My Life with Albertine thread

This show bored me to tears. It's probably the show I enjoyed the least of any show I've ever seen. Which is really sad, because it had an amazing cast. It just wasn't interesting to me at all, and some of those songs were just... not good.

Sorry, didn't mean to take "not a fan only thread" and run with it.

BUMP

Thanks for the thoughts. Anybody else?

I didn't care for it at all, I must say. As others have said, it was a wonderfully talented cast, but it really just didn't do it for me. I was actually glad when Albertine kicked the bucket! Definitely not a favorite.

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The original Playwrights production was definately flawed in many ways - mostly I feel from Richard Nelson directing his own work (almost always a big no no for musicals).
However, there is something very sorrowful and aching about this show. At its best moments, it truly was exciting to witness (especially hearing an emaciated Brent Carver sing "The Different Albertines." It was just heartbreaking. It sported a top rate cast, a beautifully orchestrated impressionistic (though slightly repetitive) score, and incredibly rich source material.
Unfortunately, Nelson really failed to fully realize the playworld which he set up in the show. There is a "show within a show" element, in which older Marcel is putting on a play in his apartment, with hired actors, in order to revisit his youth.
A really potent and dramatic idea, yes, but underexplored. And it was that lack of exploration which prevented this musical from really taking off. In dramatizing something like Proust, it seems the only thing you really can do is characterize beautifully complex characters as best you can, and get us involved in the minute details as much as possible. Nelson put on a visually beautiful stage production, but failed to make the stage action engaging - I feel particularly because he failed to address the self-reflexivity of the piece and the longings and confused emotions created by love and the passage of time. Instead, it just became a quaint piece about a boy who is confused about a girl and then loses her.
Just wait for the next production. If it has a director who really knows his stuff, I think we all might be in for a pleasant surprise.

Albertine aside, Mr. Gordon writes some amazing music. His material is complicated indeed, but he is undoubtedly one of the finest contemporary art song composers out there. Bright Eyed Joy frequently plays in my iPod. Any singers looking to sing his stuff should be able to find his books in any major public library (Only Heaven, A Horse With Wings, etc.). He often musicalizes poetry by some of the greats (Hughes, Agee, Merwin, Parker, Millay). Don't expect "musical theatre" when listening to most of his stuff - detach yourself and find the piano/harmonic intricacies and how well the lyric coincides with the music.

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i wonder if we'll see another production in the future?

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Tesse-

I don't know if you read the CD liner notes, but Gordon and Nelson explained that in Paris in that time, it wasn't uncommon for wealthy aristocratic types to have private theatres in their homes. That was the inspiration for the setting.

CJR! have i missed you lately? you haven't been around, or is it just me!? anywho... Talk About The Weather is stuck in my head

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Hi Sam... I've been around, but mostly on the OT board. Not as much as before though, due to my new job. I love it but BOY does it keep me busy!

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Yeah, yeah, I get it. Balbak is by the mother-fuc*ing sea!

What a drab, boring, horrible musical.

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All I know is that I heard "But What I Say" on a AccuBroadway and fell in love with it. Beautiful song.

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BALBEC BY THE SEA! BALBEC BY THE SEA! HAPPIEST ARE WE, at... BALBEC BY THE SEA! *bobs head back and forth* La, la, la-la, la...

*smiles innocently*

(PS: Beyonce and Josh Groban... WHAT??)

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