Ahmanson's Broadway-Aimed THE SECRET GARDEN - Reviews & News Thread — Page 4

AEA AGMA SM said: "musikman said: "She sounds terrific, but WHY are we doing The Secret Garden with such a minuscule orchestra?!? Far and away the best part of the show is the music, and it feels like we’re getting shortchanged. I hope it sounds fuller in person."

I’ve found this to be a very common problem with a lot of marketing videos from regional theatres, where the orchestras sound very thin and the singers are overly present. They take a direct feed from the sound board and fail to realize that’s not necessarily going to be the best mix at all for their video, as the live mix in the room is typically very different than what you would do for a studio mix."

I agree with your take but regional theatres aren't going to spend the money on re-mixing the sound for a marketing video.

RLFan623 said: "I've seen the show twice, and saw the Mary alternate, Sadie Reynolds perform on Sunday, 3/5. I found her Mary to be more likeable and her voice to be better than the main Mary (who performs on the weekdays). The other Mary alternate (Ava?), based on the reels she posted on her Instagram has an amazing singing voice. Not sure how her acting is, but her singing voice would have been on par with the adult principals.

My parents are huge Phantom fans, so I took them to see the show for my mom's birthday. The talent of the adult principals goes without saying. It's rare to get a cast with four cast members who have been in Phantom on Broadway (Sierra Boggess, Ali Ewoldt, Derrick Davis, and Aaron Lazar), and Julie Lester, who steals the show with Hold On, and John Michael Lyles were outstanding. My parents were disappointed to not hear the adults sing more, which is understandable. I share that disappointment with them. I can hear them sing all day.

My biggest gripe is that after watching videos of original Broadway production on YouTube is that the staging and set design left a lot to be desired. The set design felt quite simplistic, which i think a few others on this board already mentioned. While the ribbon/swirl worked in the storm sequences, I found it distracting and limiting the use of the full stage. In the day and age where you see Elsa easily transform the stage into her ice castle, it would have been neat to see a similar effect done to make the garden bloom.

I also missed the choreography and interaction between Lily and Archibald in A Girl in the Valley and How Could I Ever Know from the OBC videos. A Girl in the Valley feels a bit more like a playful flashback in part due to Lily's costume change, while in the OBC it feels like both Lily and Archibald are both reminiscing what it would be like to dance with each other again. For How Could I Ever Know, seeing Lily comfort Archie makes the scene. The love she has for him becomes palpable.

I hope the show does make it to Broadway, but there is definitely some room for improvement. I also could just be biased. As much as I like Sierra Boggess, Rebecca Luker will always be Lily to me."

Sadie was who they cast. Four or five days in they replaced her with the girl from NY. Sadie is amazing and a great kid. The "director" maybe should have, I don't know, directed her and maybe not expected a finished performance after a few rehearsals? The "director" was more comfortable probably with the Amaryllis from The Music Man he choreographed, but it does not sit well with me the way this was handled. And of course Sadie is doing a great job because - she's great. Ava is also wonderful - great voice, terrific young actor - she and Sadie split about eight performances I think. I've worked with both of them and they're two of the best.

Use code ENCHANTING for 50 percent off orchestra seats. Code valid thru end of Monday. Offer good for weeknight seats, Tuesday thru Friday.

It was from an email sent by the Center Theatre Group, but the code was redeemable only thru the end of Monday.

This wasn't bad, it was awful. I feel sorry for those performing Martha and Dickon, they are the only two stand outs.

Lily looked and moved out of a Leslie Nielsen Dracula parody, Archibald like a deer in the headlights, the ghosts looked like animatronics from Disneyland, and Mary looked as if she was doing a Stewie Griffin impression. The worst was Cholera who looked like she had badly lost a Drag Race lip-sync (the costume and make up were just atrocious.)

The new placement of The Girl I Meant to Be worked for me, but removing all interaction between Archibald and Colin made no sense at all, instead it made Archibald look like a jerk in the end.

How did this open in this state?

Broadway critics would salivate to rip this into tiny little pieces.

Updated On: 3/17/23 at 02:26 AM

I had a chance to see this last Friday - one of the Mary alternates, Ava Madison Gray, was on, and the rest of the regular cast was on as scheduled.

I am a DIEHARD TSG fan (it was my very first Broadway musical I saw when I was 8, and it made me the monster I am today!) so I will welcome any chance to see this glorious score sung live. Besides the OBC, I saw both the concert with Rebecca Luker reprising Lily as well as the Lincoln Center concert with Daisy Eagan, Sierra Boggess and Sydney Lucas. I will never tire of it.

Despite the great talent displayed on the stage (Julia Lester is the clear stand out, as others have mentioned), I found the stage to be utterly lacking. You need to get a sense of how big, dark, and cold the house is. The vine that runs from bottom to top of the stage and then turns green when everything is wick is just wasting so much of the already small stage space, IMO. They moved "The Girl I Mean to Be" to the middle of the first act instead of as the fantasy sequence in the garden. "Quartet" is almost entirely gone, and "Race You to the Top of the Morning" is fully gone. I love "Quartet" so that was a disappointment, especially considering Ali Ewoldt is Rose and this leaves her with almost nothing to do.

The less said about Cholera personified the better.

Everyone keeps talking about an eleven or twelve piece band. It's TEN. The conductor does not play an instrument and there's a keyboard ALTERNATE. Ten pieces, thin as thin can be. I honestly don't know how anyone could call anything about this production magical but to each his own. I have never seen a worse set than this whatever it is. And the one photo they keep pimping everywhere of the rain coming down is a staged photo - it's an okay effect in the show, rather like someone turned on a shower, but it's nothing like that photograph. I'll just leave it at that.

The costs here are not the costs of B'way. This is a design choice. Two million dollars is not chump change.

BossBroadway said: "Everyone docking this production on its technical elements is not acknowledging the fact that this was produced on a budget of $2 million. Not very much compared to over pre-Broadway tryouts that lose all of its money. The production value would certainly be much higher on Broadway, as well as it's orchestra."

The Ahmanson production was closer to $4M (the enhancement was probably about $2M)

BossBroadway said: "itsjustmejonhotmailcomsaid: "The Ahmanson production was closer to $4M (the enhancement was probably about $2M)"



The FEC filing was a little over $2 million."

Are you an investor?

BossBroadway said: "bk said : "Are you an investor?"



Are you an idiot? You can see the FEC filings online..."

Oh, I don't think I'm the one who's coming off like an idiot here. Why don't you just link everyone to said filing. That would be so illuminating for those who may never have seen one. Beyond that, as I said earlier, two million is not chump change and I believe these are design choices that have nothing to do with the budget. I asked a logical question of you because you showed up out of the blue, made a post that I and several others responded to, and then brought in the FEC filings like you were some kind of expert on such things. Are you an investor was not an out of left field question. And from there, you start with personal insults. Good job.

Updated On: 3/19/23 at 08:44 PM

BossBroadway said: "bk said: "Oh, I don't think I'm the one who's coming off like an idiot here. Why don't you just link everyone to said filing. That would be so illuminating for them."

Who's the idiot now?

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1943194/000194319422000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml"

Mirror meet BossBroadway. Good, instead of just spouting you provided a link. Again I ask, why do you show up out of the blue and start talking about the budget of a show at the Ahmanson Theater, acting as if you knew the entire reason for the set and band were budgetary and that it would all be set right on Broadway. I think you forgot to answer that simple question. And then you start in on FEC filings. At which point I asked if you were an investor because no other theater fan in this thread gave a crap about FEC filings, like that's something they'd just look up because the show had a set most here didn't care for and a band most here thought too small. I confined my comments about this production to the set and the band size. If you want to continue this, I'd be more than happy to go into much more detail if you'd like. As they say in a musical called Oklahoma - we've gone about as fer as we can go.

Updated On: 3/20/23 at 12:06 AM