I saw it twice in a row during previews. The first evening I was so taken aback by what I saw that I had to come back and watch it go wrong all over again. I also came back because I had been told by a friend that there was a new number going in the next night, and indeed there was. Early in Act One, Christine Baranski had a song called "Puff" (I think that was the name), in which she stood alone in a spotlight smoking a cigarette, singing about her Hollywood fame which had disappeared like a puff of smoke. The next night, in the same spot, was "Everybody Wants to Do A Musical", which is on the cast recording. It was a big production number ending with a stage full of people. It was much more successful, but that wasn't the problem with the show. The problem was the book. As Nick and Nora interviewed characters about the murder of Lorraine, the scenes they described would come to life in front of us. Everyone's version of Lorraine was different--first she was a mousy little secretary, later in the show she was a coke-snorting lesbian. This gave Faith Prince the opportunity to come back again and again, playing a different version of the same character, which was a fun idea. It culminated in the infamous kick-line, where all the suspects lined up and kicked her dead body down the stage towards us, in the style of a Rockette kick-line. It was the best moment of the show. However, Laurents didn't trust the songs. They were constantly broken up with dialogue, pulled apart to the point where a number would finally end and there would be only a smattering of applause--we'd lost track of the song because of all the talking. And the gentle double-entendres of the films became leering, crass, bad jokes. Bostwick and Gleason did their best, but he in particular was absolutely lost in the proceedings. He sang the last song in Act One, "Look Who's Alone Now" at a table far stage right with a drink in his hand. Not only was the character miserable, it was clear Bostwick was, too.
