Tale of Two Cities: In Concert to be filmed for PBS- Page 2

[Tevye_the_Dairyman]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 8:47pm

I've never heard more unintentional laughter come out of an audience than when i saw this crapfest. I remember going to the bathroom during Act 2. Jill Santoriello, other members of the creative team, and what i assume may have been producers were sweating bullets in the lobby as i came out from the mezzanine, chortling and snickers following me. The tone of the conversation seemed to be how quickly the show would fail and what to do about it. This was during previews, mind you.

[WishingOnlyWounds2]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 8:50pm

I don't see why people are writing "ugh" or "ew".

It's a TV broadcast, if you don't like it, don't watch it.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 9:00pm

Why? Why? Why?

They'll film this, but not LuPone's Gypsy?

Methinks I won't be calling in during their pledge drive this year. Midge can keep her free tote bag.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 9:19pm

One of the worst scores ever, IMO.
Is Barbour able to leave the country?
As far as it being falsley accused of being a Les Miz ripoff, they was exactly what it was and several reviewers stated just that, and I have it on good athority that more than once the writer and two ex lesMiz actors who produced this crap on Broadway told people they wanted it to be more like Les Miz.

[JillS]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 9:48pm

Tevye you're such a big fat cow milking fibber. i was always watching the show during previews so you couldn't have come out in the lobby and found me chatting during Act two. "other members of the creative team"? who might they have been and how are you identifying them as such? can you name even one of them? i thought not. and you could tell what we were talking about and what we were saying by the "tone" of our conversation eh? amazing powers you have there. and snickers of laughter followed you down the stairs in act two? more likely guys in white jackets carrying nets were following you down the stairs. your post is a complete fantasy. well, at least you're creative!

as for you, oh so predictable 'curtain puller downer', you belong in the rubber room with Tevye. you "have it on good authority"? anyone who claims they ever heard me say I was trying to copy "Les Miz" is a bigger fibber than Tevye.

I know our concert must be upsetting you two characters - but do everybody else a favor and refrain from writing nonsense that can be so easily refuted.

On the bright side, thanks to everybody else on this thread who is excited for our show and the public television concert. We are thrilled to be doing it and look forward to announcing the whole cast very soon!

[Pianolin717]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 9:55pm

Jill..
1) I'm sad I wasn't able to see ATOTC on Broadway, but I LOVE the score. So, props on that.

2) For your post above... I love YOU! Amen!

[defyingravity07]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:00pm

I really can't wait. While the show may not have been the most exciting (IMO) the music was quite good. I was going to go on a class trip to see it but it closed 3 days before we were supposed to go.

So the DVD & CD will be out before the end of the year? Updated On: 5/26/09 at 10:00 PM

[Robert Taylor]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:03pm

Tevye, I was there opening night of previews and there were no unintentional laughs. In fact the audience was hugely enthralled the entire time.

I always felt like ToTC was a big crowd pleaser that worked really well for tourists and audience members who wouldn't normally see a Broadway show. Unluckily enough, the show's subject matter wasn't appealing enough to tourists to get them to buy tickets. And what a shame, because the show was good. Really good.

[Robert Taylor]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:04pm

Whoops, didn't read Jill's response before I posted.

Go Jill!

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:20pm

I did not think the show was like Les Mis except that it was a serious dramatic musical also set in a French revolt/revolution, so a period costume piece as well.

I sincerely thought some of the duets were lovely and having Lazar singing them certainly brought them to their best and I liked his acting. Plus the leading young actress also has a beautiful voice.

I don't think you get Lazar and Edelman to sing for you if they don't like the music.

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:25pm

"Is Barbour able to leave the country?"

Hahahaha! That's actually a VERY good question, though. I wonder.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:43pm

Pretty decent score, the show just needed some trimming.

I'm glad it's not being forgotten. And it's not a rip-off of Les Miz. I mean, it's essentially the same time period, so how else should the music sound? It's not going to be a rock concert, although, maybe that route would have been much more interesting and garnered more positive attention.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 10:53pm

I never saw the show nor heard the entire album (though, what I did hear on broadwayworld.com radio left me severly underwhelmed).

What I like to think is that this is, somehow, is our way of getting back at the way PBS films these British and European nobodies and nothings ("Riverdance", Celtic Woman, etc.) and sells them to the gullible American public as The Biggest Thing To Hit The World Of Entertainment, EVER!!! when there are American performers much more deserving of the exposure.

[jimmycurry01]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 11:57pm

I have heard the demo recording of this on line in the past and really enjoyed the score, I look forward to seeing the concert on PBS, not as much as Chess perhaps, but it should still be a good time.

Oh, and for those who have mentioned that Tale of Two Cities takes place during the same time period as Les Miz, contrary to popular belief, that is not true. Tale of Two Cities takes place during the French Revolution which took place from 1789-1799 and Les Miz takes place during the Paris Uprising of 1832.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/26/09 at 11:58pm

Jill, you are my hero on sooo many levels!

And don't knock Celtic Woman. I love them and have tickets to see them in Trenton next month.

[madscientist]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 12:28am

I'm also really excited about this and looking forward to it! I hope they keep the same cast that they had on Broadway because they were amazing! I would also like to say that I agree, Jill is the woman on so many levels! I look forward to seeing who is cast...

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 12:46am

At least I'm not a big fat cow.
I can't argue with the writer of the show,
good for you getting the show on Broadway
and good luck on the concert.

[winston89]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 1:14am

This makes me all kinds of happy.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 1:29am

"Unluckily enough, the show's subject matter wasn't appealing enough to tourists to get them to buy tickets."

I'm not a 100% sure of that. It opened at a time when not many tourists were coming to Broadway. Kids were back in school and, due to the recession, travel was down. I, honestly, felt had the show made it to the holidays things would have picked up.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 1:45am

Curtain - that's a personal attack.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 1:52am

Actually, no one was actually called a big fat cow. If you really want to get down to it Jill called Tevye fibber who milks big fat cows. Curtain was just quoting her but taking it out of context.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 2:12am

This has been discussed but let's discuss it again. PBS rarely, if ever, puts up their own money to produce a show. The producers/creators behind TOTC are the ones financing this. Not PBS. PBS will simply be distributing it. It has nothing to do with them choosing Gypsy over TOTC. The producers of Gypsy chose not to fork out the money to preserve their show. Blame them, not PBS.

[philly03]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 2:33am

Yay! Favourite musical of the season/one of my favourites ever actually.

"I've never heard more unintentional laughter come out of an audience than when i saw this crapfest."

Not to go back to this comment but .. oh well! At the preview I was at, I can recall atleast one or two instances where the scenery from the flys malfunctioned...I believe it was the trees which were some sort of net thing and they kept moving back & forth which seemed to cause some laughter! Most of the other "unintentional laughter" from what I remember was .. intentional, often poking at the story or the scenery once more. Guess you couldn't figure that out.......

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 2:37am

Philly, it is clear you enjoy this brand of theatre very much. Which you, of course, are entitled to. But you must also be aware that the general public is turned off by the rather over-the-top, spectacle driven nature of such shows. The British Pop-Opera and its American copy cat shows is dead. Enjoy it, but don't neglect the fact that it is, to paraphrase Lil' Abner, "Past its prime".

[JillS]

Posted: 5/27/09 at 3:15am

Bobby Bubby,

have you looked at the box office for "Phantom" lately? (now in its gajillionth year) It seems to be doing pretty well for a relic of a genre that nobody wants to see anymore And if you spoke to most of the audiences coming out of our show and read the readers opinions on blogs and the New York Times site, for example, you'd see that many audience members loved the show and had a completely opposite opinion of the new york critics. If you read the new york media reviews you'd have to acknowledge that they had their minds made up before they even saw the show - most of them came right out and said so. Even so, we also got some rave reviews - (Huffington Post, Connecticut Post, lots of online sites (NYC.com) several radio and television stations) - those reviews were unfortunately lost in the shuffle of the overwhelmingly negative Time review. I take a little comfort in the admissions of some of the critics of their own ridiculous bias: (John Simon, for instance, wrote that Dickens book has a great first and last line and nothing of value in between! Yikes!) The truth is that there is an audience for those costumed, period shows that you would dismiss - - the decades of audiences for shows like "Phantom" and "Les Miz" and their continuing popularity around the United States and the world prove that. But although "Tale" was mistakenly likened to "Phantom" and "Les Miz" as a pop opera it really had much more in common stylistically with say, "Oliver!", than with either of those shows. We painstakingly kept electric guitar and contemporary drum kits etc. out of the orchestration - but no matter - the genius "experts" still called it a "poperetta"!

If we had opened at any other time (for instance, not the same week that Lehman went bankrupt and the stock market crashed and everyone started talking about the Great Depression Part Deux!) we would have had a chance to tough it out. But the complete collapse of the world financial markets made it impossible for us to battle back (remember all of the hit shows that closed in January? They lasted til January only because they had reserves built up from years of running and could afford to lose money during those lean months when everybody was suffering.)

A funny side note - i just returned from a week of casting our concert in the UK and spent a great day running around London with Charles Dickens great, great, great granddaughter Lucinda - a writer in her own right and all around lovely person who came to see our show THREE TIMES during the closing weekend. She loved it and thinks the critics are...challenged She even wrote a letter to the New York Times (that they didn't publish, of course)