#1
Posted: 5/17/14 at 3:38am
Caught the first preview.
There is a VERY interesting musical here, but it needs some tightening. It has some very catchy songs (i was humming several at the intermission) and the leads are all very enjoyable but they still need to get comfortable in their characters skin.In a sense the show framed against the 1965 northeast blackout (it takes places from November 9th 1964-November 9th 1965) focuses on Manhattan Sandwich maker/musician Harold McClam (played by Adam Chanler-Berat) who gets wrapped up in a love triangle with two sisters from South Dakota wannabe broadway starlet Daphne (played by Patti Murin) and astronomy loving diner waitress, Miriam (played by the extremely charming Allison Case). The first acts narrative structure is unlike anything i've ever seen as it flips backwards and forwards in a 6 month time span while sometimes even looping back to previous moments all presented to us by a narrator (played by the wonderful Henry Stram) who pretty much never leaves the stage for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes of stage time and in addition to being our guide plays about 9 different characters. The second act is a little more straight forward but theres a stage effect about 20 minutes into the second act that just clicks everything together (I verbally said wow when it happened) and the last 50 minutes of the show is beautiful and heart breaking and magical. Additional credit to Peter Friedman who plays Harold's dad Mr McClam and who easily has the best song of the evening, and Michael McCormick as Harold's boss at the Sandwich shop Crabble who gets a lot of the funny lines and a great duet with Chanler-Berat about mediocrity and the dead end job they are both stuck in. Apart from some occasional sound balance issues the four piece onstage band sounded good and ultimately if they can shave about 10-15 minutes off this they have a hit on their hands.
There is a VERY interesting musical here, but it needs some tightening. It has some very catchy songs (i was humming several at the intermission) and the leads are all very enjoyable but they still need to get comfortable in their characters skin.In a sense the show framed against the 1965 northeast blackout (it takes places from November 9th 1964-November 9th 1965) focuses on Manhattan Sandwich maker/musician Harold McClam (played by Adam Chanler-Berat) who gets wrapped up in a love triangle with two sisters from South Dakota wannabe broadway starlet Daphne (played by Patti Murin) and astronomy loving diner waitress, Miriam (played by the extremely charming Allison Case). The first acts narrative structure is unlike anything i've ever seen as it flips backwards and forwards in a 6 month time span while sometimes even looping back to previous moments all presented to us by a narrator (played by the wonderful Henry Stram) who pretty much never leaves the stage for the entire 2 hours and 20 minutes of stage time and in addition to being our guide plays about 9 different characters. The second act is a little more straight forward but theres a stage effect about 20 minutes into the second act that just clicks everything together (I verbally said wow when it happened) and the last 50 minutes of the show is beautiful and heart breaking and magical. Additional credit to Peter Friedman who plays Harold's dad Mr McClam and who easily has the best song of the evening, and Michael McCormick as Harold's boss at the Sandwich shop Crabble who gets a lot of the funny lines and a great duet with Chanler-Berat about mediocrity and the dead end job they are both stuck in. Apart from some occasional sound balance issues the four piece onstage band sounded good and ultimately if they can shave about 10-15 minutes off this they have a hit on their hands.
