From Here musical about Pulse Nightclub survivors will premiere Off-Broadway

You couldn’t pay me to sit through that.

Updated On: 6/30/24 at 07:45 PM

If you read what it’s about, it sounds fascinating and life affirming. Pity I won’t get the chance.

Gonna be spoilers in this.............



I saw this today and all in all thought it was pretty damn terrible. Some very good voices but that's where the praise from me ends for this one. Running at about an hour and fifty minutes, the first 85 mins or so is basically a queer indie film from 1993 with a script, jokes and characters to match it. The kind of film that took place at gay bars (but not Pulse here, I don't think they ever even went there in the show and maybe mentioned it in passing, once) and had storylines about the gay breakups and hooking up with everyone and the main gay's F*g Hag (I think she's straight in this...?) obsessed with the gays and has a big cabaret number about "the homos" and then the main storyline about the main gay who has a bad relationship with his Mother. But then after about an hour and a half here, they decided - Hey! Let's make it a tragedy now!

But the kicker here is none of the characters in this musical were at Pulse the night of the shooting and in the story only loosely had connections with one or two people there, we're told briefly. I thought this might work because "Come From Away" worked so well but the difference there is we have an entire show about an event that happened at the very beginning and the fallout due to it where these people had to process the tragedy in different ways and how it changed them. Here, we have an entire musical we know is based on a massacre and because of that, assuming some of the people we're watching will undoubtedly be lost by end. But no. They're all safe and it's just a "luckily we were all safe". Don't get me wrong, if this is based on true events of those specific people who weren't there that night THAT'S GOOD. But dramatically it's almost an emotional bait and switch. So this show wasn't about Pulse at all it was about this one guys breakup with his boyfriend, the new boyfriend he got the next day and his bad relationship with his Mom. And strangely about 2/3 of the way through he switches from a normal narrator of the story into Tom f'n Wingfield speaking in prose sounding like (smartly) discarded Tennessee Williams lines from "Glass Menagerie".

And when we DO have the ending we have another one. And another. And another. It just never seemed to end. And then the kicker comes after the curtain call it's STILL not over. The house was maybe less than half filled and curtain call people just got up and walked out during it.

Someone tell me I'm judging this thing too harshly please because Jeebus, it was rough.

As an Orlando theater goer that has seen this production be presented again and again and again down here, there’s many of us “from here” who cannot stand this show. Many in the community who were actively effected by the Pulse tragedy have called the piece “exploitative”, and the continual presentation of this show across multiple anemically sold runs feels more of an ego boost to the show’s creator than feeding an active desire for the material.

Add into the fact that a show about a tragedy that specifically targeted the LatinX queer community is focused, instead, around a white protagonist and written by a white creator...

And the shame is, there’s so much talent in Orlando. Many of them are even in the show, forgoing a busy summer season to go up to New York for their “off-Broadway debuts”. And because of the “high profile” nature of this show, many of us are terrified that its poor reception will only reflect on an arts community that’s still actively struggling.


There’s much of value from here... but not “From Here”.

Updated On: 6/29/24 at 07:00 PM

Thanks for your insight, Jordan and FloridaBoy. It seems just as gross as I thought it was when I first read about it. I'll be happy to miss this one.

The only review I’ve found… woof.

https://culturesauce.com/2024/07/01/from-here-musical-orlando-pulse-off-broadway-review/

Those reviews are too kind

Updated On: 7/14/24 at 11:00 PM

Updated On: 7/14/24 at 03:50 AM

Saw this tonight. GREAT voices in the cast, especially Becca Southworth and Michelle Coben. The cast was very hardworking and clearly gave it their all. I'd love to see most of them continue in other shows in the city—they're very talented and made the show worth my time.

The show itself is rough to sit through, especially the first hour. Not because of its subject matter (which is not the Pulse nightclub massacre at all), but mostly because of all the gay jokes that didn’t land at best and were straight-up offensive at worst. I just felt really bad for the cast because I can imagine what they have to go through when they're saying this text (or when they're mimicking blow jobs) in front of a very uncomfortable audience. On top of this, the lead couldn't stop whining/crying the whole show, to a point where it was getting very uncomfortable to watch. Anyway, there might be a good show in there, but there's so much to rework that it's probably not worth it.