I went tonight, and Mendez is still out. Jamila Sabares-Klemm went on and I thought she sounded great and had great chemistry with the boys. I especially enjoyed her earlier scenes where Mary is at her messiest.
The fire alarm unexpectedly went off just before “It’s A Hit”, and the cast was asked to leave the stage after an awkward pause. Nobody know what triggered the alarm (the theatre or the hotel) but the show started again after 15 mins.
Maybe it was the abrupt stopdown that shadows my opinion, but put me in the camp that wasn’t overly enamored with this show. To me, with the show being focused more on Franklin, the show boiled down to basically a musical root-cause analysis of a douchey sellout. You have the three top-billed “old friends”, but it’s really Groff's show. Radcliffe brings down the house with “Franklin Shepard, Inc) and “Good Thing Going”. Krystal Joy Brown was fantastic as Gussie, but I feel like there was way too much of her that drew the show away from the friends’ dynamic.
Unfortunately, by Act II, the show seemed to become a casualty of its own wandering mind and it became harder to care about the characters because the point of view was unclear. I also never understood why Mary went into a drinking spiral over this perceived loss of Franklin as a potential lover, and the ending did nothing to even hint that they might’ve had a thing once upon a time.
I left thinking “that was nice”, but I wasn’t over the moon and landing along the stars like everyone else. I’m going again in January because I took advantage of the presale, so maybe a second look (and hopefully with Mendez), I be able to see what the hubbub is all about
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