Caught the show last night and LOVED it. I've seen the pro-shot of Friedman's 2013 production, so there weren't too many "surprises" in store, other than a brilliant cast all around. Groff is probably the best Frank I've ever seen-- in no small part due to the fact that he's so likable in real life that you can't help but care about Frank even when he's being an asshole in the show's first half. Lindsay Mendez is a fantastic Mary, her "Now You Know" was a definite highlight of the evening. I do think she's still fine-tuning her take on the drunken/cynical Mary that we see in "That Frank," but we're still very early into previews. Daniel has an incredibly convincing American accent (maybe more-so than the entirety of the 2013 London cast) and fits into the role like a glove. His vocals aren't always the strongest, but the acting in a Sondheim show is far more important to me, so I didn't mind very much if he was off-key or running out of breath towards the end of long phrases. His "Franklin Shepard Inc." was another stand out.
The rest of the cast is fantastic as well, and yet the classic Merrily book problems still exist. I've always found the character of Gussie to be rather one-sided, and although she's played incredibly well by Krystal Joy Brown, the way the book treats her as a caricature or a stand-in for un-tamed ambition, rather than a fully fledged person usually tends to rub me the wrong way. She often feels like she's the show's scapegoat for Franklin's own moral failings, and that softens the point of the show for me. She's just so conniving in every scene she's in and we very rarely get to glimpse any humanity.
But these are all somewhat minor quibbles. After all, I don't really subscribe to the notion that Merrily needs to be "fixed" anymore. Book issues aside, it's still miles ahead of hundreds of other shows that don't have the same stigma of being somehow "broken." I fully anticipate a Broadway transfer some time next year if the reviews are as good as I hope they might be.
Updated On: 11/27/22 at 11:36 AM