I'm not a huge fan of slapstick comedy, so Butz would occasionally make me smile, but not laugh out loud. I can understand why fans of that kind of humor would like his performance, but it didn't do too much for me. I felt the score was uneven. Mostly good melodies, but often inane lyrics. Great Big Stuff was like a laundry list of tepid jokes that required more effort from Butz to try and make them funny than they actually are.
"My own personal Zamboni!" meh
"Lots of unnecessary surgery!" too long and forced to be funny
"I can finally afford tickets to a Broadway show!" I bought my tickets at TKTS that night.
The self-referential humor wasn't set up well in this show and was rarely used, so it really seemed out of place in the moments where it happened. The moments seemed dropped in as a an effort to try and yank a few more laughs out of the audience, since the script didn't seem to be working.
But the bottom line is the story. The movie featured a thin plot in order to showcase the comedic talents of Martin and Caine. While the film was humorous featured amazing performances and tight direction, it was a weak plot and not especially well-written. Without the extraneous added characters in the musical, it would have flopped miserably because there simply wasn't enough plot or variety to sustain an evening. I think the show will do very well in regional productions, but it's a rather lukewarm production on Broadway. If Butz did not ham it up as much as he did, I think the audience would be easily bored. I did not see Lithgow, which was a relief, having seen him in Sweet Smell of Success (how id he win that Tony?) and I missed Sherie, though I thought her understudy was probably more believable in the role. I'm familiar with Sherie's deliberate innocence enough, so I probably would have had a hard time buying her character for the majority of the show. I loved her in Tommy, Rent and Aida (the only thing I liked about Aida), but I just could not see this as a good fit for her.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
