Profile for The Bittersweets

While her work interfaces a lot with religious material, I think it's clearly also rooted in science as well. Much of Oratorio for Living Things focused on photosynthesis, black holes, atomic collisions, etc. Seems like one of her driving questions is "how do we make room for religion when our modern understanding of physics seems to contradict its tenets?" Such big questions feel quite compatible with music in my eyes.

I'm still mad at myself for missing Disgraced, and with the right person I think a revival of I Am My Own Wife would be electric.

I'm also glad this thread resurfaced! In the time since it was created, the recent productions of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord and Appropriate both fit the bill for me. The end of Drug Lord had me covering my eyes, and Appropriate was the last time I heard an audience scream (you know the moment).

I certainly don’t think West End has lost its touch for exciting political theatre. Even as recently as 2021, Broadway had Lehman Trilogy, a towering achievement of theatre that well deserved the Tony for Best Play. Not to mention the similarly remarkable Prima Facie and The Hills Of California. I found Kyoto to be electric.

Most of my indispensable shows have been mentioned already, and I agree Caroline is #1. If Ragtime had only come along a couple of years later, I think it would also be at the top! Here are mine, in no particular order:1. Caroline Or Change2. Oratorio For Living Things3. Band’s Visit4. Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 18125. Drowsy Chaperone6. Bridges Of Madison County (for the score!)7. Urinetown8. Grey Gardens9. Light In The Piazza10. Adding Machine

I was there on opening night (and at NYSAF) and generally agree with Jesse’s review. Somewhere in here are the bones of a good show: this is most evident in Christian’s score. The music is spectacular. The book feels muddled, and it’s often a bit hard to follow the specifics of this story even as someone who read the book. I don’t remember this being such a problem back at NYSAF, but I think some of the character moments didn’t survive the trip to DC. These issues feel fixable to me, and if t...

Of course, I will echo Joshua Henry in Ragtime, the ending (and stairs scene) of Appropriate, and the calibrated lunacy of Oh, Mary! A few other highlights I’d be remiss not to mention:• Most of Terce stuck with me, but I will forever wonder how they were able to tune that vacuum cleaner to the song!• Andrew Durand commanding a room without moving a muscle in act 2 of Dead Outlaw.• Dave Malloy’s gorgeous score for Three Houses, particularly the second house. • Hearing Christine Ebersole sing ...

Seconding Oratorio… I’d sell my soul for a cast recording. As for play, it’s a tossup between Downstate (though its first US production was back in 2018!) and You Will Get Sick.

I wouldn’t call this terrible, like the above posters! It’s not my favorite of Jen’s work, but it supplies the audience with interesting characters and some memorable moments. Mia and Patti take this show and make it into something both humorous and heartfelt. It’s a subtle, strange, at times stupid play. At times these characters feel a bit entrenched in their writing, but I still was able to connect and resonate with this show below that! Definitely some honing required, and the music was w...

I think some of Galt MacDermot’s post-Hair work qualifies! For Two Gentlemen of Verona, he had just won a Grammy a couple of years prior for Hair, and John Guare had House Of Blue Leaves running off-Broadway. While the show ended up winning the Tony for Best Musical, it beat out both Grease and Follies for the award. This was an upset at the time, and now it’s borderline unthinkable, given how much Follies and Grease impacted musical theatre canon. Perhaps Verona only qualifies in hindsight. ...

Nothing more pg13 than Inwood Daddy…

The first thing that came to my mind is Answer Me. Not only is it given to a character with only a handful of lines, it’s one of the most important parts of the show!

From a creative standpoint, I think it’s a race between Suffs, Days of Wine and Roses, and The Notebook so far. Much of the outcome depends on how much Suffs has been reworked in its downtime: I thought it had high highs and low lows off-Broadway. I still can’t imagine Best Score going to anyone other than Guettel (even having heard quite a bit of Notebook), but I don’t know if that necessarily translates into Best Musical. It’s definitely the busiest season in recent memory!

I’d throw in Putnam and Bridges of Madison County. Though Bridges might be hard to do at the community level from a vocal standpoint, (when Kate Baldwin isn’t around to spoil us, that is) it’s a show that consistently has blown me away. And Putnam is perfect at the community level, the audience interaction still feels novel and the characters are so lovable/odd that it’s easy to forgive a production if the voices aren't all there.

pethian said: "Stephen Sondheim not being nominated for music or lyrics for A FUNNY THING."Fun fact! Just 11 days after the opening of Forum, another musical comedy set in Rome opened on Broadway in the same year! This (much lesser known) musical is called Bravo Giovanni, and it’s about a family owned Italian restaurant trying to stay afloat when a competing chain restaurant opens across the street. It opened to little fanfare and mixed reviews, and it closed after only 76 performances. The m...

My most passionately held belief is that The Drowsy Chaperone (or The Color Purple, take your pick) deserved Best Musical over Jersey Boys. I blame Jersey Boys’ win for the huge uptick in jukebox musicals coming down the pipeline these days. Beyond that, Two Gentleman of Verona somehow beating both Grease and FOLLIES for Best Musical is a bit of a head scratcher. I’ve always wondered what the Tony voters were thinking that year.

They’ve still got a couple of shows coming down the line, hopefully! A show of theirs, Republic, is still looking for development, and from the snippets that exist online I feel it has a bright future.

It’s a fine show. Not amazing, not terrible. The acting is the high point, the script does less than desired. The person sitting next to me called it “Waiting For Godot, if Godot was a mechanical shark.” That’s giving the script too much credit, but the comparison of styles seemed apt.

Some shows that come to mind are:- Water By The Spoonful- Ghost Quartet- Assassins- The Thin Place- quite a few Paula Vogel plays but specifically Indecent

The most recent one that came to mind was this year’s revival of Topdog/Underdog! That final scene definitely had a lot of people squirming in their seats.