DESSA ROSE - a saving grace of musical theatre.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:06pm

oh.

my.

god.

now seriously kids, get thee to lincoln center right away and see one of the best musicals to be developed. ever. everything about this show is absolutely first rate. i saw it 3/16 at 8pm, and was sitting front row center, and child. it was an experience and more. i had love ahrens and flaherty before this due to ragtime, once on this island, a man of no importance. but this show will cement them as one of america's best musical theatre composition teams. the story i actually really grew to care about. i have to admit that i grew skeptical due to the first line of the show ("we are descended from a long line of women"). i thought, oh no. but by the end of the show i was in tears and i said yes. we are descended. lynn ahrens really really impressed me with the quality of her book. it was very strong, and each and every scene was important. there was nothing that was useless or frivolous. and the dramatic tension at points was scorching, but then there were also points of comic glory. the score. oh the score. stephen flaherty, where do you learn how to do this. the score was PERFECT. the songs perfectly captured the sounds of the era, the feelings of the characters and yet it was simply glorious. really. not a bad word can i say about it. something that really impressed me was the song "terrible" and the percussion instruments played by the slaves, so that the song was in like 5 part a cappella. it was such a joy. other highlights included the opening ("we are descended"), "at the glen", "fly away", "twelve children", "in the bend of my arm" and "white milk and red blood". really i cannot say enough about this score. and the synthesis between the two, the book and the score, just makes this musical all the better. both are extremely strong and when put together make an even stronger musical. the idea at the end when dessa and ruth's relationship is changing for the old comfortable ground of music to fade away into dramatic dialogue scenes worked so well. it was a larger metaphor about the relationship that i fear was lost on some there who might have just thought that flaherty gave up towards the end. i do not believe this was case. i think it was a deliberate statement about the two women and their relationship.

i wish i could talk about every player individually because they were each so amazing and so necessary in this stellar production.

let's start with the lady of the hour: lachanze. i'd seen her as sarah in ragtime and loved her then and loved her even more now. the woman played 16 and 80 like there was no tomorrow, and it was so clear when she was both. i was worried that it would be difficult to tell, but she proved me wrong. she was amazing. and her voice was in full effect. and in a theatre like that, sitting in the front row, to hear it without the aid of the mic was just magic. her delivery of "twelve children" was really great and i just loved her in this role.

rachel york. i was so impressed with her. maybe it's because i'm white, but her character actually called to me more than dessa. and i understood her and empathized with her. i thought ms. york's portrayal was heartbreaking. she went from a nervous, naive girl to a fully strong, individual woman and i believed every moment of her journey. her transfers from 20 to 84 were just as great as lachanze's and while i loved lachanze, i loved ms. york even more, i think mostly to do with how much i related to the character. also, her "at the glen" was indescribalbe it was so good.

something must be said for kecia lewis, who has the funniest moments in the play as dorcas, and yet has one of the most tear jerking songs too in "white milk and red blood"... she was a real standout.

norm lewis (god i love his voice) and michael hayden and eric jordan young were all great, but obviously the show does not belong to the men. but they all were given great songs and scenes and took their characters on nice journeys and i liked where they started and ended.

the set was so minimalistic and that's what i love! let the characters tell the story, not the sets. and the costumes were really period and fabulous. i loved the venue for this show and when all 12 sang together it was a magnificent sound that would bring me to tears out of sheer beauty. if you haven't guessed by now i loved this show and want to see it again and again. my grade is obviously an A+++, and i am steadfastly waiting for the announcement of the cast recording to be made. because it better be or else i'll simply die. but then again it's ahrens and flaherty, and they always get recorded. so i'm waiting. any other questions feel free to ask! AND GO SEE DESSA ROSE! IT IS BRILLIANT. the end.

[Plum]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:09pm

I wish I could say I liked the show as much as you, but I agree that the design and cast (perhaps barring Michael Hayden) are all excellent. Glad you had a good time.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:12pm

i thought hayden's portrayal was great. but you didn't like the book or the score?

[Plum]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:14pm

I think the book had serious structural problems, and the score was okay in the first half (I loved "We Are Descended") and better in the second.

Hayden did fine, acting-wise, but his relatively weak singing voice stood out horribly in such a strong vocal cast. He really missed a lot of notes in one of his solos, and I was cringing listening to it. Maybe he's fixed that up; I don't know.
Updated On: 3/17/05 at 11:14 PM

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:16pm

he definitely has fixed it. he was on last night. what book problems did you have? and you only thought the score was ok? i think it was one of ahrens and flaherty's best, not to mention the best to hit new york this season (i haven't seen spelling bee or piazza yet, but am in may)

[jmnpublications]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:18pm

I can't wait! Thank you. It sounds like I'd better bring a lot of tissues.

lc

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:22pm

yes, yes you should. i really can't get over this musical and i can't believe you didn't like it plum!

[Plum]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:27pm

SPOILERS!

I didn't get the point of having the story narrated by the elderly Ruth and Dessa. There was too much telling and not enough showing. Anytime a character says of her younger self, "I changed," you know something's wrong. We should be able to see the change without being told. It's called character develpment.

The first act, quite frankly, dragged. A lot. There needed to be more emphasis on the connections between the women, I think. The theme of relationships between mothers and daughters is supposed to be important, obviously- "We Are Descended" proves that- but I didn't always feel it in the show.

The second act was much, much better than the first. The backstory was done with and the "scheme" could begin. (I loved that song, too.) The book did some good "showing" in addition to its endless "telling" in this act, and the staging didn't drag so much.

Other than the songs I mentioned, I also liked the songs between Ruth's mother and Dorcas (the mother-daughter thing, again), but the rest of the score wasn't too memorable. And the songs that were supposed to be the most important- "Twelve Children" and "White Milk and Red Blood," for example- just didn't seem that musically strong.

Just as a side note- this isn't a criticism, but I connected more strongy with Ruth than with Dessa. The latter is a superwoman- it's not that I didn't believe in her, but I couldn't really identify with her, either.

I did like the show, in the end. Act II saved it. But if it wants to get good reviews, Act I needs fixing.
Updated On: 3/17/05 at 11:27 PM

[marincrazy11]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:27pm

yeah if anyone tries to say that Mr.Flaherty gave up at the end becuase there was more dialogue than music, I know for a fact that there were three songs at the end of the show that were cut during the very beginning of previews I believe, becuase the creative team felt that they weren't needed, they lengthened the show in a way they didn't need to and they found the dialogue just to be incredibly powerful.

[jmnpublications]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:45pm

Having read the book, I'd say by Plum's description that the play follows the story's evolution pretty closely. Dessa and Ruth did not have any contact for the first half of the book. Each was telling her own story in the beginning so that the reader could get a sense of their separate experiences and prejudices. This paralleling of their lives sets the stage for the conflict and ultimate growth that takes place in the second half of the book once their worlds collide.

I felt the book was pretty powerful in its own right. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Ahrens and Flaherty have musicalized it. From apdarcey's (and others') descriptions, it sounds like they have actually improved upon it.

Good stuff!

lc

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:50pm

plum. i think it's extremely important for the elderly characters because the whole point of the show is "oral tradition"... the stories that create us are told to us by our mothers. the old lachanze and rachel york are, in essence, telling their daughters (the audience) the story. i don't ever remember them saying "i changed" and i thought the story played out for itself very well. the scenes were augmented though with the old women, giving us an oral history. because that's how the history would have been passed down in that age. i think that's the greatness of the book, actually, being able to tie in the era of the story even greater. i too found myself more involved in rachel york's side of the story, i agree. i very much disagree though about the music not being memorable or moving. but, we'll have to agree to disagree!

[Plum]

Posted: 3/17/05 at 11:55pm

I understand the oral tradition point, but it doesn't change the fact that in the theater, that outer framing device was clunky and over-expository. Like I said, the show's biggest problem was too much "telling" and not enough "showing." I liked the connections-between-women theme, of which the oral tradition thing is a part, but the elderly women narrating just didn't work for me. I kept waiting for them to interact with someone, to have a story of their own, to do something to show why they were there, but it never came.

And that "I changed" line was definitely there. Maybe they cut it since I saw the show, but I remember it very distinctly as example 1a of the book's problems.

[homosezwhat]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 12:38am

I just wanted to pipe up and say i agree with you both.

The older narrator device REALLY moved me in the begining and at several other spots. Something about it just got me. And it was executed flawlessly by both actresses.

But, I also agree that those 2 old women should have been given scenes or songs of their own, not 12, just maybe one that they could share, or something. I LOVED those old women. is there a way to give them something without getting all after-school special on us? and i did notice that "i changed" sort of stuff in the 2nd act and cringed a little.

I know showing is more important than telling, but i also felt that having old Dessa look into Cain's eyes for a minute while he sings to her, or during their early scenes would have been devastating.
I wanted the old women not to just narrate, but to interact.
I'm sure they could pull this off.

(POSSIBLE SPOILER)

one question? is it just me or did you want to go out with more emotion at the end? like a full-cast, full-voice reprise of "we are descended" or something? It seems like the emotional weight was all given to the name Dessa gave her child, which was treated like a reveal and i figured that out in act one.
don't get me wrong, when Dessa said the name, i still started squirting water from my eyes, but...i was hoping to end with more emotion so i could really empty out those tear ducts.
as it was, they were still about half full.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 1:11am

As posted on another thread, this show--the writing and the performances by La Chanze and Rachel York--moved me in ways I hadn't expected and in ways that very few theatre pieces in recent memory have achieved.

I thought the writing was better than any original musical I've seen in the past 5 or so years--Pulitzer-prize level (whatever that means).

Plum--I loves ya, but the level of dismissiveness in your criticism seems disproportionate to the immenseness of the achievement of Dessa Rose.

I'm reminded of the story of the Broadway producer who was too ill to attend the opening night of Oklahoma and gave his tickets to his longtime and devoted costume mistress, thinking it would be a treat for her. The next morning, when all the reviews were out saying that Rodgers and Hammerstein had triumphantly reshaped the American musical, he asked the wardrobe woman what she thought of the show.

"Seams!" she snorted at him over her coffee. "They call those SEAMS?"

Updated On: 3/18/05 at 01:11 AM

[Plum]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 1:16am

I ranted about the book because it really, really stuck in my craw as I was watching the show. As I already said, I liked the show overall and I loved Act II, but it could have been so much better. When I watch a show, I don't want to be thinking about the clumsiness of a framing device or the excess exposition. I want to be thinking about the story. The book's structure was a genuine distraction for me, and it really detracted from my enjoyment of the show. Things only really came together, in my opinion, when Dessa and Ruth came together. Even though I saw the big "reveal" coming ahead of time, I was definitely sniffling once it happened.
Updated On: 3/18/05 at 01:16 AM

[hannahshule]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 6:14am

WOW Apdarcy, great preview! And you were in the 1st row? (turns green with envy) that's close enough to see up thier skirts! Where did you get the tickets?

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 9:56am

i got my tickets from the student tix program... right? greatness. i loved that the two old women didn't come together until the end when for the first time they looked at each other and recognized how much they'd changed each other. they really can't have scenes together before that, because as old women they are in different places, they are not together, and that would have ruined the content of the story (rachel york's "going away")...

anyone know of the plans for the cast recording? i'm waiting.

[Plum]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 10:03am

SPOILERS


Yes, Ruth and Dessa were separated, most likely forever, at the end of the show. But in theatrical reality they still could have interacted. I'm not that insistent on the idea though- it was just one way they could have made that framing device better. Especially because Ruth and Dessa had two very different points of view on what happened. :)

And yes, StudenTix is awesome.

[Corine2]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 10:34am

I loved it.

[twogaab2]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 10:54am

Now this is real musical theater. Most of what is popular today is "musical comedy"-much of it in the pre-Rogers and Hammerstein style (not that there is anything wrong with that-great stuff can come from either style). Nowadays, audiences generally reject any theater that makes any demands upon the audiences. Welcome back to smart, structured musical theater.

Just my opinion, I may be wrong.

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 10:56am

Corine after reading how much you loved Dessa Rose, I booked my seat (April).

[Corine2]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 10:59am

I was moved.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 11:03am

corine, do you have a review of it anywhere on here?

[Corine2]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 11:35am

There was a thread many weeks ago.

Updated On: 3/18/05 at 11:35 AM

[Testing1232]

Posted: 3/18/05 at 12:04pm

Best show that we have seen this year !! Agree with Corine... we were moved as well !!!