Profile for Auggie27

Water for Elephants, front mezz, row E, great seat.

Patriots, front mezz, row A center - no bar! As good as it gets. 

Illinoise, Saturday Matinee, Orchestra row M, seats 114, 112. Just superb. (And my response to this rapturously beautiful show is in its reviews thread.)

I've had a great 2024 with our beloved TDF. Two times Days of Wine and Roses, second row center orchestra both. 

Merrily without Radcliffe, rear orchestra, perfect sightline

I so agree with Jordan about the acting snubs. I was glad to see that Ricky Ubeda got a Drama Desk nomination. He just broke me, at two key points in the narrative. Anyone who doesn't believe dancers are nuanced actors: this is Exhibit A to make you into a true believer. As technically refined and precise as the choreography is, its execution is so emotion-fueled, you feel everything the characters feel.

The piece's impact is mysterious, the story told so artfully externali

I saw this eloquent heartbreaker yesterday. In addition to Movin' Out, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake sprang to mind, the corralling and unleashing of male energy in dance to express a limitless emotional range. I'm simply haunted: a ballet, a full throttle concert of a beloved album*, a hybrid piece of theatrical storytelling all at once. Passionately danced, the precision in the performance, exquisite. Even having read reviews, I was startled by the many surprises, in

A movable set piece crashed moving downstage before Yeltsin’s appearance. Stuhlbarg handled it masterfully before the PSM called a halt. The resumed act one rewound to the very top of the scene before. The furniture was struck. My third recent experience with automation failure stopping a show. A Strange Loop stalled for over 20 minutes early on; Girl From the North Country in the final 15 minutes, necessitating a longer reprise. Today, it somewhat damaged the momentum

I'm so happy for everyone, but especially Herzog. I saw the play in its first NYC iteration (with the quiet but ever sturdy Carrie Coon, magnificent) and always wondered why it didn't move. It's what I called the anti-Joe Egg, a play that daringly uses the theater to earnestly explore what we've grown used to in cable drama. The straightforward depiction of this 11th hour is what so touched me, the play refusing to pretend that this isn't what it is; port

Neuwirth is the reason that I will plunk down my filthy lucre, and these reviews suggest I won't be let down. As for the rest, it sounds exhausting, the last thing a decent Cabaret should be. I've seen all of the major stagings, dating to the fine first national of the original, and still wonder what this one says in 2024. It needs more relevance than a Black Cliff; it needs to point to how a blend of ennui, willful indifference to power grabs, and aggression ca

Comparisons are odious, but Carrie Coon was devastating in this role, the last scene has stuck with me for 5+ years, her playing so understated and recognizably real: we know this woman, whose seeming fragility - she's both beleaguered and resilient - is matched by an internal pilot light that glows steadily in the face of untold crises. I've heard that McAdams is fine, but the role is a quiet tour de force, a young mother like no other in recent memory, beautifully con

Forget the flops, go back and read the reviews of Evita. Just the two NY Times critics, opening night and Sunday. I moved to NYC that autumn of 1979 (saw very first preview, 9/10/79; wall, row N of the mezzanine) and still remember how negative they were. In many ways, they were eerily like these: finding fault with how history is characterized, how many scenes are presentational/narrative (Walter Kerr insisted Che’s overuse for exposition dumps and thus unreliability strips dr

I’ve read four pans by women, all of which land on craft issues reflected in the consensus. This hardly seems like white male prejudicial blinders writ large (and I’m acknowledging that gender bias exists, in analysing the canon and new work). It’s interesting that the most articulate of the women critics - whose critique encompasses both structural issues and the show’s failure to fully dramatize the title character in satisfying musical theatre terms - is taking

Early discussions about the spring being too crowded to allow shows to find their niche audiences have now proven prophetic. This is the kind of piece that might've inched forward, surviving by building on a cultish following. But with so much to choose from for consumers, it has Paradise Square written all over it: a show built around a powerful leading performance and a game support but too little else to recommend. Pull quotes about belting, all kidding aside, don&#3

Seriously, whatever the structural problems with this show - with its craft, its decisions about what and when to musicalize or its handling of the source material - they have zero to do with the diversity in its casting. When these digressive arguments ensue about the supposed inclusionary casting bias in a major working artist, here a director, no one wins. The Broadway theater is a beautifully representative canvas right now. In the last two years alone we've seen a Black art

Hearing this, I'm wondering if it's just some bizarre directorial choice.

I found Cliff on the West End recording to be the oddest, if not the weakest, link. The role has been described as thankless by some, and of course, losing "Why Should I Wake Up?" Cliff is barely a participant in a musical. But he's always been the "I" who served as the camera, the reliable narrator, and the show is severely compromised if he's poorly cast. John Be

I can actually imagine a deconstructed Wiz fueled by a new concept - say, a Kansas church congregation in lockdown during a tornado warning that puts on the story with available props and pieces, transforming themselves and the situation. A smart director could carve something new from the material, finding an expression of solidarity in a frightened community (the film did this, albeit about NYC; rural might be refreshing). But why do a straight up concept-free fantasy wit

"Performances including McAdams are the reason to go. The play itself does good character work but largely feels like a series of vignetttes at times."
 

In the original production, it was only after the midpoint that we realized the structural plan: no spoilers, but the play focuses on a particular chapter of the title character's life, and zeroes in for a kind of close-up of all that it entails, including those she meets as collaborators and/

I saw the original NY production with Carrie Coon, which was exquisite in every way. That staging had a kind of coup de theatre in the middle (no spoiler) that involved a set change. The play is naturalistic, but the production offered a theatrical prism on the story that allowed an almost metaphysical construct, the piece's gritty details measured against a benevolent universe. Will be curious to see if that imagery is used here.  

It's a beautiful, ambitious play, it