Death for Five Voices

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 4/5/16 at 7:28am

Has anyone else seen this? I thought it was one of the best scores I have heard in a long time. Just beautiful. Great orchestrations as well.  There were some problems with the book,  a little clunky at times, but it kept my attention. I thought it was a great production and a really lovely evening in the theatre. Just curious what other people thought.  It's playing at the Sheen Center Blackbox theatre, which I thought was a great venue! I had never been there before.

Updated On: 4/5/16 at 07:28 AM

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 4/5/16 at 9:10am

Saw this as well.

The score really is beautiful. Certainly helps matters when you have singers at the level of L.R. Davison, Ryan Bauer-Walsh, Nicholas Rodriguez, and Manna Nichols leading the pack.

Nathan Gardner as Carlo was a last minute replacement, so I would be curious to see it with a lead who had spent as much time in the material as the rest of the cast.

The production is quite beautiful - the brick and candles are just right, the costumes (save for a few unsightly zippers) are lovely, etc. There are a few directorial moments that jumped out at me as sloppy.

As far as the show itself,bit is still in development. As we both agreed, the score is strikingly beautiful. The book IS a bit choppy, but it is an easy enough fix. I think act two is more compelling in the first and they employ a device during one segment of the show that could be expanded through the rest of the show and it would fix quite a lot.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 7:47pm

Saw it today and totally agree with both of the above posters

 

Little known fact from the program is that the composer of this operatic piece is also  the composer/lyricist of the incoming "The Honeymooners". What a stretch for this guy.

Updated On: 4/10/16 at 07:47 PM

[macnyc]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 8:14pm

Broadwayguy2, what is the device that you think should be expanded? I saw the show recently and don't know what you mean. 

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 8:18pm

That was a bit of  mystery to me as well.

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 10:17pm

I thought the Times review was utterly unfair to this show. To the point of being snarky and petty. It's a shame because that review, as unfair as I think it was, probably turned a lot of people off from going . This show deserves to be seen. I don't know anyone involved in anyway with the show. It wasn't perfect, but it sure has a lot of great things going for it. That score! I think it is still running if anyone is interested. The review on the other chat board was very positive.

[MadonnaMusical]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 10:44pm

Saw this and unfortunately walked out at intermission. The score really was beautiful for a chamber choir, and I attend a lot of choir concerts actually so in that respect I did appreciate it quite a bit. Beautiful music that sounded from another era but used a lot of contemporary harmonization. I thought the song about the dissonance was very clever, however the book was not only clunky, it was completely lacking in three act story-telling structure. If Marsha Norman says you need to know 10 minutes into a show when you are going to be able to leave... let's just say I spent all of act 1 wondering when I was going to be able to leave.

I do agree with everyone above though that the score was really masterful, and the singers were all wonderful. I would love to hear this in concert form without the book which contained a series of unrelated scenes, none of which seemed to further the plot.

This composer is great though, I've enjoyed his other works at Prospect Theatre - this gives me high hopes for The Honeymooners so long as they have a strong book.  

[temms]

Posted: 4/10/16 at 11:34pm

To clarify, the brilliant Peter Mills is only doing lyrics for "Honeymooners" with music by Stephen Weiner with whom he collaborated on "Iron Curtain", one of my favorite never-had-a-big-production scores. Mills is someone I've always rooted for and I hope he gets his well-deserved big fat hit someday soon. 

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/11/16 at 3:25am

Worked with Prospect and they are an under rated team. Awesome people. Hope Honeymooners makes it.