if that necessarily translates into Best Musical. It’s definitely the busiest season in recent

pethian said: "Stephen Sondheim not being nominated for music or lyrics for A FUNNY THING."

Fun fact! Just 11 days after the opening of Forum, another musical comedy set in Rome opened on Broadway in the same year! This (much lesser known) musical is called Bravo Giovanni, and it’s about a family owned Italian restaurant trying to stay afloat when a competing chain restaurant opens across the street. It opened to little fanfare and mixed revi

I fear there was a bit of cherry-picking in this article… Life Of Pi, Between Riverside and Crazy, and (speculation) the upcoming Here Lies Love all feel rather ‘large’ to me. Even the current production of Death Of A Salesman, which is arguably minimalist, still had a visually arresting set in my eyes. I feel Salesman is a perfect example of the difference between minimalism and ‘not trying’ in terms of set design. 

Even thinking about last season,

This is a fascinating show! I definitely think it could benefit from quite a bit of paring, but there are some fun and funny moments sprinkled throughout the show. Michael is great at pastiche, and the first act is a really clever study of representation in traditionally ‘white’ media. 

Act 2 is where things kind of go off the rails for me. The plot swerves in a different direction, the style changes, it feels like a different (but related) show to me. Needlessly sexua

Kimberly Akimbo super fan here (note my username, hahaha). Just finished the album and I found it very enjoyable. Many different acting choices than the ones I’ve seen on Broadway! Which is both exciting and a bit sad, as the previous choices are ingrained in my head and the reason I’m obsessed with the show. But even with these new choices, the emotion of the show still comes through.
 

Overall, the songs sound great. Almost too good. My favorite pa