Saw this over the weekend as a double feature with Gatsby (and wow, what an interesting comparison!), and I largely enjoyed this a lot more. While there are parts I think they could tinker with, I didn't really find much that was out of place, and I actually thought this felt more fully realized than some other shows we've recently gotten on Broadway. The score was wonderfully tuneful and felt very "musical theater" (as opposed to some of the scores from pop artists we've gotten), even if it did have some echoes of Wicked (sometimes literally), and I thought the overall book was well constructed and moved at a clip that kept me entertained but also revealed some of the deeper themes in the story.
I think a lot of whether someone will like this show really depends on how much you're willing to empathize with those that have become ultra rich, and out of touch with the working class as a result. I couldn't help but think that the more interesting musical with more far-reaching themes would've been to start after the 2008 crash from Victoria's point of view as she discovers who her mother was before getting rich and with act 2 being Jackie reacting to the outcome of Victoria's actions, but I think this show was meant to be more of a showcase for its leading lady. But even as it is, I found Jackie fairly likeable in the first act, and even when she starts going off the rails in the second act, there was still something about her determination and aspiration that I found fascinating to watch, despite how removed she became from the general reality of life for other people (and there's an interesting sort of tragedy in that too).
Of course, this is the Kristin Chenoweth show, and I never felt the almost 3 hours with her prancing around the stage delivering big songs, quippy one liners, and a surprising amount of pathos. She gets some really great song moments, and I loved her chemistry with F. Murray Abraham, and I really don't know if the show would fully work without her (though I'd also be interested in seeing an understudy just to see how it plays). There's no song list in the program, but at a rough guess I'd say she gets about 70% of the songs in the show, and many of them are very very good.
I enjoyed both Nina White and Tatum Grace Hopkins as Victoria and Jonquil, respectively, but I do wish that Victoria in particular had better songs. They're generally in places that make sense and they fit thematically, but they just don't "sing" as well as the rest of the score, so I felt that her moments were sort of the moments that dragged the most, though I'm sure the tonal shift from the over-the-top-ness of Jackie is also tricky to juggle. The two actors have a good rapport with each other, but it would be nice to see their relationship breathe a bit more, since their attitudes towards each other change over time and it's not really shown how that happens.
I don't really know what to do with the Louis XIV scenes, as they were pretty enjoyable in a frothy kind of delight, but I'm not certain what they contributed to the show outside of a very obvious aside for when they needed to do a scene change. They seem to flirt with some ideas touched on by the rest of the show (the idea of "we build this just because we can" and the direct social commentary after the 2008 crash), but never seemed fully realized to give a real reason for existing. And additionally, I thought it would be interesting to touch a little bit deeper on just how much power and influence David Siegel wielded (between the claim that he got Bush elected and the insinuation that they were a primary contributor to the crash itself), but I suppose the show was already on the longer end and more concerned with Jackie's life story itself.
I thought the last third of the second half was really interesting to watch as Jackie spins more and more out of control with the idea that "more" will be able to fix everything, and it culminated in a few lines during the penultimate scene that really showed the cracks beneath her veneer, but then it seemed like the musical wanted to end on an upswing, so despite showing those cracks briefly, she's still portrayed as a sort of spunky heroine against the odds at the very end. But because we know who she is and how much wealth she's accumulated and how that wealth has led her to lose sight of other things (like her relationship with her children), I thought it would have been much more fitting for the show to have ended with her realization of just how much she's lost in the process and that her life isn't quite as shiny and impenetrable as she's pretending it to be (like the ending of Live Laugh Love in Follies).
I'll definitely be curious to see what they work on in the year or so they have before taking it to Broadway, but I do still think that this was a very strong showing, and I'd be excited to see it again even if they don't change a thing.
For ticketing, we did the TodayTix rush in the morning (it didn't seem all that competitive) and got center orchestra row T. I also have another friend that won the digital lottery and her seats ended up being front row.
.jpg?format=auto&width=365)
