So as promised, here are some thoughts after seeing the show (Sunday Eve) this weekend...
1. This is really a new show. I'm not horribly familiar with the original, but from everything I've read/heard, this RAGS a 180...and I think for the better. The story focuses on Rebecca and her desire to make a better world for his son and ends up in a tenement apartment with a family that makes dresses all day. The notes in the program say that the "revisal" was inspired by the Tenement Museum, which was super interesting to me. Samantha Massell is fantastic as Rebecca. I could listen to her sing all day...and the rest of the small cast (only 15) is strong. Not a weak one in the bunch.
2. So the new book is pretty good. I think they have some room to make cuts/adjustments...Act 1 runs about 1:20 and Act 2 about 55...definitely didn't feel like it at times and the audience I was in was glued to their seats. There is an idea of a Waspy quintet (which I don't think exists in any other version) that is particularly interesting and timely. They disappear during Act 2 which should be addressed since they are such a presence in Act 1. Overall, the new book is much funnier than I thought it would be, but some things are definitely not worth the time they spend on them.
3. Some specific changes that I thought were interesting...Blame It On a Summer Night is now a duet between Rebecca and Sal (essentially Saul in the original). Rebecca sings Rags at the end of Act 1 after she and Bella are beat up on their way uptown. Three Sunny Rooms is now a number that features Rachel and Avram AND Bella and Ben--it's a very charming little scene/song.
4. And as you might have seen from the song list, many of the songs from the original have been cut or have been radically rewritten as new songs. David Loud did some really impressive arrangements as well.
5. Design wise, they have a turntable that houses the entire tenement and many scenes/sequences are continuous throughout the two rooms (we never see another room that apparently exists). Pretty well executed. Honestly it seemed like the design team did a lot with the little that they had...lots of effective use of projection, particularly in the finale.
7. So getting Rebecca to sing Rags at the end of the first act felt a little out of character to me...we spend an hour plus watching this force of nature survive and the prejudice she experiences is very little then suddenly she gets slapped by some Irish guys and goes on a rant and concludes that she's "just one more Jew in her Rags"...it's good that they're trying to have the main character sing the title song, but there needs to be more conflict to lead up to it...
Overall, I really liked it. There's a lot of good that is happening. Like I said, I still think they need to trim 5-10 minutes out of Act 1 (at least) and shave some of Act 2--and I would throw in more actual conflict, which would probably help with the "boredom" comment someone mentioned previously. That said, the audience leapt to their feet at the beginning of the curtain call...
