STAGE TUBE: 'THE FIRST WIVES CLUB' Video Preview! — Page 3

First they need a new director.

Second a brand new cast - Sheryl Lee Ralph always plays the same character, and while it was fine for millie, in this, from what I've seen, she is dreadful and completely superficial.

Hell, just toss the whole show and in another couple years try doing it again with everyone new - from the cast to the writers.

I think the warning sign was when they announced they were revamping the character of Elyse into an former solid gold pop singer. The original chemistry just worked so well!

My problem with Barbara Walsh is she's just too classical looking for the role of Brenda. Karen and Sheryl actually look appropriate to their costumes, but Walsh seems so out of place in an oversized flannel shirt. Brenda needs to be very down-to-earth, homebody, and frumpy in the beginning.

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I'm jumping for Oy!

P

I assume the combination of the "choreography" given to her and Brenda's XL blue/green flannel nightshirt is the oh-so-subtle sledgehammer hint that Brenda's a lesbian again, like she was in the book?

And that set... notice the shaking island... and ginger ale? Ginger ale?

And THAT is the musical moment... like "Some People" in GYPSY... that is going to set the entire enterprise into motion?

The only motion I see happening is that of bowels...

P

Brenda's XL blue/green flannel nightshirt is the oh-so-subtle sledgehammer hint that Brenda's a lesbian again, like she was in the book?

I was struck by that thought as well. But the small head peeping turtlelike from out of that large shirt quickly made me lose my train of thought.

I'm pretty sure (like the movie) Brenda ends up with Morty in the end, since Sam Harris said something along the lines of the women "getting back at their husbands, while one gets back their husband" recently.

As Phyllis Rogers Stone said, the oversized shirt is probably supposed to help emphasize Brenda's transition from frumpy to more... glamorous?

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Updated On: 7/24/09 at 04:39 PM

As someone else posted, if this is the best they got, we are in trouble. Sheryl Lee sounds so hoarse in the first clip and her voice sounds beat. I think they needed to better delineate and costume the archetypes. Jackie Hoffman would have been a better Brenda than Walsh. Brenda needs to be a dowdy comedienne. There is nothing earthy about Ziemba and what are those dresses they are putting her in? I truly wonder if this will even make it to Broadway, especially with theatre demand being at a premium right now. God bless these ladies for trying but it really doesn't look like they were given good material and frankly, Ralph might have just needed the work. She hasn't been doing much except appearing on Clean House to get her nasty house cleaned up.

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Bettyboy, that episode of Sheryl Lee Ralph on Clean House is at least 2-3 years old!!

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What a trainwreck this is going to be which I have tickets to on August 6th! Will be seeing it with very low expectations and have a feeling that they'll even be lower when I leave. If the poster doesn't mind I think I'll make a Titanic sign to wave from my front row balcony seat at Curtain Call. The Old Globe has had some really great pre-Broadway musicals but I'm sure this is not going to be one of them.

Popular - What else did your friend say about the show? I'm seeing this on Sunday.

This HAS to be the reason so many people have left the show after the original reading. I feel like they are doing exactly what they have been told to do.... it's just really not that great. Hopefully that can make changes and improve it.

From :06-:09, there is a line that Karen spits out that was AWFULLY acted...yet I can't stop watching it.

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From :41-:45, is that Sheryl's idea of riffing?!?!

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