Long time lurker, rare responder, but I’m on my annual show binge pilgrimage and was at the first preview, and while Jonas was not as awful as many predicted he would be based on early indications, much of what has been said elsewhere needs to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt. The audience last night was very clearly largely made up of Jonas Brothers fangirls, many of whom I’m going to assume have never heard of this show prior to the casting announcement. Good lawd, they were on another level of being overwhelmingly annoying. Trying to badger other audience members for their window cards in an effort to get the full set of three. Screaming, crying, and nearly falling from the balcony to catch a glimpse of the other Jonas Brothers in the dress circle below.
I digress; the show itself was…mostly fine. Adrienne Warren was stellar. It’s not a show that offers itself to do a whole lot more than to post up and belt in many moments, but man, she dug in and delivered.
Jonas was hit and miss. Some moments were good, and well, some were not. The obvious part about him is he simply cannot hit the high notes, which is not what you want in your Jamie. He struggled and came up short any time you really needed him to soar. The greater problem was his constant lack of enunciation. In a show that is 98% sung through, one needs to be able to fully understand every word of the lyrics, and he did the pop star thing far too often where some parts sounded like a garbled mess. There was also this tendency to trail off with the final words of sentences to the point where they were just completely lost. His falsetto (which he used in many cases to mask his inability to belt) was also weak and very hard to hear. Hell, his voice was dwarfed entirely by Warren’s when they were together. Hopefully sound will recognize that and mix the levels a little better to artificially create a more natural blend between them during previews. That said, he did have some great moments. Nobody Needs to Know was his strongest effort of the night by far, where he seemed to marginally drop the pop star persona and deliver a more intentional performance (though not entirely). The Next Ten Minutes was much better than the Fallon performance, though the staging of that song was a head scratcher. Kinda disregarded the Central Park theme entirely and made it their wedding night in the bedroom, preparing to consummate the marriage. That was a…directorial choice I would not have made.
Ultimately, Warren is a powerhouse and is worth the price of admission, and Jonas is going to sell some tickets.