Everyone was in again tonight! Definitely added a little extra thrill when entering the theater, seeing no substitutions on the board or insert, though I have to admit to being a little nervous for them seeing some of the cast come in through the audience, and then when they were breathing heavily in some of the numbers and sucking in big gulps of air... I know they're being as careful as possible and clearly they must be doing it right since they haven't had the issues of other shows. But I'm very glad the ushers are being as diligent as they are about keeping the audience masked, and I couldn't entirely get Covid off my mind.
I really enjoyed the show, even if I didn't quite love it. Some of the gender swaps didn't work for me--having the men sing "Poor Baby" to Bobbie was creepy (and too paternalistic) in a way that the women singing it to a male Bobby wasn't--and I didn't love the staging of "Another Hundred People," which was too much of a mess. But the cast is uniformly strong. I actually thought Nikki Renee Daniels overshadowed Matt Doyle on "Not Getting Married Today," maybe because I'd heard so much praise for him, so she was more unexpected. On the other hand, Claybourne Elder was even funnier than I expected, even with the good things I'd heard.
On the Lenk issue--I actually understand both the praise and criticism she's received, but the faults were ultimately irrelevant to me because her performance was so strong. In the first act, her singing did bother me at times--it sounded like she was doing a weird, quasi-accent in the early songs (which I later remembered some had mentioned), and there were moments in "Marry Me a Little" when her voice sounded really harsh. But I thought she sounded fine in Act Two, and I had no problems whatsoever with her "Being Alive." And acting-wise, she was absolutely terrific throughout. I'd never seen her in anything but videos of her performing "Omar Sharif." Within a few scenes, I had no trouble understanding why she was cast in the role. It's a great performance (though I see Daniels is one of the Bobbie understudies, and I wouldn't mind seeing her in the role).
All in all, it's a perfect show for the current moment. I needed joy, and even with my quibbles, that's what I got. So glad I got to see it, and with the full regular cast!
Updated On: 12/22/21 at 11:58 PM