PipingHotPiccolo said: "DO NOT SEE THIS SHOW FROM THE ORCHESTRA. The coolest most impressive moments are projected onto the stage, or involve trap doors/trickery via the stage floor. There is no way the front orchestra is able to see any of this. It’s criminal."
I can confirm this, albeit second hand. For her Christmas present, I treated my wife a rare girls weekend – a break away from our young children. She chose to spend one of her two nights in New York seeing this show. She had liked the film and was excited to score what she thought were decent orchestra seats.
She said it was a mostly horrible experience, despite cool puppetry and a strong leading actor. She (at 6 feet tall), and everyone around her in the front rows, apparently couldn’t see the action. Not just the floor projections, but frequently the actors and puppets. Apparently, Pi spends long parts of scenes directly on the stage floor, where he becomes entirely invisible.
At intermission, many in the front area compared notes about all they were missing, their confusion, and guesses about what they had missed. She said that by Act II, the wheels really came off in the house, and audience members around row F would partially stand up and stage whisper — to the entire section! —the action that was invisible to everyone else. So they wouldn’t all be so lost.
My wife’s guess — that this was all happening because of some particular stage effect requiring the extremely tall, jutting stage deck — was apparently proved right at some point. She said that effect probably looked impressive from some locations but surely didn’t justify ruining the play for the dozens of audience members near the front.
After the show, she and others who had bonded over their experience undertook an experiment — to see how far back someone would have to sit, in order to simply see the actors. In the end, they decided people seated in Row G could probably barely see the actors’ main action. But to experience the projections, she said you’d have to sit much farther back, if not in the mezzanine. (And by the accounts I’ve heard, they’re great!)
From all my wife said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ushers and house management receive regular complaints. She hopes the production will use previews to fix things. I asked if moving all the action to the lip of the stage could work. She said it’s such a complete sight-line failure that they probably need to just deconstruct the stage deck and rebuild a lower one (and lose that one special effect, in the process).
I told her I doubted they would do that. For starters, they’re probably in a congratulatory echo chamber in New York, not to mention riding high from accolades in London. Also, the budget may not support a drastic overhaul. And, it would publicly embarrass whichever designer forgot to model the set’s ability to make sure the show’s actors are seen.
My guess is that it will open as-is and have wildly varying word of mouth, depending on where audience members sat. The best to hope for is that someone on the producing team or the director will catch wind of this, intentionally view the show from up close, and realize they have a disaster that requires a fix.
We both agreed we feel sorry for the actors. I have no doubt they’re aware of the situation, because they can hear the audience members in the front asking each other what’s going on… and trying to answer!
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?… Well, my wife thought some of the cast members were very strong, one seemed tired, and the use of the puppets was not as transcendent as it could be — though the puppet-making itself was impressive.
Her main issue, though, was the one others are consistently flagging here. The script hewed closer to the book than the film in condescendingly explaining (and hence ruining) the most special part of the storytelling. Until that point, the journey has been an engaging, moving puzzle, with the added joy of revelation for the (likely high percentage of) audience members capable of sussing out the metaphorical meaning. Then, that ham-handed explanation undoes much of the good.
Ideally, the writer and director would jump back in and devise a solution analogous to genius film director Ang Lee’s use of visual storytelling, to replace the blunt force trauma of spelling it all out. New York audiences for straight plays can be sophisticated, and many will have already experienced either the book, the film, or both. Talking down to them is playing with fire.
This is my wife’s (and my) two cents — to be taken with a grain of salt. Actually since this is mostly secondhand… make it a shaker! And, is it crazy or what that I still want to see this?
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