Profile for Auggie27

Several people have fairly raised Evita as a parallel subject, likely because like Jackie Eva possessed a bigger than life ruthlessness. Yet Eva Peron harnessed ambition and tied it to a nation's hunger for a proxy in government, or at least adjacency to the seat of power. Eva honed a message, against staggering odds (gender, class) became a communicator, and forged a connection to a swath of her culture that made her rise the stuff of myths. Eva was compromised and arg

In the last 18 hours, particularly Facebook, people have taken to social media with exclamatory paeans - offered in advance - to the casting as proof that this is an event. We get a lot of "I'm so there!" Many posters are quick to condemn those of us who aren't excited. As if such a wildly expensive endeavor for most consumers has to be viewed as a litmus test for supporting "the arts" or "the non-commercial theater." (Non-commercial? Simply because it is

Social media didn't sabotage this show.

The show sabotaged itself, in its POV-free decision to dramatize a woman whose life story told in the unique lexicon of musical theater has no audience. To paraphrase the late Hal Prince, you cannot sell a show that no one wants to see, no matter how often you proclaim the star's return or tether the project to the composer of Wicked. The Wicked audience has no reason to sit through Jackie's lurid tale,

I appreciate the honesty in the appraisal of the show sans the star and usual leading ladies. It's far from a putdown of the talented trio to note that the piece isn't actor-proof - or more fairly, a show that easily sails across the finish line without a star. It's got a fairly hard-to-sustain conceit - that opening that starts meta - that may not translate easily without a charismatic leading man to wink knowingly at the audience. A non-name explaining that he's not really D

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