I saw the show last night.
Wrote a little review about it.
Wanna read it? It goes something like this...
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I really wanted to enjoy it more, but with the small cast and they were constantly changing characters; I was very confused at some points. At the top of Act II, I had to ask myself, "Did the writer become the Governor and then marry the mother of the dead girl?" Then, when Michael B. came out as the prision guard at the end, it was falling into "Greater Tuna" area for me. How many parts CAN one person play in a show? It was the same thing with the AOC. ONE guy and girl to play ALL of the colored parts? What happened to the Ensemble? They seemed to disappear.
TR gave a wonderful performance as Leo Frank. I just wished that he could match Lara Pulver, who played his wife, Lucille, in singing. Ms. Pulver was perfection, as was David St. Louis, and Deidrie Henrey, in every part they played. Curt Hansen is just too handsome for his own good. PJ Griffith was equal parts slime and religion, all mixed together in a sulking presence. Christian Hoff was quite powerful as the prosecuting attorney, and a complete transformation from anything 'Jersey Boys'. And it was so odd to see Davis Gaines relegated to basically an ensemble role.
Charlotte d'Ambiose performance, as both the mother of the murdered child and the Governors wife, was the one that threw me off the most, as I could never really tell who she was supposed to be in any particular scene (except for when she was wailing over an open grave). Her 'look' for both characters were far too similar.
The acoustics in the new theatre seemed odd. I was dead center in the second row, yet when an actor was standing right in front of me, I couldn't hear them at all, but I could hear them through the sound system. The 9-piece orchestra sounds rich and full. I'm not sure why JRB feels the need to mix so many strident tones in the crowd scenes; it makes for a lot of noisy confusion, as does the dialog the actors have seemed to be asked to say as they leave through the audience. Some of it was so loud, you got the idea that you were supposed to follow that person and it pulled focus.
The 'girl in the blue dress' as I will refer to her, was distracting. During her last march downstage, with the lights blazing behind her, I half expected the set to open up and reveal that we were in the finale of Sam Mendez's CABARET.
It's a powerful piece of theatre that I believe people should see, because you do leave the theatre wanting to talk about the production. It does not tie everything up with a neat bow, and you are still left to wonder, why would anyone want to persecute this man for no other reason than he is slightly different from them?
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
Updated On: 9/30/09 at 07:56 PM