NIGHT MUSIC officially recoups..... — Page 2

Keaton Whittaker had to save their first scene. Stritch just could not remember about the night smiling three times so she finally threw it to Fredrika, saying something like, "I told you about it last night..." and Fredrika said, "Yes, you did...you said the night smiles three times..." and that got Stritch on track. It was unfortunate that this is the performance that will be captured on video in any capacity because I saw it previously with Bernadette and Stritch and Stritch was 100% on. She is a legend and it is always wonderful to have the privilege of seeing her perform live but it was an uncomfortable evening. The pauses were extremely obvious and you could tell from the love in the room that everyone was rooting for Stritch to make it through but it just didn't happen that night.

Unfortunately, adamgreer you're way off the beat here and HeyMrMusic is absolutely right.

I had seen the show with Bernie and Stritchay a few months back and they were both outstanding. I had read prior to going to the show about all of the issues Stritch was having on her first few nights then saw the show and thought people might have been taking her "Where was I"'s as her actually losing her place.

I then went back on Friday night (1/7) and she was visibly struggling throughout the show. Liaisons came almost to a halt multiple times, she struggled with the Wooden Ring speech and almost entirely lost the "Losing your teeth is a catastrophe" joke had it not been for Fredrika's prompts. It was uncomfortable to say the least.

Also - My mother, whom I brought to the show, had to catch an 11:30 bus at Port Authority and we got out of the show at 11:19PM so there is no doubt that it was running long.

We both enjoyed the show immensely and Bernadette's "Send In The Clowns" is one for the books BUT she was doing her fair share of shm-acting throughout the rest of the show which became, at times, distracting.

Updated On: 1/10/11 at 12:30 PM

It was filmed last week for LC archives. The truck yesterday was HBO filming backstage for a Sondheim special.

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Sch-macting. May be my favorite new word. BP was definitely guilty of that Thursday and in September and I can't picture CZJ going that route, but it doesn't affect my feelings for the show at all. There's humor to be found there and if she find it and makes it broad as a beam without ruining it, it still somehow works.

I do think the exaggeration on BP's behalf was an acting choice. She is playing an aging actress stuck in stock productions so I could see why she would choose to put on so much affect throughout the show. It also created levels and a stark contradiction to when she went into "Send In The Clowns" and really pulled at everyone's heart strings.

The thing is, she did this well enough the first time I saw her in the show and when I returned on Friday it bordered on comical (in a bad way). Her dialogue during "A Weekend In The Country" was a good example wherein she yelled, as if in a Grecian tragedy, "WELL De-AH? Ah. You. Haaaaappy Heeee-uh??" It was really quite ludicrous.