Profile for Auggie27

To points raised in my earlier post, and my friends' dismay; Variety (May 17, 2024) nails the general consensus in Berkeley, which prompted my post:: "It’s hard to imagine an easy road ahead for a show whose theme is fairly rarefied by musical-theater standards, yet whose sometimes hokey, simplistic tenor is unlikely to generate the critical support needed to lure in more mainstream audiences ... "That duo' {the designers'} stimulating array of religious, scientific and celestial imagery is a...

The California reviews were mixed leaning away from commercially promising. I read 'em all because I have close friends who (via a family member) are very much production adjacent; they all flew out. No one believed the reviews promised Broadway at the time, but clearly a belief in this show is significant enough to pull it East and into the Shubert. I wish it well, but I'm fascinated that it is coming without another tryout.

I'm just relieved she's not going into Chicago. Chicago, and I do bless it, has become the Dancing with the Stars of Broadway. I expect to see Graham Platner as Billy sometime in October.

Isn't it odd that the show is being marketed without a star? Yes, it's already become a kind of brand. But surely they know who's signed/signing. A close friend in Palm Springs says everyone in Southern California is mystified by the star being withheld. On the other hand, it's hard to get seats, so what do I know?

"Meg Stalter once again donned the bratty, curled wig of Mary Todd Lincoln last night, returning to her Broadway debut performance as the lead in Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! after a weeklong absence due to bronchitis.Just prior to the Friday evening performance, Stalter posted an Instagram Story photo of herself, apparently in her dressing room at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, with the note, “Planning on being back in the show tonight as long as my voice doesn’t give out.”All went as planned. Subseq...

The show is on TDF for the first time I believe.

To revive another show with the umbrella conceit of Jellicle Ball would be restricted to a theater piece that doesn't trade on verisimilitude to build its world. Not easy. The Doyle Sweeney stripped away Victorian England entirely and carved out the telling of the story within an institution. We never believed we were relocating to any of the show's settings, and it didn't matter. The story of revenge's toxicity was presented by characters arguably locked into a "safe" place to explore trauma...

To me, Sher's direction of Camelot was certainly elegant and theatrically focused enough. (That moment when Lancelot came over the upstage hill and onto the Beaumont stage was a ravishing entrance.) If he were to be blamed, it should be for not giving that risible book page one notes after its first workshop. Any revision that mocks musical theater itself - and in Aaron Sorkin's iteration Guinevere was allowed to find the title song silly, multiple times - is at cross purposes with itself. A ...

"I've kept quiet for forty years, but I think it's finally time to respond to some of this nonsense."I've been posting here for over twenty, but never knew I was capable of awakening a Rip Van Winkle thus.

I enflamed many by positing that Schmigadoon! on the Tonys, tucked in Radio City, reminded me of those earnest 70s or 80s television musicals that tried to recreate the Broadway experience on TV. It had what I call "Sunday night television" about it. No notes, no quibbles, but the pastiche element inspires an immediate recognition of what's being parodied, and then what? Smiles? It's a winning cast, and the choreography is energetic, but it looks too much like what it's mocking with love: a m...

I still think Linda Emond was a major oversight. But I'm decidedly on Team Becky Shaw, since it's one of the most wildly entertaining nights on Broadway. I haven't sat in a house that laughed that much since before the lockdown.

It reminded me immediately of Karen and Lloyd's apartment in All About Eve. Which I've coveted since I was a teenager. People really do live like that in NYC. I say that as someone who lived in Manhattan 24 years and never lost my awe for, um, those who lived more like the Richards.

Isn't it interesting, triggering audience expectation? This will seem random, but this discussion of the clipping and unclipping takes me back to No, No, Nanette. Ruby Keeler wore regular shoes through the top of act one until a specific entrance in one scene. People in the audience would whisper, "Look! She's got on her taps!" and sure enough, within minutes she launched into "I Want to Be Happy," invariably to thunderous applause. Here we have wires telling us the vampires wanna be flyin'.

So the massive Lost Boys is making about the same as the reigning solo show with a new star. Isn't that in itself a comment on new musicals? Lost Boys is selling tickets, but apparently not enough at the box offices prices.

To your point: the show uses up its best flying FX in the first act, that Magritte-like sequence on the bridge. Nothing comes close to it in the second act. Therein lies the problem: we believe we'll be treated to something transcendent in the end. But at least as late as the penultimate week of previews, it felt rushed.

Is Groff a little longish in the tooth for Giorgio? Wouldn't Nicholas Christopher be electric in the role?

MILD SPOILER INNUENDO. I must agree with Mrs. Sally: the show wants to be about the rangy nature of family, biological and chosen, but spends considerably less time on the chosen. In effect, this stacks the deck and makes it clear from the outset that the vampire culture will lose. It would be stronger to feel the two factions, um, neck in neck. Nothing in act two takes "Belong to Someone" to next level emotional investment. Arguably, one issue is the decision to give two love interests to th...

Ruthie Anne as Irene is part of the embarrassment of riches here, but what's not to love? Imagine her "Ribbons Down My Back."

Stakes. Nothin' beats 'em. I was listening to Maybe Happy Ending yesterday, first time since last summer when I saw it. The opening is a killer set-up. This creature named Oliver is waiting patiently for years for his beloved owner and de facto mentor/parent figure to return. Learning that the factory that made him will no longer supply parts to allow repairs. His obsolescence is a death sentence, his reunion with someone he genuinely adores the only thing to "live" for, and the clock ticks. ...

Very interesting conversation starter. I would counter that the show could use much more intellectual distancing. All three love-challenged characters routinely wear their hearts on their sleeves for most of the stage time, whether venting operatically about non-allegiances, "Nobody's Side," origin story trauma, "Pity the Child," or wistful yearning for attachment to culture and geography, "Anthem." Rice's libretto may be larded with wordplay, but the sentiment is invariably emotion-fueled. A...