PipingHotPiccolo said: "Jordan Catalano said: "Hard to concentrate on the show tonight when Andrew Lloyd Webber is nearme. All I wanted to do was watch him watch a musical."
Where were you/he seated? I was a few rows behind Michael Urie tonight, and within earshot of someone rummaging through a plastic bag for literally 2 hours.
This show is winning, for sure, but clunky. If I had never seen a musical before, I would have been blown away, but I have, so alot of this dragged for me, and you can see every plot development coming miiiiiles away. The play is structured poorly- very dramatic moments are quickly tossed away for strange stabs at comedy (she leaves the factory at a moment of serious tension to suddenly...get laid? Why? Because they wrote a great song for that moment and shoe-horned it into the story....). Act 2 opens up with a very heavy, poorly written scene, but then transitions into one of the most fun songs of the night (if not the season), which really should have opened Act 2. Stuff like that.
Some of the performances felt amateurish to me, if im being honest, but the ones that didnt, really didnt. I hope Justina Machado is recognized come Tony time- she is FANtastic in this show. She's given every funny line, and she wins every scene shes in (which is quite a few-- i could see her be considered co-lead in this...). She's worth the price of admission. Ialso thought Mason Reeves took a throwaway role and made a real meal out of it.
While I was less than blown away, the audience was with them every step on the way, and the title song--which was a hoot- got a full standing ovation. I didnt love it, but i hope the critics are kind to this one, and it gets a decent run."
I agree with just about every word of this, and I was a bit surprised at how uneven it was considering the strong word of mouth. I felt the opposite of Jordan where I thought act 1 was far better than act 2--it felt a little textbook perhaps but I thought it did a great job of establishing the characters and flowed well, whereas act 2 seemed to go on too many tangents and then wrap things up too neatly.
My main problem (which I suppose would vary depending on your preference) is that it felt a little too feel-goody. Like Piccolo said, it's the kind of show where you know how it's going to end and feel comfortable in the fact that all the conflicts will resolve neatly, and that just left me a little less than excited. They seemed to have wanted to intertwine the two main conflicts (the dress order and Ana's career path) together, but in retrospect they seem to have little to do with each other for the majority of the plot and I think I actually would've preferred it if the sisters were co-leads and it was more of a coming of age story for both of them.
But like I said, I think the characters are well written and I enjoyed a lot of the dialogue they had with each other, which made them really seem like they had lived in relationships. I also found the music quite tuneful and fun to listen to, with a good mix of humor and pathos (though I think the title song should've been saved for an encore or something--it just felt shoehorned in). But while I'm generally positive on it, I found it hard to get invested in the plot simply because it felt predictable.
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