A Tale of Two Cities was one of the most misguided literary musical adaptions of all time. The book is very much an ensemble piece with numerous fleshed out characters, almost all of which go through some sort of growth or lack there over over the course of the book. If one were to have to pick a protagonist or at least the conduit of the plot, it is an easy choice of Dr Manette, Lucie Manette, or possibly Charles Darnay. Jill Santoriello was a self proclaimed stay at home mother turned composer and it showed. She decided to make Sydney Carton the sole protagonist, despite being absent from the action for much of the book and his main purpose is to be a daulistic foil for Charles Darnay. This can be seen by the ending with his death, instead of the epilogue where we see the impact the revolution has on Paris and the Manette/Darnay family. In doing so we are seeing the plot through the eyes of a bystander who just happened to be in court room one day, instead of through the Manettes and Charles Darnay former members of the aristocracy trying to atone for the evil they saw and did nothing to stop.
Add to that instead of orchestrating the most famous opening sentence in literary history (It was the best of times....) into a brilliant opening number she began it with a prologue that summarized Book 1 Recalled To Life, that we come back to see 2 more times throughout the musical. The opening sentence, instead became a throw away line while they set up the guillotine.
Then the show didn't even feature a guillotine, which was just disappointing to say the least.
In truth the shows biggest problem is that Jill Santoriello, decided to streamline the plot by zeroing in on very specific plot lines. This is in complete contrast much of the praise for the book, which Dickens created so many interwoven plot lines, that somehow all made sense and played off of one another. The book was written like a house of card, so even taking out a single card or plot makes the story fall apart. The book is not a character study, it is a plot driven soap opera and this is a problem for a 2.5 hr musical where one needs be able stop pause the action for a song that comments on the characters or plot instead of advancing it.
I could go on and on about all of the problems with Ms Santoriello's adaption, but just trust me when I say it wasn't good. She completely forgot that she was adapting A Tale of Two Cities, instead of a cheap romantic fan-ficton novel of A Tale of Two Cities.
When I saw it I remember thinking this would of made an amazing epic play and unlike a Shakespearean drama all of the action would actually take place on stage. I think that even more so now with plays like Wolf Hall, and Cursed Child, and hope the National theater decides to take a stab at it.
I didn't mean to. I know there was contention about all this when it was on Broadway, and I understand that, but my expectation (and my hope) is that this movie, if it gets made, will have a whole new cast. 
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