Profile for LucyEth

From the second this production was announced it's seemed hilariously imbalanced and miscast. Is it in any way believable that such a powerhouse as Warren would, as the lyric says, "follow in his stride instead of side by side" when the Jamie in question is Nick Jonas? This particular Cathy is going to slink off to Ohio, put up with Jamie's BS and whine when he leaves her? I'm sorry, no. This particular Cathy is going to wipe the floor with his cheating butt, kick him to the curb and start da...

Well, at least Ivy's no longer dead at the end of the show.

With all due respect, Stroman has never been (IMHO) a great director. Contact was, of course, a dance show, which accounted for its deserved success. The Producers was a smash (but she had Nathan Lane, Mel Brooks and bulletproof material), and The Music Man was fun (and a Tony-winning, proven show). To be fair, The Scottsboro Boys was innovatively conceived and executed. But the others, all new shows: Thou Shalt Not, The Frogs, Young Frankenstein, Happiness, Big Fish, Bullets Over Broadway, P...

Katie Webber was fantastic last night. I haven't seen any videos of Hurder in the role so can't make a comparison, but with only three hours of prep (as Stro explained to the audience in her pre-curtain speech), Webber was pretty much flawless. But more than that, really: it felt like a fully developed character, one that she'd been performing for months. Job very much well done. As for the show...I highly doubt that anyone who didn't watch the series will care one iota. And so much of the wa...

All in all a terrific evening. I'm a huge fan, although I realized last night that this was the first time I'd ever seen her live! On Drag Race she was an indisputable comic genius so I think I was expecting more comedy, more zaniness, so was slightly disappointed. I wanted to laugh more, particularly in the second half, which got political (how could it not in these frightening times?) and oddly spiritual (when Jinkx brought out a practicing witch to bless us and the hall). The political med...

TheatreFan4, I respectfully disagree. Given the political climate at the time of the original show, the Emcee would actually expect his audience to laugh at the joke. And they would. That's what makes it so chilling. To step out of character and tell the audience (which is ostensibly the Kit Kat Club audience) not to laugh is absurd. I wonder if more would be achieved if a modern Emcee were to laugh with the assholes in the audience, in a sense aping them to try to get them to see how ugly th...

I was in the audience for a performance of "The Buddy Holly Story" the night the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. When the actor playing Buddy came out for the final big concert, he brought a sign that read "Abortion is Healthcare." Apparently he'd corralled the cast into "making a statement." Needless to say, not something that would have ever happened in 1959. The audience and management were not happy, to say the least. This is what your social media platforms are for, people, leave you...

Kad, I completely agree. I find it hilarious that the original Facebook poster wrote that Lambert spoke to the audience "without breaking character." As if an actual 1930s Berlin emcee would admonish his audience for laughing at a joke that, back then, they would have found quite hilarious. No, this is an actor who's pissed off about the current political situation in 2025 America (and who can blame him, it's an unspeakable nightmare out there), and injecting that into his performance. I have...

Attended the show last night and FULL DISCLOSURE, left at intermission because...well, there seemed absolutely no reason to stay for Act Two. So do with these impressions what you will. My husband and I were super excited to see "Tammy Faye," having read the 2022 Variety review, which labelled it "terrifically entertaining," and Matt Wolf's NY Times anointment, which called it "spectacular entertainment." We thought, "My God, this is going to be amazing, how bad could it be?!" Well, the answe...

I worked on "Whistle Down the Wind." The official reason that the show was "postponed" was -- ironically enough -- that Really Useful was nervous about losing the Tony Award to "Steel Pier" that season! That and to give the creatives more time to work out the kinks. Something that might have been done in Washington had not each one of them disappeared after opening night.

Saw the show yesterday afternoon. Thought it was hugely entertaining, an old-fashioned musical with modern-day smarts. David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori have, remarkably, combined a hate crime and the aftershocks of the Trump election to create a funny, moving and important piece of political musical theater -- all the time paying homage to R&H and the great song and dance shows of the past. It's an odd, relevant and unlikely master work that ends on a note of heartbreaking hope. Can you t...

Saw this last night. Close to three hours of sound and fury, signifying not much at all (and not wholly historically accurate). We witness the birth of the worst kind of tabloid journalism possible, and while much of it resonates and reflects on what's happening in journalism and social media today, I can't say I ever had any "aha" moments. It's an interesting play, beautifully performed and mounted, but I was never drawn into the story; with so much at stake for them, I never felt as if I we...

I'm by no means an expert on the show, but I never got the sense that the story covers a decade. Unless you're talking about what it feels like for the audience. (Can you guess I'm not a big fan?)

By the time this film gets made -- if ever -- Gaga will be mid-30s. A little long in the tooth, no? Unless we're looking at a repeat of the "Grease" film, in which everyone was too old.

SPOILERS AHEADJBroadway: Apologies for taking so long to get back to you, have been busy with Life!For me, by cutting unnecessary characters and events -- no-one invents the phone machine, there's no Frank Jr., no lawyer Jerome -- this production clarifies what's important about the story, and that's the relationship between these three people. There's a poignancy to the "Old Friends" section of "It's a Hit" that never hit me before, in part because we heard "Old Friends" 15 minutes prior, no...

This version reinstates the Charlie/Mary restaurant scene, so that Frank has time to reflect and stew after the TV interview. And it works much better.

I'm really surprised and disappointed by the negative comments here. Obviously tastes differ, but I find this to be the only production since the original that justifies the story going backward. It's always been the conceit, of course, but IMHO the Lapine version (and its subsequent iterations, some of which I have enjoyed very much) simply starts when it starts and goes back in time without ever explaining why. By eliminating the high school graduation scene, you never get the sense of why ...

Full disclosure, I'm an original cast member, so this show is very dear to my heart, as you can imagine. I was there last night and found it thrilling. It's a complete top-to-bottom reinvention of the show, one that focuses solely on the six main characters, using some earlier book scenes and lyrics, most of which I've never heard before. Locations are changed, songs are deconstructed, lyrics are reassigned -- and the whole thing works incredibly well. I thought Fiasco's "Into the Woods" was ...

OMG, saw this last night. One of the most inept, amateurish evening I've ever experienced in the theater. And I'm a native New Yorker who's been seeing theater for over 40 years. (And no, I'm not too old to appreciate well-done fluff.) Dove Cameron, was out, which might have contributed to the slapdash nature of things, but I can't imagine that her presence would have helped that much. Truly, this was like a stale Hasty Pudding spoof. A dreadful embarrassment for all involved.

Just saw the HD broadcast of "Everybody's Talking About Jamie" this afternoon. OMG, what a glorious, moving, life-affirming musical. It's the show "The Prom" could have been had it taken itself seriously.