I love this show, but I would really hope for someone other than Sutton as Drood.
And my dream has always been LuPone as Puffer, but I don't think that's going to happen either.
When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain.
-Kad
The money note in "Writing on the Wall" is really high (if the person can hit it-I'd love for them to cast someone who could sing that note-it's chilling if done right). I kinda wonder if Kelli O'Hara could pull the role off. She's got the chops vocally.
Wonderful news -- but yes, Mr. Bennett et al, it seems a daunting endeavor for Roundabout to pull off. At this, I'll allow myself to be excited and optimistic, at least until I learn more.
I don't know if O'Hara could "butch it up" enough for Drood. One big flaw with her South Pacific performance was that she didn't really try to do "Honey Bun" like a man.
SF is the obvious choice for Drood.
Or perhaps Susan Egan, who impersonated a man in Triumph of Love. What's she been up to?
If Kelli O'Hara has proven anything consistently, it's that she absolutely cannot belt. She could never handle the role of Drood in a million years, not to mention the fact that her year long contract with NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT renders her unavailable anyway.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
I would love Sutton and Nancy Opel. I agree that Kelli could probably pull off Nutting/Drood (let's see how she does this spring in NICE WORK...), but she's more naturally suited to Rosa. That's all I was saying.
"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."-Stephen Sondheim
I saw the original twice, once very early in the run with the full OBC and once late in the run with mostly replacements. It was a vastly different show the second time and nowhere near as good. Drood must have larger-than-life personalities in each role for it to work to its full potential. It's a "music hall" musical, not unlike Vaudeville. Broad styles where the people you're watching are FAR more important and interesting than the story they're telling (even though the story they're telling is interesting). That's why the performers constantly break character as their "real selves" with jokes, asides, and sometimes tantrums. It's all part of the evening's entertainment.
If you cast "good actors" in these roles who are more dedicated to finding the essence of Rosa Bud or Neville, you're dead in the water. That's what I loved so much about the OBC. Everybody had a big personality. As a result, they shone in their "stage roles" as well.
One of my favorite nights of theatre in the '80s was seeing this show in previews.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
best - That's why I immediately thought of Marc Kudisch. It was his scene-stealing turn in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that made me think of it. This show requires an overload of charisma in most of the roles to make it work, especially to pull off the voting bit at the end which we've seen in various forms in other shows by now.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
If Laura Benanti doesn't play Rosa Bud, Todd Haimes is gonna get cut. No Sutton Foster as Drood. Just...no no no no no.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Best 12: Great post re the "larger than life" aspect. I agree completely. I too saw Drood with the OBC right after it opened at the Imperial, then later with most of the lead roles replaced, except for the incomparable George Rose, who continued as the Chairman. The original had so many great performances. Cleo Laine was Puffer, and I remember that John Simon, writing for NY Mag at the time, gave the show a rave and singled out Cleo as "a paragon of frumpy deviousness" in the role (yes, that was praise!). At this time, I knew the stagedoorman at the Imperial and he said that Cleo was very friendly and down to earth and arrived at and left the theater every night in wooly socks and tennis shoes. She and George Rose, both British, of course, evidently really hit it off. Rose had an apartment in the Village at the time, with several large dogs, and an impressive LP collection. He was murdered not too long after that production. Jana Schneider, who fell on hard times later, was flawless in the supporting role of Helena Landless and received a Tony nomination, as did Cleo and several others. Rose, of course, won. The second time I saw it Loretta Swit was Puffer and IMO she was miscast and not up to par.