Best Matinee+Evening Performance Combination — Page 3

Morosco, I am quite jealous of your two-show day!

I think back fondly to the summer of 2001, when on a Saturday night one could see the 5 pm show of the Rocky Horror revival, have dinner and then make it downtown to see Raul in the late show of Tick, Tick Boom. (I think it started at 10 pm.) I suppose you could do a three-show day with that schedule, but I don't think I ever did...

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I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" on the same day. Needless to say, I was exhausted come 11 pm.

Lets see...I've done:

Les Mis/Les Mis
Riverdance/Rocky Horror
Avenue Q/Avenue Q
Hairspray/Little Shop
Little Women/Dame Edna
Spamalot/Sweet Charity


but Les Mis/Les Mis was my favorite.

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My first time was Wicked/ Fiddler on the Roof(With Harvey yay!)
Then Wicked / the Producers (Alan ruck and richard kind, pretty damn good)
And on June 15th I'll be seeing dirty rotten scoundrels then AvenueQ which I'm dying to see.

I've never seen rent before, blasphemy i know, and i sorta wanta see it with Brooklyn, for some reason in my head i feel like they go together, although i've never seen either, mostly i want to go to brooklyn just to see eden before she leaves or it closes or both.

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Cathyhyatt wrote: "frontrowcenter...phantom and les mis in the SAME day.. omg that IS beauitful."

Frontrowcentre replies...

Well actually not so much. LES MIZ was great (Gary Morris had just taken over the role of Jean Valjean and was the weakest link but even he was not all that bad.)

No, the bad was over at POTO - now this was Saturday Jan 30 1988 - 4 days after the show opened (to very mixed and negative reviews) MAYBE the cast was tired from all the opening week hoopla but it was a dreary performance of a dreary show. Michael Crawford was the one shining light. The rest of the cast I described in my review as "dead wood." The scenic effects were spectacular and the music was appropriately lush. But the lyrics! They have to rank among the worst ever heard in a major musical hit. And I wondered, why didn't Hal Prince demand better. (Because he was hired only to direct this show - he wasn't the producer. ALW was. Mystery solved!) Beautiful melodies like "All I Ask of You" are frittered away with dull repetive lyrics. And the story telling is quite muddled.

I returned to PHANTOM again in the sumer of 2002 with a friend who had never seen it. He came away withe the same impression. I saw the movie version when it opened last December..same reaction although I found the movie even more drawn out and dull. I have tried and tried, I just don't like the show. And I don't get why it remains so popular when other, better shows enjoy much shorter runs.

I wish someone could explain to me how they connect with POTO or what it is that makes the show attract so many phans!

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I've done Avenue Q and Wicked, and All Shook Up and I Am My Own Wife. Lets just say having Buring Love stuck in your head while watching I Am My Own Wife is not a good thing.

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I tend to take a more critical look at every show I see, and so one really weak element (poor book and lyrics in this case) can spoil my enjoyment of a show. But many others let it slide or don't care about this as much.

Still, I guess in retrospect, seeing those two major blockbusters in one day was pretty amazing. And add to that, on the Friday night I saw the full original cast in INTO THE WOODS.

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