"the choreography was frenetic and textured"
I'll agree with frenetic, but "textured"? As in a Laker Girls half-time show where they do they same move, but on different beats sort of way? What do you mean? The Out For Blood dance/ballet/thing made absolutely no sense. Chris and Billy kill the pig and dance and celebrate the blood letting or whatever while a team of shirtless guys dance and do acrobatic tricks around them, having nothing to do with the scene or the action at hand. It was like the precursor to Notre Dame de Paris.
I do agree with most everything else you say, however. The show had two major failings: the conceptual staging and the book, which included the erratic use of rhyming dialogue. I do think the majority of the score is quite good and that the show has potential to be a hit. It's just too bad the director turned it into a vanity production that focused more on the concept than the story, which is not a tale of horror, but of tragedy and despair. Perhaps the story will resurface as an opera someday.
As for Stephen King novels, I think Misery, if adapted from the novel, not the film, is be a viable source for a dramatic musical. The parallel stories of the author and his fictional heroine could be spectacular. I would love to hear what Jeanine Tesori could do with it.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
