Profile for FightTheDragons

It's interesting because I actually thought Pasadena's Night Music was rather mediocre, though it was my first and only exposure to the material so the show may just not be for me. Dandridge was phenomenal (loved her in Hadestown, too), but the rest of it fell flat for me storyline wise.

I also had not seen La Cage before, and have not seen it since -- I want to experience another production again eventually, but I need more time to clear w

Having seen this tonight, I must add to the chorus of praise. Pasadena Playhouse's Amadeus is a brilliant piece of theater. Having had no familiarity with the material going in, I was blown away by the writing, thematic depth, and intrigue -- but most of all by Jefferson Mays as Antonio Salieri.

Yes, Mays is giving a performance for the ages in this one. Reuniting with Tresnjak, who uses Mays' ability to seamlessly shift between characters mid-scene to th

Saw this tonight. It’s a very cute and quite delightful show that I hope has a future life after some fine tuning. Kristen Bell is always wonderful and she turns in a fantastic leading performance here. For a one weekend run, it’s surprisingly well put together — a couple of mic issues here and there but nothing major. The material is utterly hilarious. There’s a gag near the end of the show that has me laughing so hard that I could barely breathe. The opening is

A few things to note.

From a tech perspective, it went off pretty seamlessly. I didn't notice any major problems with the cameras or anything like that -- it was all timing and lines that were the problem with the preview (aside from the form itself, but that is auxiliary to preview issues). This may be, as GirlFromOz68 noted, due to the fact that this show has had a run in Australia prior to this. I acknowledge that while these shows may not have started as celebrity plays, clearl

Well.. this was just awful.

As someone who didn't see Kip Williams' The Picture of Dorian Gray but had heard very mixed opinions on it, I went into this cautious but optimistic. I regret to report that Williams' Dracula with Cynthia Erivo falls into every criticism levied at Dorian Gray, but brings another layer of problems all its own.

To start with -- this show concept is fundamentally broken. While an act

henrike said: "There was a performer at the very top of the set throughout the whole show, hunched over like a zombie, creepily moving his arms to the beat of the music as if he's orchestrating the entire evening. In the finale Ballad, it's revealed that he was Sweeney the whole time. To me, I didn't get it. Would've made sense if it was Toby who was retelling the story, but I guess John Doyle already did that take."

Yeah, this confounded me too. Fran

I saw the production. In one sentence, I would call it a solid production of a fantastic show with an underbaked concept and fine actors.

The asylum concept works, but is also almost entirely auxiliary to the story being told here. It feels like Jason Alexander went "this is a cool idea and I like it" so they did it. It doesn't detract from the story (beyond a few "wait why is it like that" moments) but it doesn't add anything either. The show is so stro

Brilliance. That's the only way to describe what I saw onstage at Liberation. It was pure and utter brilliance. I sat there, completely engrossed, as the lives of these ordinary women unraveled before my eyes and the show had me completely bawling by the end of their tales. Every single actor is working at the top of their game and if there was ever an argument to be made for a Best Ensemble Tony (besides John Proctor is the Villain last season), this woul

I was at the first preview tonight. Calling it a disaster would be generous.

There was a show stop -- almost an hour long. The latter half of act 1 has hundreds of glass bottles stacked all the way across the stage, and they were clearly not supported properly; they fell, smashing into pieces on the ground. Shoutout to the team for handling this properly and making sure it was safe, but I cringed every time I heard another bottle smash during act 2 (which happened multiple times, under

As someone with no experience with the play that this is based on, I absolutely loved this. I thought it was wonderfully off-kilter with fantastic off-beat performers to perfectly match its insane tone. Diamond especially is doing fantastic work here, and I want to shout out Shuler Hensley who I thought was doing particularly great work and seems to be going unnoticed. The score is excellent, the performances are top-notch, and I found the show to overall just be completely visceral in a way

Dolly80 said: "Why is it so hard to make these new shows good?
what a waste of everyone’s time."

A great question. Part of the problem is that some of these shows that ARE great just simply aren’t catching on, and that makes producers (rightfully) wonder if it’s not worth it to put soul into these shows. Regency Girls and Ride, two recent Old Globe shows, were miles better than almost everything I’ve seen

I’m afraid this was yet another misfire from La Jolla for me — this venue has really struggled to put out consistently good material in the last year or two. 
 

The problems start with Ashley directing, though they certainly don’t end with him. I tend to find him bland and uninspired (Come From Away was a notable exception in this regard), and this was more of the same. It looks cheap, the blocking and staging is boring and mediocre, and there&

I'm not exactly sure where Ken is getting the idea that audience response was "very positive." I heard nothing but mixed (at best) or very bad (at worst, and more common) things.

The use of AI for this is... so stupid it's unbelievable. Just read the responses yourself and come up with things to work on rather than having ChatGPT vomit out what it thinks you should do (and will likely be wrong about). This is not ethical use of AI in theater, it's stupid use of AI

henrike said: "Compared to Redwood (only bringing this up, since this also had its pre-Broadway run at La Jolla Playhouse), I thought The Heart was better, but only marginally. And I agree with FightTheDragons that there are two stories that are being told. Naturally, you'd think that the donor's story and the recipient's story would mesh together, and somehow create a compelling circle-of-life moment. Except it failed to do that."

I thought the two to be

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to when I visited it in San Diego. The music is wonderful, the design works (despite my skepticism about it in videos and production photos), and the performances are top-notch. I don't think it's Broadway-ready yet, but it could be.

The problem here is that it's really two shows, with one show being vastly better in quality and interest than the other. There's an intense, breakneck medical drama with a fascinating philosophical

I unfortunately found this to be not just poorly written, but grossly and shockingly misogynistic, outdated, and blatantly offensive.

From a writing perspective, it's basic and formulaic, following two sisters engaged in a battle over the Renaissance Faire; one completely bone-headed and making terrible decisions through the entire show (Cailen Fu's character, who gets mostly pushed to the sidelines; she has one solo song that serves as the useless act 2 opener -- Fu is ex