Profile for Oldschool

The fact is that the Tonys, more so than the Oscars is a closed group that defines the eligibility of the nominees by whether they are in a limited number of Broadway houses. The question is whether historically, shows that were reviewed well, but had runs that ended before the Tony's voting period, didn't do well given the relative level of nominations. "Once" is a late entry darling that folks see as a general longer term draw to Broadway, and so garnered a lot of attention. Follies was wel...

Word.

"He was no slouch in RAGTIME." And yet he was well out gunned by Mary Elizabeth Mastriantonio in Man of La Mancha.

Stokes has pipes to spare, but act? No, I'm afraid he needs directions out of that paper bag.

Seems to me that Schwartz is still suffering from being the young composer who did extraordinarily well early in his career and others have penis envy. Godspell, Pippin, did very well and he was young when they debuted. Storming out of the Tonys is bad form. In a way his success is his worst enemy, again, penis envy. It's not like the Tonys are sacrosanct in their awards. There are any number of examples of awards that were given to less deserving shows/performers. Catherine Zeta Jones won fo...

Point taken, to a degree. The lyric is different from what you quote, and can easily be read that she's not entirely shocked by her decision. She reflects about her choice, that it is different than the one others might make, but also that she doesn't like the implications of someone who would turn away: "What kind of woman Would do what I've done- Open the door to such chaos and pain! You would have Gently closed the door, And gently turned the key, And gently told me not to look, For fear o...

A couple of thoughts...first, I couldn't agree more about Noll. Marin belts it, but she sings a bit like William Hurt speaks -- she emphasizes every syllable and it takes away from the performance. Too formal, too cold. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that her taking in Sarah's baby is such a shock. We don't have much backstory on Mother, other than it being the turn of the century. What we do know is that although she doesn't put it together until the end of the show, she is looking for s...

Sound is the bastard child of the theatre -- when it works, no one complains, but when it doesn't look out. No one complains when a moving light is out or a follow spot pickup doesn't happen...but I digress. There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to sound design. There are the designs that are very natural, well anchored to the stage, transparent, and virtually disappear. There are other designs that are meant to be a rock and roll show and don't hide the fact that they're bei...

Agreed. Mic problems can be any number of things, and it isn't necessarily the sound team's fault. A sound designer may have intelligibility as a priority, but say the director wants sonic saturation -- a room can handle only so much. A perfect example of a director screwing up the sound is Arthur Laurents and the recent revival of West Side Story. Laurent's wanted the actors to improvise, not only in tech but in the run. That required everyone's mic be opened so that the engineer could picku...

Pal Joey, spot on. Laurent's hated that the show was known for Robbins/Bernstein rather than Laurents. He deliberately downplayed the choreography to focus on the story. Claims that the use of Spanish made it more "real" are a fallacy. It's a crutch, a device, rather than making a functional contribution to the show. Lastly, and this is most important to why the revival sucked wind, was acting. The Jets, more so than the Sharks, couldn't act. It's not enough that you can dance, you've got to ...

They may manage to rewrite some things, and adjust the direction, but I highly doubt that set changes are part of the solution. The show is hung. Adding things to that show given its technical complexity is unlikely.

Mildred, where did you see Les Mis being extended? If it is, their own website doesn't have it up yet. I see they extended into September to the Jefferson in Alabama, but nothing about Seattle listed.

Over produced and lacking the grittiness of the original, but otherwise well performed.

Couple of thoughts.... First, the audio on the broadcast was HORRENDOUS. Missed pickups, and so forth. So the first question I have would be whether she was getting anything in her in-ear monitors which would account for some of the pitchy-ness. The Bat Boy and jsg03jd have it right: She has little resonance in her midrange, and a bit of harshness in her upper range. She's training herself to be a Idina Menzel and, well, there are better singers. Idina is the Alanis Morisette of Broadway -- o...

The Eisenhower has a single, open balcony. There really are no bad seats. It's a modest theatre (around 1100 seats). The theatre was completely refurbished about two years ago with a new sound system, seats, paneling, and so forth. It's much more inviting than the original design which was very 1960's with very dark paneling -- the new paneling is a honey amber flame maple. The only times there are issues with sight lines are when the set and/or blocking make it difficult to see. Ragtime had ...

Ghostlight2, right on. Thank you for your comments. Lost in this discussion is a fundamental lack of understanding of the hows and whys of working as a stagehand. Most stagehands don't work anywhere 8 hours a day, five days a week. They do a load in here, a load out there, and so forth. They are paid a premium because they don't work in the same place all the time and may be out of work for long periods because there isn't anything going on to require all but the house staff to do the work. S...

A full production of Follies is on the production schedule of the Kennedy Center for next spring. I haven't heard any casting information or creatives.

I don't think Schwartz could stomach having Gilliam direct this. Fosse, would approve, but not Schwartz. Schwartz didn't like the darkness that Fosse brought to the production.

Stagehands working the show are required to wear show blacks. Period. It's entirely possible that it was a last minute replacement who didn't have their blacks with them. There are exceptions. For example, RENT wanted their stagehands not to wear blacks because they wanted them to be part of the set.

What does the eligibility mean? They announced eligibility for Quentin Earl Darrington, Robert Petkoff, and Christiane Noll, for Ragtime, but did not mention Bobby Steggert. Does this mean he is ineligible?