BWW TV: PROMISES, PROMISES Video Preview! — Page 2

Sean Hayes looks utterly charming and has a pleasant voice. I'd see it just for him after watching these previews. However, "Turkey Lurkey Time"... you know it's over-choreographed when they can't even sing the song without sounding out of breath. What about using the Vocal Minority or even a click track (which I hate, but that's what they're used for)? Nothing could touch the original choreography, so why try? It was most likely going to be a disappointment, and from what I've seen in these clips, it is.

~Steven

When I saw the original - Ohmygod, that was 41 years ago and I was just a kid - if my memories are reliable, the audience gasped audibly several times during the Turkey Lurkey number. The biggest was when the dancers did that X-cross-over at the end, which was done on a gallop, at breakneck speed and the worst I ever saw in the five times I saw the show was one of the guys clip one of the women in the neck. It was an amazing feat.

The other thing I remember - and you can see it on the Tony footage, is how tall and pencil-thin the guys were. As the show played and played, the quality of the cast went from the A+ dancers of Broadway to B- reliable journeymen - which you can see on the Ed Sullivan footage which was shot with just Baayork Lee from the original cast in the trio and a woman who had been, I believe, the lead dancer on the TV series "Hullabaloo" replacing Donna McKechnie role. By that time, the sharpness is out of the number, moustaches are in on the men and the pencils have been replaced by thick crayons.

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Things look like they have improved since the first preview. But it is still not a very strong production. I think Night Music and La Cage are superior.

brick, well said! i have tix in may and cant wait. i knew i would like this, and sean is great!

The suggestion that they shoe-horned more songs into the show just so Cheno could "sing pretty" could not be more on point.

^ thanks for that!!!!!!!!!!

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Sat through it last night. Bored senseless a lot of the time. The show is hideously dated, way too many songs go on entirely too long and add nothing to the story. That interminable "Where Can You Take A Girl" thing, for example, which comes back not once but TWICE, for Christ's bloody nailed up sake, and the songs they added to give Chenoweth more to do and didn't even really bother to motivate at all. And that hideous "Young Pretty Girl" number was a total embarassment -- what on earth makes them think that it works?

The performances are skillful, but one note. Chenoweth's Fran is a bummer, whose suicide attempt seemed rather perfunctory and ill-motivated -- really, would anyone kill themselves over Tony Goldwyn? And Sean Hayes' performance is a parade of schtick, some of which works very well indeed but there's no growth in the character at all, nothing seems to mean anything to him except as a way getting a laugh out of the audience. He had some vocal issues the night I saw it, missing at least two of his big notes, most damagingly at the end of the title song, which has probably never been sung with less passion or conviction.

I won't even ask why the show depicts thunder and lightning during a snowstorm in December.

The sole bright spot in the show was Katie Finneran. The Tony for Supporting Actress in a Musical is hers by divine right. She lifts her scenes right into pure heaven. She was so brilliant that I couldn't even laugh at her: I could only shake my head in admiration at how one actress, doing the right thing at the right time in the right way, can lighten even the darkest dankest dreariest of shows.

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Updated On: 4/23/10 at 10:28 PM

Has a cast recording been announced?

Just turkey. No lurkey.

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Wow. That was...bad.

Hayes sounded better on the duets than in his solos.

My question is this...does anyone think the score sounds...muddy and dull? I felt like there was no life in it (or the title number).

And don't even get me started on Turkey Lurkey Time.

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What's really sad it that this will likely get nominated for best revival while either Ragtime or Finian's Rainbow gets pushed aside.

!

~Steven

I'm a big fan of Kristin's and I hope to get to NYC to see this, but this footage makes her look awful. Why is her face so hollow? Why does she do this to herself? Contrast her face to the woman with Sean in the bar scene. It's completely natural. I can't stand what actresses are doing to their faces.