Big Fish Preview Thread- Page 5

[RippedMan]

Posted: 9/11/13 at 12:27pm

Seeing it tonight! B 14 in the orchestra. It's not marked partial view, so I hope it's a decent seat.

[Hongus]

Posted: 9/11/13 at 4:47pm

I am not seeing it because it will be a great piece of theatre, I want to see THREE WORDS Norbert Leo Butz.I have not seen him on Broadway yet nor have I seen Idina on stage. They are really good actors and deserve my attention.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 9/11/13 at 6:07pm

They must be so grateful.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 9/11/13 at 11:49pm

Saw this tonight. Awful partial view seat that was not labeled partial view, but I moved.

I'll break it down simply:

Actors: Norbert is brilliant. Just brilliant. He is giving 110%. His big notes were very forced and I'm sure doing this show while also rehearsing it during the day has got to be grueling for him. He's on stage the whole time, and if he's not on stage I'm sure he's running around backstage.
Kate Baldwin is beautiful and she had the only real stand out song for me in ACT 2 (I don't have my Playbill next to me.) She doesn't have a ton to do, but she's so great.
Billy Staggart (or Steggart?) was okay. I mean his character is tough because he's the straight man. He just was always mean or skeptical and that's about it. His voice is NOT MY THING. The shaking head, the weird head voice, just not my cup of tea. But he was a fine actor.

Book: I really enjoyed the book scenes more than the music numbers, especially in Act 2 when the plot became piecing together his father's life.

Music: Besides the mother's song, I didn't really feel like I came out remembering or caring about the music. It's all just so blah. I really love Lippa's Wild Party but everything since then has been so bland. Where's his musical style? I don't think I could hear a song and know that Lippa wrote it. I liked the orchestrations with the banjos and whatnot, but the actual songs? Not so much.

Direction: She over-directed the show. There's no need to have people jogging through Central Park or having like 8 mothers with babies walking by. It's distracting. This show might seem like a big show, but it's honestly got a lot of smaller moments in it, and she doesn't trust that. Even the scene with the son and the other lady at the end and the trees are like blossoming. The projections are just distracting cause you get wrapped up in that and not in what's going on. The choreography was just horrible. Nothing new or interesting. When they started doing the jazz squares in the opening number I about threw in the towel. I mean, c'mon? That's like community theater stuff.

Design: Design was cool, I guess. I don't really get why we were going for this whole like "old barn" look. And for a show that's so big on the Southern Gothic storytelling and what's truth and what's not, etc. I felt like the design was so lackluster. There was no "wow" moment for me. I thought there would be these big moments, but Stroman just isn't an imaginative director. She's very old-school, which is why she worked so well with "The Producers," but this needed a director who could figure out the visuals.

It was packed, and people seemed to like it.

[Patash]

Posted: 9/12/13 at 8:44am

ripped man, I haven't seen it yet, but your review "sounds like" it is very well thought out and shows some clear and good thinking.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 9/12/13 at 10:29am

Did anyone else find it odd that the sole black girl ensemble member was relegated to "servant" at the wedding? Made me feel icky.

[jaxandmci]

Posted: 9/12/13 at 10:58am

RippedMan:

It was uncomfortable to me also. She's an understudy for Josephine. I am usually blind to colorblind casting but it really seemed out of place in this show in regards to Josephine.

First of all, this is a small Alabama town and a mixed-race marriage wouldn't have been so invisible to everyone. But even ignoring that and without serving up too much of a spoiler, the casting choice became even stranger at the very end of the show with a, well, biologically impossible development.

[Kad]

Posted: 9/12/13 at 11:46am

It's Alabama in the present day and the family is clearly fairly progressive.

[Patash]

Posted: 9/13/13 at 3:58pm

so. . . are any improvements being made in the previews so far?

[gleek4114]

Posted: 9/13/13 at 6:44pm

Are there any new developments on my previous question?

[MrFerriero]

Posted: 9/14/13 at 12:38am

Saw the show tonight and loved it. Honestly, some award winning material in there. Runs long - I can see a few spots to be shortened. Thought the first act was stronger than the second but both really good. My favorite this season so far.
Norbert stopped the performance during THE GIANT song, "Out There On The Road" because of some 'oil' on the stage. It actually took me a second to realize that he wasn't acting. He said he was concerned for the giant since the fall could be nasty for him. Resumed a few minutes later after BP cleaned up the oil. (I tried for a joke -- failed?)

Enjoyed the set -- I could do without some of the projections but they weren't terrible.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 9/14/13 at 3:24pm

Saw it last night. There is much to admire. The sets, the costumes, the staging, the musical numbers, Norbert Leo Butz,. Those elements are not the problem.

You can change a witch number or a cowboy number or a fire girl and that will not solve the musical's problems. These numbers are all staged fine.


The problem with the show is the structure. I didn't know it was about a father son relationship until somewhere in Act Two. I think I need to have this information much earlier. Also making the son so unlikable and so stiff made me not care as much as I could have. You need to make the audience care from the get go. I want to say to the creatives it's fine to dazzle the audience with spectacular bull**** but where is the heart?

Norbert is terrific, charming and working very hard. But as JaxandMci pointed out, he monopolizes things to much. It should not be the Norbert Leo Butz show. It is not his story. It is the son's story. Or at the very least the a story about a father and son relationship. And you simply don't care about the son because he is written and played so stiffly and unlikeable. It is too late to try and make me care in Act Two. The authors and the director (stager in this case) should flesh out How did the father's story negatively effect the son's life to make hims such a curmudgeon.? And does he have to be such a priggish curmudegeon?


As for the rest: I didn't love the score. It was serviceable at best. Kate Baldwin is gorgeous. I did find myself watching the projections more than the actors. The sets and projections and some staging are so busy that they take me out of the heart of the story. The musical isn't directed...it is staged. There needs to be more balance between the elements of spectacle and simplicity of story.

Trying to dazzle us while not committing to the heart of the story is the problem with this musical Creatives need to seriously examine the structure and the poorly written son.

People around me seem to love it. I thought it was problematic at best.

Updated On: 9/14/13 at 03:24 PM

[StageDoor3]

Posted: 9/16/13 at 6:07pm

I saw BIG FISH in Chicago early in the run. I have high regard for the cast and creative people behind the show. I loved the cast. I thought the score was serviceable. But I felt the show needed a good deal of work. The meandering, episodic tall-tale format of the first act didn't grab me. The second act worked better for me than the first because it focused more on the father-son relationship. I wanted more of that focus in the first act. And having just been wowed by PIPPIN in New York, the fantasy and circus elements of BIG FISH didn't spark theatrical fire for me.

I live in Los Angeles and I am coming to New York mid-October. I wanted to see the show again to see how they've improved it. I'm trying to piece together comments from people who saw both productions, but it's hard to tell if the show has changed enough.

Can anyone who's seen both shows give me their opinion if it's really worth seeing this again? I would definitely get a discount ticket.

Thanks!



Updated On: 9/16/13 at 06:07 PM

[goldenboy]

Posted: 9/16/13 at 9:07pm

Well I didn't see it in Chicago but Act One still meanders. Act two brings more into focus the father son relationship. The meandering is indeed a problem. Witches and Cowboys and Circus giants. Oh My!

[GatorNY]

Posted: 9/17/13 at 9:34am

I saw it on Saturday and found it to be thoroughly entertaining. For me it was a wonderful night at the theater. At the end I found myself on the verge of that cathartic sort of crying that I have felt rarely before...mostly because I love my Dad so much and I can still spend time with him. The show actually made me want to be a father (if only just for a moment). I very much enjoyed the music, and I did find the songs memorable. I would recommend it to all my friends. My husband, who is a lot more stoic than me...he wasn't feeling it though. Just didn't do it for him.

[ZiggyCringe]

Posted: 9/18/13 at 12:51am

I really wanted to love this show, but it was Much Ado About Nothing.

I agree that the biggest problem is that it is the son's (Bobby Steggart's) show, story wise, and he is written to be a rather annoying little snit. Norbert worked his tail off, but the story isn't really about him, it's about his son's reaction to him.

Poor Kate Baldwin was stuck with one of the most underwritten females ever. Her Act 1 song was very interesting, but got cut off halfway through and no applause break. Her 2nd act number was lovely, but didn't do much for her character development, as it was mostly repetition of information we already knew.

The sound design was atrocious. I was sitting in row H, in the dead center of the theatre, and I could only make out half of the lyrics.

Also, there's a big problem with the Neil Simon. The house is barely raked at all. I'm extremely tall (and I apologize for the person sitting behind me who probably saw nothing). The way to fix that is do what Hairspray did, and rake the stage severely. They didn't. There was this whole river thing going on over the orchestra pit, which I couldn't see from row H of the orchestra. That's a problem. In fact, the whole thing looked like it was staged on a much bigger stage, and every cheerleader, clown, giant and mermaid was trying desperately not to step on each other at the Simon.

Then the projections. The set was a clapboard, picket fence kind of thing with spaces between each slat, that they then projected things on. I have nothing against projections, they can be terrific. But don't try to project things on an uneven surface, or worse, on something with two inch empty spaces over the entire set. Perhaps it was an artistic choice, to make his fabulations seem untrue? Whatever. The projections looked awful.

Personally, I really liked the witch number, which was inventive and felt like a real, exciting musical for a minute. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word she was singing due to the sound problems.

The whole circus sequence is really unfortunate, because Pippin is doing it so much better a few blocks south. This looked like amateur hour. The elephant dance was fun and inventive, as was the orchestra reveal.

But I thought it was a huge misstep at the end of the first act with the daffodils, and this is nothing to do with the production, it's to do with the advertising. The marquee outside the theatre completely spoils that moment. If we hadn't known it was coming, it would have been spectacular. The problem is we all saw the marquee walking in the door, and knew it was coming. Bad PR team. It's an actual set, not a projection, and I could tell watching it that the production staff is trying its darndest to make this moment work. No matter how much money you throw at that moment, you've already spoiled it. It's a lovely song, terrifically sung, and it's never going to get the "Ah!" moment you want.

Lippa's score had some lovely things. And a lot of hoe-down music that sounded the same.

There were a ton and a half of walk-outs at intermission.

Strohman put together a very professional show, but it was a lot of flash-zam-alacazam put on top of a basic four character story, to the detriment of those four characters, who were all badly fleshed out.

Updated On: 9/18/13 at 12:51 AM

[ACL2006]

Posted: 9/20/13 at 12:18pm

ended up seeing this last night. went on a whim with a friend to TKTS to originally try and see Pippin, but it was off the boards by 5:00. Attempted SRO for Pippin & Kinky Boots, but both were sold-out. Got back on the TKTS line and settled for Big Fish at 50% off. Just a note for anyone getting tickets for this through TKTS. As of right now, they're offering the mid-mezz for 50% off($40 tickets). Well worth the price as my friend & I both really enjoyed the show. Didn't love it, but it was a great night of theater.

Thought the opening was great("Be The Hero") & enjoyed The Witch's number as well("I Know What You Want"). Artistically, the show is gorgeous, however, I felt like the show has odd pacing issues. From the opening up until Central Park the show moves well, and then it seems to drastically slow down in Central Park and doesn't pick up again we meet Karl. The circus numbers seemed to work, but why have all these "circus performers" on stage if none of the can do any circus tricks(Stroman should have taken notes from Pippin). This is were there seemed to be too much clutter on stage and way too many people just standing around trying to attempt some kind of "trick"(it was actually a little sad to watch some of them attempt to do something here). But Act 1 ends strong with "Time Stops", "Closer to Her" & "Daffodils". Act 2 really moves well, outside of the way too long "Red, White & True". The show really needed to have Will(& even Josephine & Sandra) involved more with Edward's story telling, especially in Act 1. Josephine's character is basically non-existent in Act 2. The audience was into the show last night as well and there were quite a few people in tears at the end. If they could only strengthen Act 1 and shorten it, this should could be so much better. I would hope with Stroman at the helm, the proper cuts will be made and all the clutter will be removed. I think the show will get mostly good reviews(not great ones) and has the potential for a solid run.

[Up In One]

Posted: 9/21/13 at 4:07pm

The best part of the Big Fish movie was the ending, it was worth baring through some of the interminable stretches that come before it. Going into Big Fish I was hoping that the creative team felt the same way and would theatricalize the Candide like journey of the story telling father leading us to some type of coupe de theatre which would send the audience out on a spiritual theatrical high. Sad to report that song and dance pro Susan Stroman had a by the book 50's/60's style musical in mind for this special material. You know your in trouble when the show opens with a book scene that leads to a solo in the next scene where the chorus is essentially that - they could have used back up singers. Why we see the entire cast right up front is beyond me. Let the father "tell" his story and then surprise us as the night goes on. The musicalization is uninspired - the songs non-descript - their structure simple. The acting is fine but no better than the material. Butz is in Carolee Carmello's postion this year - as long as the field is limited he's sure to get nominated come awards time. This one needs to go back to the drawing board - can it be saved? Maybe with a 45 minute cut - turn up the Butz star turn and make it a "must see" performance? Not sure how that would be accomplished. Much less of the son's role and Bobby Steggert would be helpful.

Back to the final scene - the sons storytelling and the funeral
"reunion" - it was rushed and disjointed - that scene can be polished more - in the film its a mini-movie unto itself. Here its a pantomime exercise. They've spent their theatrical nut on inconsequential scenes leaving the beginning and end to stand on its own. Short of some amazing reviews I don't see this making it past the New Year. It may be the best new musical of the season but that isn't saying much. The must see dollars will continue to head over to Kinky Boots, Pippin and Matilda.

PS: Colorblind casting is one thing but should not the bride have had some family at the wedding? It was very distracting to see the only other people of color play the doctor and the waitress. Nothing like taking an almost nonexistent part and drawing attention to it for the wrong reasons.

Updated On: 9/21/13 at 04:07 PM

[Younger Brother]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 7:22am

Can someone explain Sandra's act 2 opening? Why is she at the war?

[Up In One]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 10:42am

Can someone explain Sandra's act 2 opening? Why is she at the war?

Good continuity question, if the tales are true she shouldn't be there, if they're not its part of his imagination. The funeral scene suggests they are true so....

That was one of the more poorly staged scenes. An unnecessary orchestra reveal which revealed more wasted dollars. The mermaid scene forced the orchestra out of the pit. The new pit arrangement and their appearance in that scene gives them additional performance and hazard pay and they weren't even costumed to the USO period

[Kad]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 10:43am

It's hand waved by Young Will saying something along the lines of, "All the pretty women in his stories are mom."

[TimesSquared]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 12:36pm

Up In One, that's exactly how I felt about the Big Fish musical.

Stroman's decision to tell the tale in such a conventional musical theater style is baffling. The chorus was used like the stock mass of 'merry townfolk' seen in any high school rendition of Brigadoon and The Music Man. Adding contemporary-style numbers like the witch scene (staged like something from Spiderman) does not change the fact that the show's structure, look and score are very old-fashioned and outdated--and for such a fantastic story!

I love the movie Big Fish. When I first heard it was being adapted as a musical I thought it was a brilliant idea. The theatrical device is already built into it--the small story of a man at the end of his seemingly ordinary life framing the spectacular tales he told. And the built in, musical-ready ending is that the quiet end of his life breaks the frame, and courtesy of his story-hating son in an explosive outpouring of withheld love for his father, becomes the most moving and fantastic tale of them all. That's sort of what Stroman does here, but the framing device and the tales are given equal weight and are not sufficiently distinct from each other. I always imagined that the tales would sing, and the framing device would not, and that the son would sing for the first time (in his life) when he tells his first tall tale to his father at the end.

I'm so disappointed that we'll never get to see a different composer and director take it on. I keep wistfully wondering what Adam Guettel and Alex Timbers might have made out of this. Or Sondheim and Prince, for that matter, who even 40 years ago would have devised a more original concept of storytelling for a musical ABOUT storytelling.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 11:13pm

The score isn't embarrassingly bad, but it sounds like just an assortment of songs and not a score. There's no through line of music, there's no recurring themes, which would have been neat with all the stories. It would have been nice if the stories had a certain sound and the "real" life moments had a certain sound, etc. But that doesn't happen.

And yeah, it's a pretty old-fashioned musical. The choreography seems like an after-thought, honestly.

I'm not sure this will stand the test of time. It's not bad, it's not just creative or interesting. I thought the "running" sequence out of the hospital was really laughably stupid. The projections looked like a Pixar movie, but it's suppose to be this crazy serious moment? Why not throw in some magical realism into the actual story. It's theater. Use what you have.

[Younger Brother]

Posted: 9/25/13 at 10:47am

Can someone post the understudies please :)

[getatme]

Posted: 9/25/13 at 11:16am

For Edward: Ben Crawford, Tally Sessions
For Sandra: Kirsten Scott, Lara Seibert
For Will: Alex Brightman, Cary Tedder
For Josephine: Bree Branker, Lara Seibert
For Karl: Preston Truman Boyd, Tally Sessions
For Amos: Preston Truman Boyd, Tally Sessions
For Don: Truman Boyd, Joshua Buscher
For Dr. Bennett: Preston Truman Boyd, Joshua Buscher
For Zacky: Joshua Busher, Cary Tedder
For The Witch: Bryn Dowling, Synthia Link
For Girl in the Water: Synthia Link, Ashley Yeater
For Jenny: Bryn Dowling, Synthia Link
For Mayor: Preston Truman Boyd, Joshua Busher