Profile for weaselprince71

"(Ya Got) Trouble" from The Music Man.  Along with its numerous parodies.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet; this seems like the obvious granddaddy of the "warning song" genre, even if the "person, place or thing" being warned-against -- a pool table -- is comically unworthy of all the fuss.  Or actually maybe because of that:  Hill's rabble-rousing really is pure "warning", unencumbered by any actual facts, reasonable inferences, or even any genuine concern for the people he's warning.

morosco said: "The ending felt pretty anticlimactic... is that how it always ends?

TotallyEffed said: "I saw a production of the show once where the ending was different and probably not an authorized change.

g.d.e.l.g.i. said:  "Piggy-backing on what I said, let's be clear on what this revival is, as its press has been making it out to be: a love letter to the 1979 original. If you're coming expecting anything else, you're in the wrong theater."

I haven't been yet; I'm looking forward to seeing the show twice next month.  But while its nostalgia may extend to preserving the original keys for the story's dullest character (in both senses, both deliberate) -- still, nothing I've seen or heard so far suggests that this revival approaches the original staging or designs quite so reverentially.  Which is fine; I've been heartened by the upswing in enthusiasm here from folks who've seen it most recently and noted improvements from the earliest previews;  and I'm very much hoping I'll love Kail's production on its own terms.  But I'm not sure that just using the original full orchestration -- and finally giving the piece another NYC production that is not, in broad terms, experimentally (or pragmatically) miniaturized -- automatically makes it a "love letter" to the original (which isn't to say that both those choices aren't overdue and well worth celebrating).  Kail & co. do seem to think of it that way, which sounds hopeful, but all I've seen to support such an intention in visual terms so far is a bridge and a crane; it remains to be seen whether their homage, however sincere, succeeds as more than a handful of isolated gestures.

My fear has been that their revival might end up as a nervously-calculated attempt to appeal to both fans of the original (large theater, full ensemble & orchestra, a few token "industrial-era" scenic elements) and of the Burton movie (sexy leads, black-brick surround, godawful poster art) -- while tiptoeing gingerly around Hal Prince's unapologetically Brechtian political framework, which has fallen from favor ever since SJS began blessing ever-smaller productions on the basis of his original pre-Prince impulse (chamber-sized revenge thriller, claustrophobic pub-theatre scares).  However pure those intentions may have been, it's always seemed to me that Prince's epic scale and political animus ultimately found their way into the writing at a deep enough level that it's probably unwise to ignore them entirely; the Doyle and Tooting Arts versions were interesting and productive experiments, but they could never be definitive, because, in focusing exclusively on individual psychology at the expense of social context, these "teeny Todd"s left a significant chunk of the work unexplored.

Pace Sondheim Himself, Sweeney isn't a droll little fright-fest about a psychotically enraged serial killer and his besotted, amoral landlady.  More than that, it's an apocalyptic, resolutely unsexy vision of humanity (or at least, of humanity under capitalism), so deeply pessimistic that its pitch-black "humor" should elicit more shivering revulsion than actual laughter.  (The show, alarmingly, has never felt more timely).

All of which is my roundabout way of saying, I hope this production is indeed a love letter to Prince's 1979 original as well as Sondheim/Wheeler's.  It's clearly not a carbon copy -- which, again, is fine.  (I was just a few years too young to have seen it on B'way, but have spent countless hours over the ensuing decades obsessing over the original designs and going through the tour video with a fine-toothed comb -- and even a handful of photos from the new production are enough to establish that this ain't that).  But I hope it somehow manages to reconstitute, for 21st-century audiences, something of the original shock and awe, the expansive theatrical world-building and sheer overwhelm, that have gone pointedly missing from previous revivals (NYCO notwithstanding) of this show.

trpguyy:  "Unrelated, are we all just ignoring the fact that this set looks almost identical to "Diner?""

Hear, hear.

Nothing to add to your observations -- just that I entirely agree.

Brown is credited (in the OP's link) for Prince of B'way's "musical supervision and arrangements".  I wouldn't expect much (if anything) in the way of original composition, unless it's along the exceedingly-slender lines of the single original ditty ("God") composed by Himself for Sondheim on Sondheim a few years back.

http://f**kyeahgreatplays.tumblr.com/post/118694712921

(replace the asterisks)

Check your PMs.

Kad: "Sure, the reveal of the house is missed. But everything else that is revealed is more valuable." 
Indytallguy: "Eloquently said."

Thank you, indytallguy.  When I saw FH downtown, I was less-enamored by it than I'd hoped to be, but it's been steadily growing on me ever since -- in recent months it's become my new obsession, particularly its score -- and the Broadway staging has utterly erased any remaining qualms.

Eric and SF: yes, the graphic memoir is more careful to allow that Bruce's death might indeed have been an accident, as officially reported -- though even in the book, Bechdel makes it clear that she and her mother always thought otherwise.  (In short interviews, she sometimes simply refers to her father as having "killed himself," without further explanation).