Shows that REALLY Took Advatage of Their NYC Previews?/Shows that Didn't?

I've been wanting to make this thread for awhile, but have lately been a bit busy. What shows do you think took great advantage of their preview period and which shows didn't. A lot of people feel that shows don't really use their in-town preview periods to fix book/lyric/story problems, and I was curious as to what shows DID fix or try to fix things in the time allotted. Also vice versa, what shows were doomed from the start and never tried to change? As for the former, I recall Women on the Verge making a TON of changes during previews. Any others? What did they change exactly?

Going back awhile, Legs Diamond was basically rewritten. It did not help.

More recently, Spiderman made vast improvements. Problem was the show was doomed to failure no matter what they did.

I saw a Spider-man preview when the Geek Chorus was still included...the rest of the show was still crap but at least they got rid of those characters.

Saw a preview of Fool for Love a couple of weeks ago and Sam Shepard and Patti Smith were sitting at the back with the creative team.

Not to mention that Casey Nicholaw has proven to take very good advantage of his shows during previews. Like how he kept re-working Aladdin every single day until opening night on Broadway. Even how he was able to use the limited time he had during previews for Something Rotten!

The Motherf----r with the Hat started out the preview period with generally negative word of mouth, but ended up getting very strong reviews and lots of Tony noms.  That was a world premiere opening cold on Broadway.  Women on the Verge (also a world premiere) made a lot of changes, but the early word of mouth was horrible.  

Spider-Man 2.0 was "better" than Spider-Man 1.0 in terms of being more coherent, but Spider-Man 1.0 was much more interesting to watch.  Spider-Man 2.0 was very bland.

Not exactly the same, but I think Fun Home was better at the Public than on Broadway (I know I am in a very small minority about that one).

The original Spider-Man 1.0 was a fascinating mess, while the revised one was just a dull one. But the Geek Chorus, from what I've heard, left the show not because they didn't work, but because the characters and their subplot were lifted pretty closely, bordering on plagiarism, from a famous set of recurring DC Comics characters who discuss the varying mythologies of Batman, Superman etc. 

Bullets on Broadway was always awful

Kwong3 said: "Bullets on Broadway was always awful"

I completely disagree. I saw the first preview and absolutely adored the show.

I am convinced that during previews for the show "Wonderland", they eventually ran out of time before opening, so they just left the show as is. It's a shame, the music was so wonderful, but the second act felt like a rough draft.

Not to threadjack, but the death knell sounded on LEGS DIAMOND the day they fired lovely Christine Andreas and cut her whole girlfriend subplot, leaving the only love story between Peter Allen and the glorious but elderly Julie Wilson. No love story-- no show. And without a strong leader like a Mike Nichols/Arthur Laurents/ Tommy Tune, there was no-one to steer the foundering ship, not Harvey Fierstein, not the ineffectual director of record, Robert Alan Ackerman, and certainly not poor Peter Allen who was still performing the damn show 8 times a week.

One day, someone might do well to look at the original script and score from BEFORE the draconian preview cuts began-- I think there's actually a decent show there.

Next to Normal made the majority of their changes between Second Stage and Arena. There were a few small changes between Arena and Broadway and during Broadway previews. The ones I remember are changing Natalie's verse in "Just Another Day" and changing Gabe's age when he died from 18 months to 8 months, both of which happened between Arena and Broadway. There was also originally an unnecessary crib that descended from the ceiling somewhere in the music box scene that was cut very early in Broadway previews.