PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE first previe- Page 2

[jbm2]

Posted: 4/1/11 at 11:50pm

really??
I guess this isn't a must see for when I am in town?

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/1/11 at 11:50pm

This is disappointing to hear.

[thismyshow]

Posted: 4/1/11 at 11:52pm

ugh so sad to hear this really expected this to be the wildcard of the season, guess book of mormon has it locked down

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/1/11 at 11:52pm

Whizzer, just asking, are you saying that you found "Caroline or Change" just as bad? Did this remind you, musically, of Caroline?

[dave1606]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:11am

I know Whizzer and can tell you that he LOVES Caroline or Change. He definitely is not saying that.

I was there tonight and it was horrific.

The music was very forgettable save for the camp highlight "Ich, Uch, Feh" which I thought was hysterical. I did like "We were Here", but everything else was very unmemorable.

The problem is that if you are going to do a Holocaust story, you have a justify it, lest it be roped in as just another Holocaust story. This had nothing new or special about it.

Donna was decent, but I don't think she will be remembered come tony time. I hated the set, which (spoiler?) is a giant leaning picture frame that looks like it is endangering both the cast members and the audience. The only real tension in the room was that it seemed ready to fall at any moment.

I haven't seen Baby It's You yet but this was definitely one of the low points of theater season for me.
Updated On: 4/2/11 at 12:11 AM

[mikem]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:12am

I'm sorry to hear that the show wasn't very satisfying. What time did the show let out?

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:12am

uncageg, No I ADORE Caroline and think it was the best score/show of the 2000s. What I meant was this whole score is so nondescript that it could sound like any "Jewish-sounding" music. I couldn't remember any of the tunes exactly, but in evoking all Jewish music it put that scene from Caroline in my head. The pull of that song overpowered my ability to discern the tunes from People in the Picture. Does that make any sense?

Edit- Ha Dave! Yes my love of Caroline is no secret to anyone who knows me!

Updated On: 4/2/11 at 12:12 AM

[uncageg]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:16am

Gotcha. And I agree with your opinion on Caroline. it was the first B'way show I saw in 15 years and I almost feel blessed to have seen it. It closed a month before I got back to NYC.

Well, this saddens me about 'People in the Picture". I have been so looking forward to it.

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:24am

Why on earth would Donna Murphy choose to be in something like this if the material was not good?

On another note, the topic of orchestrations has always been something very mysterious to me. Is it normal for a show to leave that sort of thing until the end? I'd assume that they'd have those written before the fact and not be frantically trying to do them at the very end...

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:33am

Ugh. That was pretty painful. It has a decent premise, but the execution is absolutely awful. The score is beyond generic. Lyrics and book are very predictable. Murphy does what she can, but it's not enough to save the show. Having most of act 2 played by a piano was the most puzzling part of the evening.

They really missed the mark here.

[jovie27]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:42am

By-far one of the best shows I have ever seen...Murphy graced that stage with fire and grace...oh, wait sorry thinking of another show she was in...opps. my bad.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:46am

This was the last musical of the season and I was hoping it would end things on a good note, but I can't say that did. I have had so much disappointment this season, especially in the spring, with many of the musicals. I had such high hopes, only to be let-down by most of what I saw.

[Tom-497]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 12:48am

It's too bad that the dialogue and lyrics are so poor, because I found the basic situation fairly compelling -- an increasingly senile holocaust survivor tries to instill some tradition into her soulful granddaughter before her bland bitch of a daughter carries out the final "solution" of "transporting" mom to the old-folks home.

There were some nice moments, but also a few very bad ones -- the whole Dancing Dybbuk segment; the way that a couple of characters obviously exist mainly to be killed, like unknown crewmembers who beam down with Captain Kirk; a song that contrasts short-term memory loss with eternal devotion (to paraphrase: "I don't know what I had for breakfast, but I know that I'll always love you").

[jbm2]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:03am

Does this have the potential to get any better?
I will be there in a couple of weeks....I bought all my tickets and had one night left. It was out of THE PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE or WARHORSE...and I chose PEOPLE....
Does it have the potential to get any better?
Or should I just leave my tickets @ will call? and buy WARHORSE tickets?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:06am

So.....we can call this one "Baby, It's Jew"?

[adamgreer]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:06am

Whizzer is dead on with his comment about the score being "generic." It sounds exactly as you would expect a score in a Jewish musical to sound- lots of short beats and quick tempos. This is true of the entire enterprise. The writers and creators seemed to take every Jewish stereotype they knew and threw it into the show. The choreography looks borrowed from Fiddler on the Roof- lots of foot stomping and pointed gestures with raised arms. In fact, at one point, my friend turned to me and whispered, "Is the bottle dance next?"

Did anyone else notice the writers' strange obsession with the penis? That organ factored into the show twice. Once during a bad musical number about how when Jews go to Hollywood, they lose their Jewishness, and "the foreskin gets put back on." The other time was when Murphy's character has a baby and another character examines the baby and freaks out because it doesn't have a "schmeckel." (He couldn't surmise the baby was a girl? Really?)

Did anyone else find it odd that we never saw this traveling theater troupe, on whom the entire show is based, ever put on any plays? All they did was make movies.

The biggest problem with the book, besides its predictability, is that most of the themes it explores have been done before, and done much better than they are. The old world vs. new world story has been told much better before.

Spoilers follow.....

-I mentioned before the book was cheesy and predictable. Does it get any more predictable than having one of the Jewish characters get beaten to death at the conclusion of act 1?

-You felt nothing for the "husband" character when he died because you knew the minute he left the ghetto to deliver the girl's precious doll that he wasn't going to come back alive. When he died, we all looked at each other and said, "of course!"

-Donna Murphy's death sequence meanders on and on for about 25 minutes (something else you know is coming as soon as the curtain goes up, along with her daughter's eventual epiphany). It's the most drawn out, boring sequence. I wanted to scream out, "oh just die already!"

End spoilers...

Audience reaction tonight was tepid at best. The older women in our section said it was "too schmaltzy" and "it didn't work." Polite applause at the curtain call, but that was it.

[perfectliar]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:17am

I didn't think it was as awful as everyone else did. Yes, it is dull at time and very slow-moving. But there are some flashes of greatness as well. The song "Bread and Theater" should hit home for many of us on this board with the lyric: "We live on bread theater... Without bread, we would only be hungry. But without theater, we'd be dead." It was a strong opening, but it was unfortunately downhill for the next hour. Every song sounded the same from there on out, and every one of them needed to be trimmed.

The opening of the second act into "We Were Here" was also strong, very emotional. I found the rest of the second act to be more personal and involving than the first, and without the orchestrations it also felt very intimate. The final "memory" Raisel shares with her granddaughter is well-acted and sung, though the final scene following it is laugh-out-loud ridiculous and cheesy.

Donna Murphy is doing fine work, though the role (and show, to be honest) is very cliche and ultimately underwhelming. Alexander Gemignani is completely wasted, with only one duet with Donna Murphy in act one and hardly any stage time in act two. Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography is adequate for the piece, especially the second act prologue. And I'll disagree with dave and say that I actually like the set. It's a giant picture frame which frames the entire acting space in the first act (as if they are all "the people in the picture," reenacting memories). And it (SPOILER) breaks apart for the second act, when Raisel's memory starts to fragment. A beautiful moment.

It has the potential to at least get better, but it will never be great. As of now it's merely mediocre. Aside from a few interesting moments, it's pretty boring. It will surely captivate an older audience, however, as it seemed to do for many tonight.

Updated On: 4/2/11 at 01:17 AM

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:18am

Just got in from a 2-hour wait at the stage-door for Donna. Time flew by meeting some fellow fans and before we knew it, an hour and a half had gone by so we figured -- might as well wait! When she finally came out, she was gracious as ever.

I'm exhausted so don't mind any typos or a rushed feeling to this.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Bumpy and probably will be for a few more days, but I expect it to be cleaned up, tightened, things cut/changed over the next few weeks and a beautiful, touching show will open.

I think the point that everyone here ultimately missed was Bubbie's gift: she saved laughter throughout the Holocaust. She literally SAVED the jokes from disappearing. Was it shticky? Yes. Was it campy? Yes... But so was A LOT of Yiddish theater.

My concern here is that most people won't get a lot of the jokes. Or they'll find it a little too hammy. But that's what it was! They let themselves go and were some of the freest performers out there. [Remember The Three Stooges???]

As for the score, it has some really lovely moments [Red's Dilemma, a gorgeous song for Nicole Parker] and some lousy ones [The Dybbuk Dance]. But you can also tell what the director is trying out in front of an audience and what probably will be gone first thing tomorrow. There was a lot of playfulness tonight, figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Donna is wonderful, but her performance needs some tightening. She makes remarkable age-changes right in front of our eyes, but the transition needs to be cleaned up and cleared up for the audience.

Nicole Parker, for me, was the highlight of the evening. A truly beautiful performance. She reminded me a lot of Anne Hathaway, actually... Anyone else get that?

I think some of you are awfully hard on a show opening cold in New York on its first preview. I plan on going back in a few weeks and seeing how it's grown. I expect that it will grow a lot.

As for the orchestration issue... yeah... that was pretty rough. A good half hour of the show had only piano. But it could also be a sitzprobe issue -- perhaps they ran out of time and the orchestra wasn't ready. Who knows? Still... rough.

I enjoyed the set, though after a while it got to be a bit much. I don't want to explain too much as the start of Act Two has a really lovely reveal/change that stops your heart for a second.

Give it a chance. It's not for everyone, but many will LOVE it.

[Donthatecongratulate]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:22am

"the foreskin gets put back on."..???????

please tell me you're kidding.

musical about the holocaust sounds like a real downer anyway.
up next from the producers of PITP-PEOPLE ON THE BOAT-the true story of how one slave became a slave and sang slave songs and ate slave food.......

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:24am

Is Murphy's performance anywhere near threatening to Patina at this point?

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:25am

^ Nope.

[jbm2]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:27am

How long is the show?
Will a 13/14 year old girl enjoy it??

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:33am

Once she's got a couple more performances under her belt and has gotten the hundreds of transitions from age 80 to age 30 (guesstimate numbers) into her body, she very well could create some competition for Patina. But I figure it'll go to the rising star this year...

The show is exactly 2.5 hours. Let out at 10:30 on the dot. Depends on the girl, jbm2. If she's smart and loves theater, she'll enjoy it.

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:33am

It was about the standard 2.5 hours. A 13/14 year old girl (or boy) will be able to follow the story, but they might be easily bored.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 4/2/11 at 1:38am

No, Murphy poses no threat to Patina.