Profile for merle57

I agree with your longer list as well as many Off-Broadway shows and did not mean to suggest my list was exhaustive. . The big expensive revivals and mindless musicals that get on Broadway but fail to recoup discourage producers from backing the shows you listed and some of the wonderful off-Broadway shows another poster listed. I think I was reacting in horror to suggestions for an immersive Les Miz, or some other gimmick imposed on the show just to be trendy. Les Miz does not need gimmicks ...

LES MIS has never really left the American stage due to the multiple touring productions. Sadly, they no longer tour with the original set or staging, more a very cut down version of the original.How many of these "let's put the ensemble in abbreviated gym clothing or underwear" concert style productions do we have to endure? The gimmick has been overdone now. I fear this will be another $25 million concert production that will run well for 6 months, then have. no more audience and drop all $...

The Bijou was not much of a theatre, not missed. The Morosco was home to some of the greatest classic plays in American theatre, a beautiful house with perfect natural acoustics. The Hayes was also a beautiful house of hits, and named for a great actress -- theatre torn down while Hayes was still alive. Shuberts wanted the money, the money, the money .... Just as the Nederlanders wanted the money, the money, the money and sold the Mark Hellinger Theatre to the church. Sad loss.

Several good points are mentioned in these comments. First, Jellicle Ball may not be the best example to make a case for the end of Broadway since the concept might have been a limited niche market, certainly not for the family crowd the original Cats appealed to. Second, the show was hot over a year ago off-Broadway, so it should have transferred then, not waited for a full year. Third, the Cats movie proved the show itself is no longer a hot property -- in fact, the movie was a disaster at ...

Surprised that Oh Mary will play San Francisco's smallest Broadway house, the Curran, and all main floor and loge seats are completely gone for the run -- no orchestra or handicapped seats remain for any performances, only some back rows in the first balcony and the last six rows of the 2nd balcony.Why they did not pick a larger house or extend for a 4th week is a mystery since this show was bound to sell well in San Francisco.

They received a negative review in the SF Chronicle -- about how they squandered their talents and the symphony orchestra on material that the audience did not particularly come to hear or enjoy, even though they enjoyed the talents of these two ladies. That’s why Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara’s appearance at Davies Symphony Hall was such a disappointing missed opportunity.Yet there’s an impossibly vast canon of musical theater transcendence out there. Why sing novelty numbers your music dir...

Saw them Saturday night, both in great voice. The first half was more traditional musical theatre music that the majority of the older audience came for. The second half, more the Carol and Julie theme, was more 1990s pop music which showed their voices and versatility off well, but did not make good use of the full symphony orchestra on stage. It was a good evening, but more of the Broadway catalogue was needed for this audience, mostly past 60 years old.

With the major revival losses on Sunset Blvd and Jellice Ball Cats, I wonder if the Andrew Lloyd Webber brand no longer has the "golden touch" it once did when his early shows were a sung-thru novelty. People forget that Starlight Express lost tons of money in its original production, as did many other shows - Bad Cinderella, Love Never Dies, Aspects of Love, and surprise surprise the original Sunset Blvd which dumped a ton of money. His only really big hits have been JC Superstar, Evita, Pha...

I have never read anything about Oscar Hammerstein being abusive to actors in his productions. If you are going to make accusations like that, please document the proof.

I was actually referring to the quality of the scripts being produced in those two revivals. Similarly, the season proved great for wonderful, adventuresome new plays. So many great scripts, so many great casts, so many great evenings of exciting and challenging theatre. That is theatre at its Broadway Best.I was bothered by the last minute "cash in" on a Tony weak season (e.g. Beaches), or moving a perfect thriving off-Broadway musical into bigger houses just to capitalize on a weak season a...

Thank God for quality productions like Salesman and Ragtime. Thank God for Lincoln Center and Scott Rudin for producing quality. Those are Broadway quality shows, not off-Broadway shows being produced on the main stem where they do not belong.

Cats is an English musical, not a traditional Broadway musical, and this Cats is a very, very specialized production that was, never targeted to a mass audience as the original Cats was, so it was bound to have a limited appeal compared to the original Cats run. That said, Broadway is having a very difficult time at the box office right now because too many of the shows appeal to specialized subset markets. The problem is what is being produced is just not appealing to a large enough audience...

May 1966 -- great broadway musical shows on the boards: Mame, Sweet Charity, Man of La Rancha, Funny Girl, Hello, Dolly!, Golden Boy, A Time for Singing, Skyscraper, Merman in Annie Get Your Gun revival, off-off- Broadway Cafe Cino Bernadette Peters in 1 hour version of Dames at Sea, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Harris and Cullum. New York City Center revival of Wonderful town with Elaine Stritch, final weeks of Hal Prince's Superman.

Thank you for the reports of the progress or regress of the show from Boston to early NYC to later NYC. Lansbury claimed the show got worse and worse as they monkeyed with it, especially with 3 different directors and choreographers. Milo O'Shea stayed with it through the opening, but begged to be let out since his part was eviscerated as was the Director of the Corporation, the villain of the show. It can work as an intimate show with a small string ensemble like a French cafe musical ensemb...

The book is messy and talky, the production numbers hurt the intimate feel of the show. Lansbury was fabulous - probably her finest Broadway role, up there with Gypsy and Lovett. The other madwomen, Connell and Matthews, were equally excellent. The garbage=sewer man had no good material, so the trial scene fell flat. But those production numbers should just have been solos for Angela with a concertina or accordion. The lyrics of the title song are awful, and seeing the ensemble dressed as doc...

Two Gents was a fun, trendy, gimmicky, lively and ultimately mediocre show when it first opened -- it was a novelty with casting that was trendy then, and could be trendy nowadays. But it is not going to run for years and years as a revival on Broadway, so off-broadway is appropriate.

The shows most people mention as possibilities for this Jellicle Ball treatment are shows that also have no linear story or characters that interact dramatically, they are loose concert style shows. Perhaps those shows, like Wiz, can be retrofitted with a new concert style coat of paint -- Mamma Mia would be a good one to do that to. These are essentially concerts, not dramatic works.That said, is the new Cats really selling that well? Does it justify another $25 million being thrown on the r...

Porter's singing is very rough, often searching for pitch, riffing to cover vocal inadequacies - it is a performance that calls attention to Porter, not the character. Sadly, His voice has really suffered major damage in recent years and that shows in this kind of old fashioned musical theatre score. This production of La Cage should not transfer. The "style" is all over the place without a clear or clean sense of style or intention. It is an adequate Encores concert version, but that's it. D...

This is a strange season, and except for new plays, a disappointing season. All four best play nominees are excellent works. Acting categories for plays also feature many excellent performances, as do the musical acting categories. But the musical season has been dismal except for revival where Ragtime and Cats are, for different reasons, equally deserving. Not sure this year's Tony broadcast will be that interesting.

Glad it is at the Hayes, that is at least a reasonable house size to maintain the show's intimacy. Is this the revised for a same sex couple version?