Profile for Auggie27

Scott is so damned good, rendering the final number with a gifted actor's clarity, she made me realize how absolutely wrong it is, as a stopping place in this muddled, compromised narrative. Her investment in the circular rumination as a final epiphany, as a personal re-declaration of her I Want, is so persuasively offered, it points up how the show has no real ending. Scott approaches it like Jackie's "Before the Parade Passes By," and finds herself where she started. 

Just looking at the curtain call footage reveals a different take. She has a distinctive carriage, suggests a different navigation of the space, and unlike the show's star, has always manifest an effortless sophistication, in every role. I will be curious to hear how it played. I was 8th row center and never ceased to see Chenoweth as Jackie rather than Jackie. I'm guessing that Scott disappears more readily and fully. Which likely helps the show's cohesion.

This should come as a surprise to no one who checks advance sales. The winter on B'way can be brutal for even a modest success. But you have to arrive with word of mouth. And sustain it. There was never a path thru Jan - March for this poorly received piece. And this once again underscores: A Critics Pick in the Times used in every ad cannot buck the general consensus. I cannot get past how anyone presumed the high nut could've been made in the days ahead. But people do believe track&

My two companions and I all thought the homoerotic element in JJ and Sidney was front and center with this cast's interpretation, if not always illustrated in the staging (an unfair ask, since nailing the plot is tricky enough with this piece with 2 weeks of rehearsal; subtext would have to be mined in performance).  The emotional incest angle certainly makes JJ a bit of a damaged puppy, and "For Susan," a scary stalker paean, nails how pervasive the obsession has beco

I was there Saturday, and the score was so stunningly executed, the sharp staging made a persuasive case. I found it part Loesser - the lush stuff between Susan and Dallas  but also part Cy Coleman, the edgier midcentury urbanity. A friend felt the engendered emotion was slightly oppositional to the musical's goals: when the melodic lines underscore earnest intention in characters, satire and brittle sheen in the story can disappear. Of course, that's often true in

I raised questions about the book from the first preview, but now see that its foundational flaws are ultimately almost an irrelevancy. This hybrid staging - Encores! meets Encores Moves a Show to Broadway - seems to satisfy the paying public. This shot of a shirtless man gives the production the optics of a hot intimate character piece, not a mega-amplified concert dominated by down center power ballads. But no one is kvetching or crying false advertizing. There's nothing else on B'w

The long Chenoweth interview on CBS this morning puts to rest the idea that the Queen creatives believe the piece is a stinging "cautionary tale" (the caution addressed to whom, I still ask: the $290 seat ticket holders?) or pointed satire. Chenoweth makes a blunt pitch that the show asks audience to walk in Jackie's shoes. She goes so far as to say that she used to judge her, watching the doc, but cannot anymore. So the show has created an earnest portra

Isn't the Queen nut close to a million?  The show seems safe enough through the holidays, though mid-December is an infamous dip. So hard to gauge advance sales these days, with buyers purchasing seats closer to chosen performances. I was looking at the Chess matinees and January, and the Wednesdays are wide open, mostly unsold (I note that Chess is not  necessarily a midweek matinee show). This could be a rough winter - January - March - on

Can't believe we're debating COVID protocols with an anti-science anti-vax hardliner at this site at this time. The issues with Osnes focus exclusively on the theater community in crisis after 18 months of shutdown, and the courageous rallying of artists to serve the artform, audiences, industry.  They saved it; she was not a participant, and rather than apologize and seek new access and resume her Broadway career, she became litigious, dug in her heels, packed up, moved to a red

There's no such "science" that determined that a younger demographic is invulnerable, sans vaccine. The vaccine saved lives. We all have anecdotal evidence in our own lives of the vaccine's success. And the tragic loss of life when it was avoided. People begged for the shots in ERs across the nation when it was too late. Let us not now rewrite history and pretend that COVID was a cold and that younger, "stronger" people who took vitamins or worm medicatio

And just this morning, I wrote something comparable on a friend's FB page:
 

 "As a four-decade rabid fan of the score - I'd argue that the second act is unfixable, if the song stack is rigidly preserved. The only genuinely post-millennial correction to the character of Florence would be to give her comparable agency in the chess world, let her finally achieve on her own, not in the shadow of either of these two self-absorbed men. Were she to ascend, co

In praise of the BWW posters, whose comments during this long-ish preview period track perfectly with this consensus. As a 22-year veteran of this board, this morning I'll toast the savvy discussions that ensued.in an always engaging thread. The flaws noted from the first performance are all amplified in the media critiques, to a point, and for daily visitors to this site, these reviews validate the head scratching, the sighs, the one thumb way up/one down reporting. Those scolded for nay