I saw the Playwrights Horizons production, which was staged almost like a Samuel Beckett musical--an inclined platform surrounded by rocks and fallen timbers at stage right for Floyd's cave, and a weatherbeaten rake leading up to a scrim at the back. Lots of ingenious minimal lighting effects (with such touches as having bits of sand falling gently through spotlights, as if the "cave" was unstable). The staging of "How Glory Goes" at the end made the most effective use of a scrim and performers I have ever seen.
I was so stunned when I saw the original production I didn't know quite what to make of it; I was shaking all the way home. Later, when I listened to the cast album, I fell completely in love with it. An extremely unsophisticated, anti-theatrical friend of mine heard the score at my urging and also fell for it, fervently.
This is a show that I think you could stage in a number of brilliantly creative ways--the Shaw production photos look wonderful and original. The thought of having Floyd somewhere where the reporters, for example, could lean against him or sit on top of him without realizing it--both funny and horrifying.
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
