Looks like I posted last night in the less thread, so I’m going to copy/paste my post here. One thing I’ll add is that this production did not read to me like a community theatre production at all; say what you will about the concept and execution, but the production caliber struck me as roughly on par with what Roundabout usually does. Anyway, here’s what I said last night after the 1st preview:
I guess you could say I fit nicely in the target audience for this production, in the sense that I’m (a) a fan of the material, but also (b) the opposite of a purist. I genuinely love to see artists take massive liberties with an existing text.
I have mixed feelings about the end result, but overall I dug it. Sometimes a bit heavy-handed, to be sure, but even some of those moments worked for me, because the text is already written with such a sense of self-awareness. They just changed who who was aware of what.
When all was said and done, I actually don’t think this production feels like it’s fighting the text. Working in dialogue with it, yes, and occasionally embellishing it where it could’ve spoken for itself. But I think the things that already work well about the text were still present in this production.
Some of the more “frivolous” numbers didn’t quite gel with the flow of the production, but in general I thought most of the musical numbers were excellent, and loved a lot of the stylistic changes they made to the score.
As I said, I do have a number of criticisms. But since this production already seems to have been pretty poorly received, I feel more inclined to focus on the positives in the post. Because overall I definitely enjoyed it, and respect its ambition (Also it’s late, and I don’t feel like doing a play-by-play tonight).
Regarding Mamma Look Sharp: I do love the original version, but I also thought this re-imagined version was exquisite in its own way, and was actually the highlight of the evening for me.
For anyone curious, it ran close to 3 hours tonight - got out at like 10:50 or something.
