Profile for Auggie27

Jordan isn't an obvious choice, but does tour with his own rock band and thus this sort of presentational turf isn't alien to him. Yet I agree: will he sell tickets? The show is a unique synergy of specific performer, who nursed the project, and song catalog. It needs a winning personality who can morph before an audience's eyes, with a pop singer's voice and a hipster sophistication. (Morrison seems closer to me than Jordan on this point).

Listen to the (brilliant

It's been interesting to note now often Redwood is cited as context. Yet other than the obvious connection to Chenoweth, its a show with almost zero parallels to Queen. In content, style, and comparatively modest presentation, not similar at all. It offered a relatable tale of a grieving woman's journey to self-forgiveness if not closure. We can mock its wide-eyed belief in Thoreau's Walden for spiritual and corporeal reinvention, its New Age twee-ness (nami

"Don't blame Arden. No one could make this work."

Arden was involved almost from the outset, one of the first tier creatives. The show had a high profile out of town engagement with mainstream reviews that proved prescient in their diagnostics. Arden shepherded the piece through every step, the artistic team leader tasked with finding solutions to problems identified by consensus. We can lose the word "blame," but to pretend his hands-on input was

The post-closing deconstruction of Arden and company's justification in this thread is so persuasively argued, the last thoughtful word on this show; and as someone who's been here two decades - and saw Queen, for the record - the kind of discourse this board is known for. Thank you, smart folks.

I'll just add: Blaming this debacle on misogyny is rich indeed. The show is a celebration of a navel-gazing woman who has no skill, no discern

Count me among the disappointed. I wanted to love it, and the first 10 minutes gave me hope, since it begns in medias res. Yet. This take will infuriate those who were enchanted, yet ... from strictly a craft standpoint, it must be noted that an efficient hour second act on Broadway has been expanded to 2 hours 17 minutes, and the resulting padding (a wedding, origin story flashbacks, 2 new but unmemorable songs, one with almost indecipherable lyrics) leaves the audience co

I'd add The Humans, by Stephen Karem. It's a grim forced-reunion Thanksgiving play set in a lower Manhattan two-tier basement duplex that manages to make suburban domesticity threatened by an urban environment something palpable. Much goes on, the neighbors are mysterious presence, and yet very little. Adultery is revealed, and mysterious doings happen around the core event. But it created an ominous atmosphere that captured something frightening about such family gather

The eloquent Shaw review - highlighting the distinct Americana in Hunter's story - is, in the best sense, triggering. The play is closing in no small part because it's a non-event offering in an "event" forward ecosystem. Ticket pricing as a liability remains a controversial topic, because we're told that even short runs require a preponderance of near premium seats to ensure return on the dollar. But here's where we hit a sociological wall: A show like Hun

Some of us believed Criss was returning briefly, to play the show only through the holidays. But apparently that was conjecture. Not that the website was always accurate about what company ticket buyers were purchasing seats to see (infamously, Criss's name didn't disappear from advance sales until just before he left; I know because I checked it often last summer). If memory serves, the show ultimately stayed near 100% capacity during Feldman's run, albeit with lower b.o.&nb

TotallyEffed's take is so useful at this late date, the comparison with Gleason's je ne sais quoi attributes informing her Baker's Wife the perfect illustration: some actors inhabit roles, creating an alchemy of character and artist that's impossible to frame with words. Acting is both a science - craft - and a mysterious art, the morphing into another via an almost chemical synergy. Here, we see a gifted musical comedy star tackling a role outside her resum

I saw a towering performance of this play with Liv Ulman in my youth (mid-20s) in DC, opposite a fine John Lithgow (and Mary McCarty) and I remember then believing the talky, creaky play inaccessible for modern audiences. Along came a B'way revival with Natasha Richardson that people adored, and proved me 100% wrong. But this is a curiosity, and not only because Williams is on the other side of 40. It seems to me that it needs a radical new frame - maybe not as stylized as Van H