"I'm sensing a pattern here. It seems if you haven't seen the last revival, then the show is brilliant. But if you did see the last revival, it's still great, but not different."
I saw it before and it was still brilliant. The disconnect seems to be if you are wondering what new approach Cumming was going to take after all these years, only to find he was going to do the same thing, right down to some of the same exact noises you now have memorized from listening to the cast recording; or, if you are somehow put off by Roundabout restaging this with high ticket prices despite having no desire to revisit any element of the show.
I went in expecting it to see him recreate his brilliant performance, and he did. It is a good position to be in, though, to have created something so indelible and magical that after more than a decade every line and move seemed familiar. But like any work of art, you can only discover it once.
In the viewing of The Sixth Sense, you know Bruce Willis is dead; in Citizen Kane, you look for details about the sled, etc., etc.
If you see something once and it is amazing, and you see the same thing again and it doesn't light you up in the same way, the thing that changes in the equation is you.
Now t/d/b/a haterobics on here.