Ok, I'm not in the "I loved it" group. In fact, I started laughing towards the end of the show when it just seemed to be one silly gimmick after another. The little food boxes, shaky maraccas for audience participation, glow lights on sneakers, table lamps in the rows of seats that dimmed and glowed-- --they came off as a desperate plea of "please like me, I'll do anything you want" to me. And they detracted from the value and gravitas of a broadway show. I want my Broadway shows to be special and grand. These kitchy things cheapened it. I saw at least 10 people get in their cars and leave at intermission. I would have too, if I could have gotten my ticket money back.
That's not to say the show doesn't have a lot of potential, but it seriously needs someone to pull it all together. Like a whole class of students studying musical theatre. That way they could break up into sections to address each trouble spot.. from story telling to casting to staging to musicality to props etc. I realize that the show's been around for a while in this form, and so it's not likely to change much now that it is here, but it just isn't special enough for Broadway. Unpolished. Un-grand. It seems to want to remind us of that fact over and over. It was such a hodge podge of schticks and disharmonic sounds, that it came off like a not-so-great high school production in parts. I left there thinking it was cheesy and disjointed.
There were tiny pockets of awesomeness. The opening number, for example. I wish they'd carried that theme through the show. (and Andre isn't here) --or at least build the intervening music around the framework of the notes in that chorus. And JG and DB were awesome--and not just because they have voices you could listen to all day, but because they didn't over act and they were staged to be separate from the folksy hoe-down feel of actors running through the audience with guitars. . Another strong voice was Natasha's cousin. Others in the cast weren't nearly as strong. And the differences were noticeable. I realize that the part of Anatole has been played by the same actor for quite a while, but his voice couldn't compete, and his look should have been handsome dark, Russian and strong. Not blond/white, and lanky. And the part of the aunt (marya), could truly be a Tony-winning part, but it is played as angry, and actually IRATE at times (which got a little overboard and creepy), when it could be played as grand and robust and sage and authoritative. I think when a show has to list a character guide in the program (and the typing on this is so teeny you can't see it in the dim light of the theater--so it's essentially useless until intermission), you gotta wonder if maybe it's because the play is hard to follow. The music is NOT melodious, and frankly, didn't sound like a musical score in most parts. Rather, it sounded like the warm up in the extemporaneous jazz band I was in in HS. And the singing of the narrations reminded me of the way the priests sing the offertory in Catholic church --rambling between 3 notes over and over with no real tune. It was painful and boring and uninspired. And didn't even remotely sound like it was actually the written notes. It sounded like someone said "Ok you guys, I am going to play this ...(plays 5-6 beat run of notes) and you sing whatever you want that might go with it." And I was expecting the sung-dialogue/and narrative to at least rhyme at--or have an endpoint-- but it didn't. In fact, some of the lyrics sounded so contrived or unnatural or trite that we got the giggles. ("my face is now displaying anxiety"
. I think the show would do much better to actually have a narrator/narrators take some of the droning aimless summaries from the actors, so they could stick to the acting and dialogue between characters. In fact, a narrator was just about the only 'broadway play' concept that this play didn't have. It had the costume party, the older aunt/barmaid, the raucous drinking song, the let's-have-4-people-sing-at-4-different-parts-of-the-stage about the same issue for different reasons, the stare-at-someone-and-reflect-about-them song (daughter/king), the involve-an-unsuspecting-audience-member-into-the-show moment, the "meaningful" singular spoken line.... etc etc. And then-- and then--after all these unnecessary extras and kitchy moments, the actual COMET is curiously ordinary and bland and uninspired. It's a lightbulb. Yup. One lightbulb hanging from some 70s art-deco sunshine-shape suspended from the ceiling. That's it. And it arrives in the final moments of the show...like an inconvenient afterthought. I don't think it was ever mentioned before this, even. So random that it also seemed so contrived....just to make sense of the title of the show.
Sigh.
Somewhere, amidst all these over-trying concepts, the show loses its path and the audience loses the storyline. Someone needs to trim it, hone it up, and rewrite the musical narration part. It's got a lot of good stuff and "potential," but in its current form, it just isn't worth the money.
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