Stage Door Sally said: "Thwarted in my efforts to see Mandy in The Great Comet, I finally saw the entire show online.
Overall, I am glad I saved my hard-earned money. I agree with others that sitting on stage was the way to go to be up close to the actors. Sitting in the mezz, I may have left at intermission. It was a noble effort and should be applauded as such. Where it fell short for me was it was sing-through. It would have benefitted from dialogue because the exposition was confusing as hell. Also, in the end, the plot was ultra simplistic. Complex characters, simplistic plot. Groban was WONDERFUL. Would have been worth it to sit on the stage to see him. Denee Benton was also very good. But the special effects and extra little things in this production were lost on me. I never engaged with the show. Perhaps it was meant for a younger audience. In any event, I could see this as the grandfather for similar interactive shows in the future. Someone has to be the groundbreaker.
I find this reaction to a bootlegged version of the show fascinating, for a variety of reasons.
First, the obvious one. Entering the Imperial, through the "bomb shelter" and then into the sumptuously decorated theatre is, in a striking way, an actual part of the experience of seeing Great Comet. Even a professionally shot and edited film would not be the same as being there, grabbing for tossed pierogis from members of the cast and gazing in wonder at the beautiful set. The show casts its spell before a note is played, if you let it. (And there's actually an artistic point to all the pretty spectacle, which becomes clear later.)
The critiques, and my observations:
- The show was confusing but simplistic. I have read variations of this from others, too often for me to discount it. I read such critiques so often that I made sure to read the section of War and Peace on which the musical is based, both to avoid confusion myself and to give a plot summary to my wife and daughter so they wouldn't be confused. Some people had trouble following the exposition; others had no trouble at all. This doesn't make anyone smart or dim. It's just an interesting but troubling problem for a show to have. Hamilton had pages and pages of rapped dialogue and was also sung-through, but it didn't hurt that show, perhaps because the basics of the American Revolution are familiar to most Americans and because Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a far more conventional musical (rap battles notwithstanding).
- The bells and whistles detracted from the story. At times, that's true. "The Opera" and "The Duel" (the latter of which is inconveniently taken from an earlier section of War and Peace that I hadn't read yet) are the most confusing songs in the musical. A lot of stuff is happening, and while some of it is great - Anatole's rock star introduction, for example - it's a lot to take in the first time. You have to be paying attention to grasp all that's occurring, and in person, there are a lot of distractions (strobe lights, cast members running all over the place). But otherwise, I didn't think it was at all confusing. But others disagree, and that obviously wasn't going to help the musical become a hit for casual theatergoers or people thrown off by the goings-on. When I attended the show, I could see some people relishing every bit of the experience, and others sitting back and looking uncomfortable. That's no small problem for an expensive Broadway musical.
- Groban and Benton were great. I strongly agree. Groban really surpassed my expectations, and was a wonderful Pierre as an actor whose performance as a depressed rich man who finds grace and hope was genuinely moving to me. Benton was a real find. So you liked the leads, but are glad you didn't bother with the show. Again, that's a problem for a Broadway musical.
- The show wasn't engaging. This is obviously a matter of taste and what you find compelling. But plenty of people didn't find it compelling enough to turn it into the monster hit it needed to be because of the huge costs. How long would Great Comet have had to run, bringing in around a million dollars a week, to break even? Three years? Four? Is a national tour, which I want to see, just going to be throwing good money after bad?
It's easy to blame bad producing for a lot of this. They had no post-Groban plan and even Groban himself - as terrific as he was in the musical - posed a bit of a marketing problem. He's the sort of mainstream performer who appeals to older people because of the type of music he usually sings. But the Groban fans weren't going to be natural Great Comet fans (although some became fans). And his presence created expectations for a star vehicle, a la Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly. But Groban isn't at that level of stardom, certainly on Broadway, and Great Comet was not built around him anyway. Until the last 25 minutes of the show, Pierre is often a bystander, sitting in the orchestra pit, except for a couple of big ballads and the beginning of "Letters" to start the second act.
My sad conclusion, because I loved the show, is that Great Comet was simply too ahead of its time, too "weird" in creator Dave Malloy's own word, to thrive on Broadway at this time, at its high costs. Hamilton may have shown a path forward, but Broadway audiences remain a conservative group (not politically) that wants familiarity in most of its big productions unless something really catches lightning in a bottle. The producers screwed up in many ways, but I just don't see how the show as it's now constituted could ever have succeeded as a big-budget Broadway show unless they had a bunch of stunt casting replacements lined up. And with the partial exception of Ingrid Michaelson, they didn't even have one. They had Hercules Mulligan from Hamilton, and we see how that turned out.
Updated On: 8/11/17 at 02:05 AM
