Profile for Nokros

All evening performances at the Public have been cancelled (matinees are still on), and tomorrow's movie night has been cancelled as well.

If audience response is good it's likely to extend. The Public has had multiple extensions this season (Gatz extended, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs extended like... 5 times) and is generally very open to things extending.

Underground tunnels? There's a door by the women's restrooms in the Cort theatre that has a sign on it that says, "This door leads to the tunnel." I kid you not.

Ben Eakeley in Sweeney Todd. Saw him as both Anthony and the Beadle, and he was brilliant as both.

I also saw the 4/14 evening performance, also second row... I could hear a LOT of prompting going on, especially for Marian Seldes, but they definitely handled it well. It brought a question to my mind about how many recent changes have been made to the script. It's a very difficult script to work with, as a whole - they've got some great exchanges that they pull off very well, but I can see how the script has a whole would be incredibly difficult to pull off. Had it not been Angela Lansbury ...

Granted, this was not overheard in the city, but it was on a train when I left after seeing Sweeney close: Woman: Did I hear you saw Sweeney Todd? Me: Yes. Woman: Is Angela Lansbury still in it? Me: ... no, she was in the original Broadway production, this was a revival. Woman: So she's not still in it? Me: ..No. Woman: Oh, I've thinking of seeing it. Me: It closed yesterday, actually. Woman: Oh...

When my friend Emily and I saw Sweeney in February (we'd both also seen it in November), we saw Ben Eakeley's first performance as Anthony, talked with him afterwards, and he was really sweet. Our fourth time seeing it (and the time we saw it from the front row), he was on for the Beadle. Talking to him afterwards, he remembered us, and asked if we lived in the city. We said, "No, we live in VA, we've seen it four times." He said, "Wait, the odds that you've seen me TWICE and you live in VIRG...

"First of all I'd like to thank the rest of the creative team, Sarah, Richard and Dan, and also I would thank the costume designer and the set designer but they've both given up the business after working with me so it's not going to happen that way. Thank you too, our wonderful producers, particularly my friend Richard Frankel, who is a very special person in my heart. Thank you to a wonderful, wonderful cast and crew who have made this show, I hope, memorable to the Broadway audience. Thank...

The Best Score Tony involves music AND lyrics. And WiW's lyrics... are bad. I'm sorry. I really wanted WiW to be good, but from my first listen to the OLC, hearing things like, "I believe my heart/It believes in you/It's telling me that what I feel/Is completely true"... wow. I feel for the actors and all they went through (especially Maria Friedman, she's an amazing woman and an amazing actress), but that doesn't change the fact that WiW's score is bad. Especially the lyrics.

I agree that comedy is harder than drama, and I commend the Pajama Game because it looks like something fantastic. But I think Sweeney had far more to overcome than the Pajama Game. The problem with reviving Sweeney is that the original Broadway production was so legendary. There will always be people out there who believe that the massive, original Hal Prince style is the only way Sweeney should be done. Especially before the revival opened and gained such notoriety, these people were everyw...

I have Saturday Night, but as has been said... it's really an early work, not a recent one. I'd go with Assassins... it premiered Off-Broadway in 1991, which is about as recent as you're going to get (unless you want to do Bounce, which I DON'T SUGGEST). The Frogs would work, but the version that was just on Broadway was an extention of the one act musical he wrote in 1974, so it's a mix of older and newer.

It's "Like a perfect machine he planned" in this revival.

rockfenris2005: First of all, if you're as big a name as Andrew Lloyd Webber, you should be used to people have widely varying opinions on your work. It's really the nature of the beast. I've heard just as many people say that Sondheim's work is too intellectual, not melodic enough, boring, or not catchy enough, as I've heard people say that Lloyd Webber's work is flimsy, recycled, or repetitive. I think he's used to his critics by now. Second, the critics and naysayers probably have differen...

Mostly, it was during "God, that's Good". Since they didn't have a fancy barber chair, they found something else to be a chair and as significant as the fancy barber chair, but it wasn't the mechanical contraption that it's been in many productions. They changed some lyrics involving the mechanics of the chair. I can't remember exactly what the changes were, unfortunately. There might have been another instance, but I can't remember that off the top of my head..

I think he really got carried away with using motifs. Like, he thought, "Oh, I need to use motifs to unify the score," and then he just got carried away with them. Woman in White beats you over the head with the motifs. There are really only 5 or 7 melodies in that musical, which, considering it's almost completely sung... well... really. Cats was flawed because it didn't know whether it wanted to be a book show or a revue. It made a weak stab at a plot, separating it from revues, but the plo...

Haha. Interesting, I saw Sweeney on Friday, too. It was ridiculously fantastic in every way imaginable.

Definitely get familiar with it via the DVD or CD (I suggest the DVD, though). But don't expect to see what you're watching on the DVD... this production is MUCH different.

Though it was both of their faults, blah blah, etc. etc.... if I'd have to pick, I'd say Cathy. Jamie gives Cathy so much. That's really demonstrated in "Schmuel Song"... besides just giving her a watch, he's giving her time, he's giving her a chance to do what she wants to do without worrying about money or time. He could not care, but he does. Through most of the show, he's giving and giving, and Cathy's either taking or pushing him away.

The Pippin sex music. "Ba-buh-buh-ba-ba-ba..."

The number was cut from the Original Broadway production because Hal Prince didn't like it. He said, "I took it out. We did it at the first preview, and I said 'It's gone tomorrow.' I don't get it; I don't know how to do it. . . .And furthermore, I don't like it, so it wasn't there." (that quote's from Secrest's biography of Sondheim, which is god awful, but I'd assume at least the quotes are accurate) It was Prince who cut the song, not Sondheim. I heard that Edmund Lyndeck performed it beau...