I just saw this last night. I want to preface this review by saying that I am a huge fan of the original movie (ie I've probably seen it over 50 times, mostly when I was in grade school). I think the music and lyrics of the original movie are beautiful, and I was more than thrilled when this adaptation was announced.
The book of this musical was one of the worst of this season, in my opinion. I was completely bored throughout the entire thing, and all I kept thinking is "I would rather be rewatching the movie right now." The new characters, and the old that were heavily revised, were completely uninteresting.
Gleb is a sorry excuse for a "villain." You can't root for him and you can't root against him, and in the end, we don't care about him, either way, one bit. His scenes end up just being an annoyance we have to deal with.
Anya and Dmitry have been turned into two of the most boring, uninteresting characters of any musical I've seen in recent memory.
Like others in past posts, I couldn't have cared less about Anya until the beginning of Act 1. Moving Journey to the Past to the middle was a huge mistake, it is the moment where we begin to understand and care about Anya, and without it, we spend half the musical not feeling like we know who Anya is or what her motives are. While we have glimpses of the fiery personality of Anya in this adaptation, that part of her personality is all but lost.
Dmitry has also had half of his personality sucked out of him, he now comes across as a straight conman / jerk, as opposed to the flirt he was in the movie. This makes it harder to root for him and Anya together, and when all of a sudden he falls in love with her at the end, it feels much more jarring than in the movie.
The movement of songs only made matters worse, instead of a slow progression of love, indirect flirting at the beginning, spending time together (learn to do it) and then slowly falling in love (learn to do it reprise), their on again off again feelings just feel jumbled and confused. A snippet from the learn to do it reprise was added at the very end (to make us think that they were falling in love as they danced in the previous act?) And then all of a sudden at the end they are head over heals for each other.
I also found the Grandma in this production to be really off-putting. The one in the movie was the perfect balance of heartbroken (and cold from being heartbroken), but still human. The version in this production just came across as cruel, so when she finally opened up to Anya I didn't even like her anymore.
The changes to plot points from the movie did not work, all of sudden when the Grandma and Anya meet she spurts out 1000 different minute details out of nowhere, it felt forced. In the movie, she smells the perfume and a memory slowly comes back, it felt much more genuine. So much of the memories felt forced in this version.
None of the new songs were memorable, maybe short of My Petersburg, which still could have used a rewrite or two. It's funny how when creators revisit their works they often have trouble creating compelling new songs. Alan Menken seems to struggle here too. They reused the same melodies from old songs for quite a few new ones, and that is not a surprise, as none of the new melodies were anything special.
One of the biggest weaknesses of this show though was the staging and direction. I mean every single ballad was the same, walk to the left of the stage sing a verse, walk to the right of the stage sing a verse, walk to the center and sing the final verse with a long note at the end as the lights brighten on you. Applause. I've never seen a show do the exact same thing for every single ballad like this, it was crazy (compare to War Paint if you would like to see this done well).
The sets, well, others have already mentioned, they were completely lazy and cheap. They literally had one physical set for the entire production, even when they were outside in a meadow there are arched openings? Lazy and cheap. The projection thing ranges from somewhat inventive to completely gimmicky.
Turning Paris Holds the Key into a random number, instead of an introduction to Sophie, felt forced and strange, was definitely disappointed to see the changes made to that character as well (the comedy between her and Vlad was a highlight in the movie for me, and while it had a couple bright spots in this adaptation, was not as appealing as the movie version).
Unfortunately, and despite what I've written you may not realize that it pains me to say this, the only two things I can say positively about this production are that:
1. Christy has a beautiful voice and really nailed every song, so that part was fun
2. Many of the costumes were beautiful
Altogether, my feeling was just that they had made all the characters "sterile," maybe for the sake of making it more "realistic" or "historical." But in the end, we all know that the whole story is a farce, it is now a fairytale, so let it be a fairytale.
Updated On: 4/14/17 at 03:56 PM
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