Profile for merle57

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?

I love The Fantasticks, but I do not see it as a Broadway musical. It is too delicate, too intimate, too romantic, too spiritual. The original direction is essential to the theme of the parable -- the illusions of romance versus the reality of mature love. Decorating the show may tear apart the fabric of Schmidt and Jones' creation.

The tradition in past years used to be the dim the house lights for a play 7 minutes after the scheduled time to allow for latecomers, for musicals 5 minutes to the downbeat of the orchestra which still allowed for late seating. Maybe they have gone back to that old custom/tradition.

The staging is adequate, often repetitive with similar stage pictures of silhouettes against a cyclorama and flat wall set pieces. The acting and singing is strong by all the principal characters, the harmonies particularly well sung. The score feels hit and miss with many expository musical numbers in an almost recitative style that advance ideology and plot points, but that do not always "sing" the emotion of the character. Too many musical numbers sounded alike, so the score lacked variety...

Broadway musical audiences have devolved into rock concert audiences in terms of behavior -- cell phones, eating snacks with wrappers, talking loudly, singing along, bouncing around to the beat. We live in different times where listening and concentrating are no longer valued skills except at plays like Salesman, or Good Night Good Luck or Othello .... movie audiences are no better.