Profile for Auggie27

RFKII and Biden jokes sprinkled into this show at this moment speaks to a tone deafness in the minds of the creatives eleven months into the political hellscape that is 2025. Maybe with the narratively pointless and utterly audience indifferent Queen of Versailles playing a block away we're witnessing Broadway power brokers' middle finger to earnest resistance. It's hard to fathom why anyone would capture this moment with cynicism. Whatever their motiv

Does Arden understand that a cautionary tale demands an audience that requires cautioning? Does he honestly believe people spending $600 for a pair of seats will gasp with knowing recognition and intone “but for the grace of God go I” witnessing this navel-gazing cipher sing incessantly about “American royal-tee” ?  The specious reasoning - that Jackie’s narrative has an every woman universality - defies logic. Simply being able to mus

I've seen it, I've read most reviews, and I honestly cannot imagine what would've fixed any show about this woman and her quest. A 90 minute black comedy, might work. Maybe a writer like Diablo Cody could've excavated a wicked portrait of vaulting ambition. But a big, bloated extravaganza with an earnest I Want, a historical conceit that drives home a parallel that only makes the subject less appealing, and a pile-on of digressive material - we're left with what conse

In a production this strong — one of the best I’ve seen in 30+ years of theatergoing — these topical jokes feel like unnecessary speed bumps. Cutting them would keep the audience fully immersed in the extraordinary world you’ve created onstage."

But isn't the goal to give some members of the audience an exit ramp if they're not engaged? I cannot fathom any other reason to interpolate current socioeconomic politics into this tal

Subjective take: it's impossible to fathom That Song functioning in a linear narrative now, as excised and repurposed as it is, a standalone paean to {Singer's Choice}, a showcase for 80s overwrought show-tune-ness. With its galloping rhythm, its incessant plea to be recognized as the stirrings of a singer's - not character's - heart, how can it be folded into a slight fable with the gravitas of, say, The Fantasticks? Or maybe Amelee? Asked to serve

"Not worth Broadway prices, but worth a rush ticket."

More or less the consensus on these boards since the first preview. Get a discounted ticket and you won't have missed it when the show eventually closes. I'm trying to imagine folks coming to town for the holidays - or more telling, the dead of winter, January - March - and finding this must-see. Maybe I'm wrong; it pulled a million last week (though apparently still below the nut?)  It's hard

"Well, the book being a bit misogynist matches the score also being so. Not a single female song passes the Bechdel test."

I raised this very issue at the start of previews and was shouted down that the show doesn't need a "woke" fix. As if giving a female character any agency beyond romantic entanglements is "woke."

Strong had an opportunity to remint Florence, to give her a new impetus in the second act, one driven by he

I saw Liberation this weekend, and was mesmerized, entertained, moved to tears multiple times. I haven't seen a play with its cumulative power in many seasons. But the show is closer to, say, The Heidi Chronicles than Suffs, - epic but personal and fictional, intricately woven storytelling, not a polemic - and I wish they'd market it to highlight how theatrical the staging is. It's not a handful of characters perched on the edges of folding cha

The morning after, the culpability for disaster here feels so organic to the unsuitability of subject chosen for a musical play, and the better critics -- notably Feldman and Teeman in the Daily Beast - strongly support it. The reviews do not suggest that more development, selection of different moments to musicalize, tighter control over the narrative or any other after-the-fact corrections would offer fixes. Though not universal, the consensus finds the piece's unworkabil

"‘The Queen of Versailles’ Broadway Review: Kristin Chenoweth’s Electric Performance Can’t Save This Overly Ambitious Slog.." Variety

"Yet the play’s positive components do not make up for its faults. Broadway is the wrong medium for this story. Musicalizing the story does little to ground the audience in Jackie’s world and instead pulls and stretches the tale, when the themes alone could speak for themselves. The narrative would a

Does anyone else who has seen this behemoth grasp where "smart," "sparkling," or "a sociological fairy tale {what the hell does that mean}" come from?  The show lumbers and lurches, it attenuates its thinnest of plotlines to push itself forward, with nothing "sparkling" manifest, its insistence on making 1793 more pertinent than 2025 negating "smart." The review feels suspect to many of us because it doesn't use a lexicon that re

Mutable embargo determinations have been harder to ascertain in recent years, to my eyes, since many of us are accustomed to reading most reviews before bed on opening nights. As many note, this show's reviews are what they are whenever they land.

Some have debated this show in many forums (discussions on FB extensive) and are particularly intrigued that the opening is in the worst possible socioeconomic climate for a tale of solipsistic obsession with 

Per Jordan's comment, I'm intrigued if the 15 minutes excised all centered on the diary (without re-opening the discussion). I also imagine some of the Versailles sequences were tightened.

At the Wednesday matinee, we experienced an odd add-on to the run time: Chenoweth announced at 1:55 that the show would start late, even mentioning 2:15. For the next 8-10 minutes the audience sat in semi-darkness, and then the pre-show sequence which had begun once circa 1: