Just back from the first preview of PORGY AND BESS.... — Page 5

Except for the case of Kristin in Wicked.

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hmmm while this "country bitches" moment sounds awesome, what seems to not work here is Porgy turning on Bess.

I think there may have been a more graceful way to do this ending that made Ms. McDonald's Bess seem more sympathetic while not messing with Porgy's character. Hopefully it will be discovered before New York.

I think the comparisons to My Fair Lady in this thread are missing the point. Changing the ending of P&B is not like changing the ending of Pygmalion when it became My Fair Lady. More accurately, it would be like someone doing a revival of My Fair Lady and changing it back! There would be a huge outcry if someone revived MFL and altered the ending so that Eliza went off and married Freddy instead of coming back to Higgins. Or if someone changed Camelot to have Guinevere go back to Arthur and live happily ever after. Or a West Side Story where Maria stops Chino and they all live happily ever after. Etc etc. I'm not surprised that there is concern over the changes to P&B. I think it's a pretty big deal!

Yeah. I'm with Eric here. The first time I saw Porgy was when I was 13, I loved it, I obsessed over it. Most adults I knew at that point did not know anything about Porgy, let alone theatre, while I was already working in the industry for 2 years. I am now in my mid twenties, have more than a decade experience in the industry and what I like to think is a pretty vast knowledge of theatre in general.

I understand that many posters here, including you bk, have been in the industry for decades. That said, there are also posters here in their thirties and forties who recently fell in love with theatre and are far more green than some of us youngins.

ps- While I am willing to give this production a chance I am not a fan of changing the ending, and I hope they are able to work on it more so that it works, or that they change it back (which probably won't happen).

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Updated On: 8/26/11 at 10:42 AM

I think one of the most powerful moments in the theater is when Porgy gets out of jail and returns home triumphantly (having defeated both Crown and the white cops), only to find the townspeople acting oddly because they know Bess has run off with Sportin' Life!

His bewilderment turns to alarm and then to despair. "Where is my Bess?"

Meanwhile we in the audience wonder, will this defeat Porgy and turn him back into the social outcast and emotional malcontent we met at the beginning of the play? Now that his "Plenty o' Nothin'" has become literally true, how will he survive having nothing now that he has had a taste of having it all (i.e., love)?

The moment is dramatic irony at its best and I have no idea why the adapters were willing to discard such an unforgettable scene. I can only assume Miss MacDonald demanded it or there was an outbreak of insanity at ART.

In the original opera, there's a character named Lawyer Frazier who runs an off-the-books divorce court. In this new version, Frazier lives in Catfish Row and I guess isn't a practicing lawyer anymore but his license is still good (like I said, it's clunky). But Porgy still asks him to grant Bess a divorce. If I didn't explain it very well, I apologize.

Oh and needless to say, the lines about there not being a hurricane got a few unintentional laughs.

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Updated On: 8/27/11 at 07:52 PM

I saw the show on 8/20 (hi doodlenyc!!) and again tonight and was surprised (but happy) to see that they have changed the ending.

The earlier version (on 8/20) of the ending made no sense to me - it seemed like it was designed to make Bess a more "likable" character. (I don't know the protocol on spoilers, so I'm being vague.)

Now, the ending seems closer to the original (I've only seen an "in concert" production of the show, but I'm familiar with the basic story) and, to me anyway, it is much more moving.

The show ran longer tonight than 10 days ago, but otherwise the only difference I noticed was that they got a larger doll/baby for Act II!

I enjoyed the show, and the audience (both performances) went wild for it. The entire cast is outstanding, but Norm Lewis steals the show (in my opinion).

The only thing I didn't really like was David Alan Grier's portrayal of Sporting Life. I'd love to hear from others about this, but I felt like he played the character too much like a comedic "song and dance man", with no real sinister side. This felt particularly problematic to me during "There'a Boat That's Leaving Soon" - he was doing his light comedic thing, and Audra was being all dramatic/traumatized - it seemed like they were in two different places. But maybe his part is always played this way?

Somewhere I read "Summertime" was lowered only because it should be more of a lullaby and put the baby to sleep. I thought the real baby was very weird, she was so so young. Did she have ear plugs in?

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Brantley weighs in showing a lota lovin' for Audra. Everything else...not so much.
NY Times Out-of-Town Review

Favorite line in that review-"...or if you must, The Gershwin's Bess"

I can't stop laughing.

So the TIMES has officially changed it's policy of reviewing out of town shows that have announced a Broadway run.

That is certainly a love letter (another one) to the beautific Audra. The rest is pretty damning.

I saw the matinee the day before the hurricane, from the second row. What you have here is an extraordinary confluence of talent onstage (I mean, what are you going to do? NOT go see Audra and Norm?) assembled by a backstage team of painfully ordinary talent, starting with Diane Paulus.

I lost count the number of times we watched as the ensemble listlessly filed off stage single file, before the next scene would start. It's the kind of thing you see in high school theater. Keep things moving, Diane, the next scene should have started already.

Before Paulus arrived in Cambridge with her alleged mandate to make the ART more "populist," even the most turgid Robert Brustein production with music by Philip Glass had breathtaking sets. It's as if Paulus has reacted against that with this set that looks like an after-thought. And, can we PLEASE have a moratorium on tables? A single table moved around to different sections of the performing space doesn't really convey different locations very well. Think "La Vie Been Done."

Still, you've got Lewis, McDonald, Boykin and Henry singing beautifully, as well as much of the ensemble. I loved Grier's performance up to and including "It Ain't Necessarily So," but from that point on he is completely under-served by Paulus. I got the sinking feeling that I could tell the specific moment at which I could delineate the parts of the show that had been rehearsed a lot, and where I was seeing the half-baked under-rehearsed portion.

I don't blame any of the mess on Parks and Murray, they're just hired guns I believe to have been acting in good faith. But Paulus is a woman of pedestrian vision. How many times is she going to place a scene's main singer center stage with everybody else clumped around them in a half-circle? Too many times, is how many, because she really thinks what people REALLY want to see is a rock concert. That's how she tries to appeal to younger theatergoers, no matter how inappropriate the material for that sort of interpretation.

I honestly would go see it again for the acting and the vocals, which I feel manage to rise above the crap they're surrounded with. This statement is, of course, entirely cast-dependent. Oh, and when this opens on the Broadway, it will be THE beary-est musical ever seen there.

PS... I just looked and there is exactly one (1) seat left for the rest of the run. This does not include the last weekend's performances, which Audra will miss.

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Updated On: 9/1/11 at 02:51 PM

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if what I say is true either, other than when a cast with some exceptional talents meets a director with nothing more than average talents, the results are some great performances surrounded by mundanity.

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