TOMMY TUNE's "TURN OF THE CENTURY" — Page 4

This wait is killing me, you know this?




Talkin' Broadway Review

The last of the Chicago papers to review (I assume). Pretty consistent with the rest of the pack. Book needs work with a capital W, music and design are grand, and Rachel York...well, it's getting predictable. She shines (like the top of the Chrysler Building?).

Daily Herald Review

Looks like they're moving forward. Glad to see they're taking their time, though. Sounds like they want to get this right. Wonder what other city they are considering for a tryout?
TOTC Aiming for Broadway

I was waiting for your comments! Thanks for this.

Yes, the rumor is that the writers are working on it a lot, but that they didn't put in any of the changes during the Chicago run, which of course is nearly over. My guess is that they will play somewhere else next summer, and try for NY in the fall, but that's just a hunch. We know they were thinking to go straight to Broadway, but first the reviews hit, and then Wall Street sank.

There is just so much potential here that you want so badly for them to get it right. It's just not there right now.

But Rachel York is a goddess, the Julia Roberts of the American Musical Theater.

Updated On: 10/28/08 at 10:07 AM

I saw it on Tuesday, Oct. 14th. Poor Rachel York stuck in the middle of a mess. It mentioned in the Playbill that it took 3 years...or was it 6 years to get this on stage and they came up with CRAP. Jeff Daniels is great on film. At the center of a musical he's this gaping hole. The book is horrible. Example: York & Daniels' characters "write" Annie Get Your Gun which she is to star in. Before the curtain goes up she gets cold feet. She feels it's unfair to steal from Irving Berlin. The show is cancelled. OK....hmmmmmmm. What about all the chorus and actors that were to be in the production. One of them could have gone on to claim that they wrote Annie Get Your Gun. It's absurd. The set reminded me of Wicked with the giant clock around the stage. Rachel York's character dreams of rising up through the stage floor in a red gown. She does and it's Freddy Wittop's original costume design and headdress for Carol Channing in Hello Dolly. W.T.F. ? Jeff Daniel's character reminisces later about Miss York and the red dress and doesn't even mention that it was from Hello Dolly. We left the theatre disappointed and exasperated. The Goodman's record of musicals has been mostly misses: `Riverview: A Melodrama with Music (great sets but boring), Perlie (a great set), Pal Joey (I loved Carlin Glynn but the show left me cold), The Visit (flawless). I have to put Turn of the Century in the miss category. A huge miss.

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Saw the show tonight. And I must say it was very good. Is the show without flaws? No, but good none the less. The negatives can definitely be fixed though, before the show hits New York.

Some of the negatives:

- I feel like there wasn't enough of a shock when they realized that they had been transported back in time.

- I also feel like the number where Harry makes fun of Billy kind-of comes out of nowhere.

- I also think some of the transitions were not very smooth.

- I feel like there wasn't enough chemistry between Billy and Dixie's characters throughout the show to justify her comming back to Billy at the end of the show.

Positives:

- Rachel York! That girl can sing her ass off!

- Jeff Daniels. Who thought that man had such a good voice? Certainly not me.

- The lighting and the minimalistic set.

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Me and my friend paid $10.00 for last night's show. We originally put our names into the drawing for Wicked, and when we didn't win we decided to go see if they had any more tickets for the show. The box office guy said they did and that they were $30.00 each, and then said he could give them to us for $15.00 each, and then went lower again and said he could give them to us for $10.00 each. We definitely felt like we got a good deal.

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Saw the matinee today and must agree that it was a hot mess. It wasn't as awful as I was afraid it would be, but it was still bad. Rachel was radiant, though. I'm working on composing some thoughts for a friend; I'll post 'em here too when I'm done.

I got to talk to Rachel for a few minutes at the stage door (which I was beyond excited about - what a lovely woman), and she said that they're working on making major changes to the show and aiming for a run in another city in the future (right now, it looks like it will be Boston). She didn't know when that would be, though, or if she would be involved.

I agree -- I think that with some major overhaul (first and foremost: REWRITE THE BOOK!!), it could be a successful show. (And I hope Rachel's free when they do it in Boston, because despite all of the problems, she was wonderful. But I'm a longtime Rachel fan, so I'm also biased.)

I'm pretty sure the set can fit into almost any small to mid-size theatre because the set is so simple.

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Back early in this thread I said, "Am I the only one who never knew Jeff Daniels was a musical talent? "

Then I saw the show. Now I realize that I had been right all along and it was other people -- including the producers of this show who were wrong in their assessment of his musical talent.

About 30 or 40 minutes into the show I was thinking, "this is so clever and so great" -- about the time of the big medley including the girl in the velvet swing singing "Moon River". But then they just didn't seem to know where to go with it. We had no reason to really care about their personal relationship and the play turned more and more to that. How did they end up returning to the present by the way? Did they tell us, or did I just not care at that point?

I agree with several others. A whole lot of potential, but it needs some major work.

Hey, commasplice,

Glad to hear your report. Billy and Dixie DID come back to the present. It was signalled by the clock chiming, the Victorian ensemble "disappearing" in the background and the 1999 partygoers returning downstage on the ramp. It was also implied in Dixie's reprise of "Where or When" in which she wore the same dress as during the prologue.

The loose ends of the time travel conceit didn't bother me, since it's a fantasy. We can infer that everything they changed in the past will be healed once they return to their own time. What did bother me was how easily they accepted their situation and that they didn't struggle more to fit in. I really liked the way the time/style differences were handled in the Alexander's number. I wish there had been more of that kind of humor throughout the show. I also think Billy and Dixie should have been working hard to keep their time travel a secret. Comic situations could have been developed as a result - where they make up a funny story about who they are and where they come from, what inspires them to "write" the songs, etc.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

They did make it back to the presence? Oh, crap. I missed that completely. I thought the reappearance of the partygoers from 1999/2000 was part of Billy remembering the whole thing. Thanks for clarifying, lc.

I adore the song "Where or When" (and Rachel sounded fabulous singing it), but the way it was used to bookend the show was pointless. There's no real connection to the rest of the show -- we never see Rachel in that gorgeous dress again, and there's no sense of time given (and the idea that it occurs in some sort of timeless place is a cop-out). I'd rather see them implement a bit more useful exposition in its place.

I agree about how easily they adjusted to the new time -- the "Alexander's" number was did that well, but after that, it was all too easy, and they lost some potential opportunities for comedy.

Another problem with the show is that the timeline is extremely cramped, and that becomes especially evident when Dixie's pregnancy is introduced. Billy and Dixie hook up about a week before New Year's. After arriving in 1900, a character makes a comment that Billy and Dixie have had something like 30 hit songs in their first four weeks there. Then they decide to put on a book show, and I assume that there had to be at least another month in there for writing it down (and who the hell remembers the entire libretto to Annie Get Your Gun anyway?), casting, rehearsal, etc, probably more. After opening night, Dixie disappears for four weeks, and when she returns, she breaks the news to Billy. By then, she's at least three months pregnant ("at least" because I don't think we know the timeline of AGYG -- if they said something, I didn't catch it -- so it could be more). I can forgive that she's not yet showing, because some women aren't visibly pregnant at that point, but it's the end of March or later. Dixie is then overdressed (beautiful as that outfit is), and it seems improbable that the weather could sustain that much cold and snow and ice (well, ice that's strong enough to skate on -- the "Any Place I Hang My Hat/Willow, Weep for Me" scene was actually one of my favorite bits of staging. I thought the "ice skating" ballet was lovely.). After that we pretty much fast-forward to September, the end.

I also thought the "It's (date) at (residence), where rent is (amount per month)" bit was just plain narrative laziness. Show, don't tell. (And the rent information, while interesting for contrast, really isn't necessary information. I don't feel I would be any worse off in terms of knowledge if they cut it.).

Matt, I went in thinking that they had been together for a while but had recently parted, so I was taken by surprise by the whole "they just met and had a one-night-stand" thing. As a result, I didn't feel like they had enough of an emotional connection for the audience to want them together, and that became more and more problematic as the show went on, because the writers kept shoving that plot to the forefront. The only good thing about it was that it gave Rachel an original song to sing, and she sang the crap out of it. I think it would make more sense if Billy and Dixie had more of a history together, and it would make the relationship/interaction onstage more interesting to watch as well.

Updated On: 11/3/08 at 12:09 PM