I'm trying to imagine the meeting at which Stroman and whoever else came up with this show.
"We'll do an ode to NYC, we need it post-pandemic, and Stro can choreograph some showstoppers, and we'll get the Kander/Ebb catalogue, and we'll throw millions into a lavish, gorgeous, old school set, and an actor with lungs of steel to belt out that famous song!" And no one said "ok but what about the story?" And no one said "ok but who can we hire to write some jokes?"
So there's no story. Not a single ounce--not the teeniest drop-- of dramatic tension during the entire 2hr45min slog. And this ain't no opera- there are whole swaths of "dialogue" that are simply painful to sit through. As someone noted above, Manhattanhenge plays a prominent role. One of the leads witnesses a murder, I think? Who knows, we move on immediately. There's an out-of-nowhere 3 minutes devoted to a cleaning lady at a museum who is suddenly given a plum role in an opera, wows the audience (on stage and off), and then disappears entirely for the rest of the night. The same actress previously plays a kitchen worker who longs to be a fashion designer, but she, too, is never heard from again. There's a brief nod to the perils of alcoholism, 90 seconds spent on spousal abuse and/or macho homophobia, half a minute reminding us about the Holocaust, occasional reminders about the horrors of American racism. And hey, if you're writing an ode to NYC, sure, ya gotta cover alot of ethnic background, I get it, but the writing is so bad, so INSULTINGLY BAD, its just painful.
And thats a shame because they've lined up an impressive cast and designed a gorgeous stage/set. I'm not an artsy/visual guy but I was consistently impressed with what they put together to evoke different pieces of NYC--the projections, the backdrops, the ever moving sets. And Stroman sets up a few really impressive moments in Act 1--the high-in-the-sky construction set drew applause when revealed, and those minutes were magical. And yes, the big finale stunt is impressive. But all of this in the service of no dramatic tension or plotline to speak of. Maddening.
Count me (and the audience tonight) in the Colton Ryan camp. Had no idea he could sing like that. His character is quirky, yes, but in a show of boring one-note characters, this is a complaint? I'd listen to him sing anything, and actually found myself wondering how he'd do in Moulin Rouge (injecting a bit of personality where Tveit didn't or couldn't). Uzele knocked her numbers out the park and fills the leading lady shoes just fine, but struggles to keep her character interesting. Hard to blame her-- no one bothered to write anything worth saying.
Emily Skinner and Janet Dacal are criminally underused- Dacal, especially, isn't given anything to do at all, even though her character calls out for a moment to speak/sing. I was sure Skinner's Madame Veltri would get to sing a bit in Act 2 given what she goes through, but nope. That would have required a modicem of thoughtful writing/plot development, so she disappears before anything interesting can happen. John Clay gets a nice number, and makes the most of it; Oliver Prose makes a wonderful Bway debut. Great to see Jim Bortelsmann dancing and mugging all night, but when one of his silly faces gets a round of loud laughter from the audience, it reminded me that he is literally the only remotely funny person on the stage.
But all of these ingredients are just left waiting for a recipe to make us care, to move the evening fwd. But no one bothered.
Updated On: 4/16/23 at 01:21 AM
. My friend put it best when she said it was like an AI-generated book. Every single line seemed so cliche and almost taken directly from another musical throughout the last 100 years. 
