Hilty & Simard to lead DEATH BECOMES HER in Chicago spring 2024; Broadway in the fall — Page 9

jacobsnchz14 said: "Merch is online!https://aracaeventmerch.com/collections/dbh-shop-all"

Now that's some cute merch. I do like the pins and the fact they aren't afraid of graphics but the font also elevates the text-based stuff. It looks better than all the basic text merch that's so popular because it feels like there's some design to it.

It’s such a pity that you can’t just get a T-shirt with the little bottle and the words now a warning ( like on the back ) instead of the over the top logo on the front.
Sometimes less is more

jacobsnchz14 said: "The ending felt rushed and there is a change with Ernest that’s different from the film, and there’s no final moment from the film of the ladies falling and collapsing after the funeral."

By chance is the ending something along the lines of

Because that was suppose to be the original end to the movie but they decided to end on a comedic note so filmed the comedic falling down the stairs one instead. When I first heard about this musical, I guessed they would return the original pensive/bittersweet ending.

Made me more excited about seeing it next week lol

Anyone who has seen this can you let me know the runtime? Many thanks.

Makes it even more exciting! But I think I'll watch the movie beforehand.

I had a hard time getting through this last night. Maybe I set my expectations too high.

Megan and Jennifer are fantastic, but they are working really hard to carry this material. Megan is perfect for this role. I love Jennifer, and she is realistic and believable in the first act, but she develops a crazy accent and mannerisms starting from the point in the story when she's in the asylum, which make her seem very cartoonish for the rest of the show.

Megan's big first number is a highlight, but also mildly offensive. It's about her appeal to the gays, so of course she dresses as stereotypical gay icons, like Liza and Judy, surrounded by chorus boys in rainbow tuxedos that have a big reveal of bare ass cheeks. Always fun and modern to make gays the butt of the joke (so to speak).

In the movie, Madeline is performing in a musical version of Sweet Bird of Youth, which was funny and relevant to the story themes. In this stage version she's in a show called "Me! Me! Me!" and all we see of that is this big gay number. What is this show she's in??? It looks like a cheesy Las Vegas female impersonator show.

The ensemble does nothing except slink around in the scenes with Viola, wearing very revealing bodysuits. Not really complaining about that, since it's something pleasant to look at (hi, Mikey Graceffa), but it did give me strong Devil Wears Prada/Lempicka vibes when the show started, and that's not great.

Enough has been said about Michelle Williams. Bad acting and bad material. That role needs an overhaul.

Josh Lamon plays Madeline's assistant early in the show, but that character just disappears later. He also plays the fat version of Elvis Presley in the scene at Viola's party. In the movie, they cleverly had a number of dead celebrities attending the party, and I thought that would be a funny element to present in the musical. However, here we only have Elvis and no others. Seems like a missed opportunity.

In general, I didn't think the music was engaging. I can't really comment on the lyrics, since I couldn't hear 75% of the lyrics and much dialogue due to the Palace's atrocious sound system. I also missed a lot of dialogue, partly due to technical shortfalls, but also from an over enthusiastic audience whooping and yelling, mainly early in the show, before they settled down.

I had read about how a professional illusionist had been brought in to oversee the effects, so I was expecting to be amazed, especially considering the movie relied heavily on impressive CGI. I saw almost nothing in the way of effects on that stage. There was something happening with Megan's head for a second before the first act curtain, which I couldn't see well. The famous gunshot hole through Helen's abdomen, which is played to great effect in the movie, is shown as just a black circle on Jennifer's costume, from what I could see, and then it's covered with another costume fairly quickly, never to be mentioned again. Oh, and the memorable gunshot and shovel fight between the leads happen offstage. Also, Madeline's slow-motion fall down the stairs just looks like a very flexible ensemble member slowly bouncing back and forth before collapsing on the floor. I didn't see any other effects. If there were any, they weren't visible from the front row mezzanine.

The comedy seemed pretty low-key to me, aside from some cutting one-liners and random sexual double entendres. For example, at one point, Jennifer says the word "come" in a couple of lines, then points that out and says she just can't get "come" out of her mouth. Such an odd out-of-character non-sequitur.

There are many places where the pacing drags and could be tightened, scenes where Megan and Jennifer are just standing talking on a bare stage, bad staging where I couldn't see what was happening at the top of the stairs or the funeral scene, and very little actual choreography other than Megan's big number.

I really am pulling for this show and will be returning to it late in the run to see what might change.

I realize there is no song list but I thought it was "I do it all for the gaze" which made it even more funny.

Updated On: 5/1/24 at 12:37 PM

They did throw a (stuffed) Toto into Megan's hands for that last button. I loved that.

Updated On: 5/1/24 at 01:21 PM

I thank the kind soul who put Warren Yang in that bodysuit and the person who filmed the curtain call for us all to see.