The Outsiders is the most Genre elevating musical since Hamilton (IMO)

[massofmen]

Posted: 6/1/24 at 9:28pm

Shows rarely evolve the entire genre of theater.  There have been a few that make the Musical Theatre landscape take notice and have to be better than it was before that Musical. 
West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Phantom, Les MIs, Ms Saigon, Ragtime, RENT, Book of Mormon, Hamilton (to name a few) and now  (IMO) The Outsiders.
The fight scene alone i Act 2 should win its own tony award for actually portraying a real fight scene on stage. Unlike basically every other fight scene before it. It's visceral, and bloody and vicious and brilliant. 

The stage itself is a marvel. the Sound effects, the special effects and the storytelling. This is what you get when you actually have a pulitzer prize nominated writer and all around brilliant playwright, write a musical. You get book scenes that rival broadway plays and not some generic elementary fluff that usually comes with musicals. 
The dancing is unlike anything we have seen before. Gritty, emotional, brilliant. 
To me, there is no competition for Best Musical this year and I have seen them all. Every one. Nothing comes close to what the outsiders brings to the genre and elevates it. 
I applaud the creative team, marketing team and the brilliant actors on that stage. I also think the actor who plays Pony boy should easily win the Tony over Groff. It's not close in my eyes.

This is what musical theater can be if you actually care and take risks instead of just doing another version of the same tired playbook. 
Congrats to all involved. This will run for years, and be in regional theaters for decades. I look forward to the inevitable movie that comes out. 

[magicfingers]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:01am

I think the book is indeed very good- but it’s a book better suited for a play. In fact I would have enjoyed it a lot more as a play. The score was extremely disappointing. A score for a musical needs strong hooks/melodies. Think of any classic musicals  - the ones you mentioned - and there’s one thing each of those musicals has in common- incredible scores. Unless a musical has a GREAT score- you can’t call it game changing for musical theatre. I do agree it was extremely well done- great fight scenes etc- but no one is raving about the music to this show- and THAT is what a musical has to have if it’s going to be a game changer. 

[Skip23]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:02am

massofmen said: "Shows rarely evolve the entire genre of theater.There have been a few that make the Musical Theatre landscape take notice and have to be better than it was before that Musical.
West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Phantom, Les MIs, Ms Saigon, Ragtime, RENT, Book of Mormon, Hamilton (to name a few) and now (IMO) The Outsiders.
The fight scene alone i Act 2 should win its own tony award for actually portraying a real fight scene on stage. Unlike basically every other fight scene before it. It's visceral, and bloody and vicious and brilliant.

The stage itself is a marvel. the Sound effects, the special effects and the storytelling. This is what you get when you actually have a pulitzer prize nominated writer and all around brilliant playwright, write a musical. You get book scenes that rival broadway plays and not some generic elementary fluff that usually comes with musicals.
The dancing is unlike anything we have seen before. Gritty, emotional, brilliant.
To me, there is no competition for Best Musical this year and I have seen them all. Every one. Nothing comes close to what the outsiders brings to the genre and elevates it.
I applaud the creative team, marketing team and the brilliant actors on that stage. I also think the actor who plays Pony boy should easily win the Tony over Groff. It's not close in my eyes.

This is what musical theater can be if you actually care and take risks instead of just doing another version of the same tired playbook.
Congrats to all involved. This will run for years, and be in regional theaters for decades. I look forward to the inevitable movie that comes out."



I pretty much disagree with you on everything. 
 

but I agree that the actor who played Pony Boy should at least have been nominated

 

[magicfingers]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:04am

Interesting that the one thing you didn’t mention about this musical was….ummm…the music.

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:09am

Skip23 said: "massofmen said: "Shows rarely evolve the entire genre of theater.There have been a few that make the Musical Theatre landscape take notice and have to be better than it was before that Musical.
West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Phantom, Les MIs, Ms Saigon, Ragtime, RENT, Book of Mormon, Hamilton (to name a few) and now (IMO) The Outsiders.
The fight scene alone i Act 2 should win its own tony award for actually portraying a real fight scene on stage. Unlike basically every other fight scene before it. It's visceral, and bloody and vicious and brilliant.

The stage itself is a marvel. the Sound effects, the special effects and the storytelling. This is what you get when you actually have a pulitzer prize nominated writer and all around brilliant playwright, write a musical. You get book scenes that rival broadway plays and not some generic elementary fluff that usually comes with musicals.
The dancing is unlike anything we have seen before. Gritty, emotional, brilliant.
To me, there is no competition for Best Musical this year and I have seen them all. Every one. Nothing comes close to what the outsiders brings to the genre and elevates it.
I applaud the creative team, marketing team and the brilliant actors on that stage. I also think the actor who plays Pony boy should easily win the Tony over Groff. It's not close in my eyes.

This is what musical theater can be if you actually care and take risks instead of just doing another version of the same tired playbook.
Congrats to all involved. This will run for years, and be in regional theaters for decades. I look forward to the inevitable movie that comes out."



I pretty much disagree with you on everything.


but I agree that the actor who played Pony Boy should at least have been nominated

"

Brody Grant was indeed nominated.

[Skip23]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:37am

Oops. 
 

Brody deserves the nomination. 
 

as does Jason Schmidt’s body. Corey Cott, eat your heart out. 

[RUkiddingme]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 12:41am

My fave parts in The Outsiders were the quiet moments.  When you could hear the score for Stereophonic pounding through the wall behind the orchestra seats.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 7:10am

So much "telling" and with stilted language. And a lackluster score. 

 

[inception]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 7:16am

Haven't seen it so can't speak to the quality, but it seems popular.   According to tye reddit Saturday rush report thread there were 75 people in line yesterday trying to get rush seats.  More than any of the other shows.  I looked at the TKTS live site,  and while it was available it was listed as only offering a 20% discount with tickets from $185.  $185 at the TKTS booth!!!! That's ridiculous! 

The one thing I have read that makes me question the staging is that there are reports of sst pieces on the sides that cause obstructed views.  Again I haven't seen it for myself, but have read that there is a tire sitting at stage left and a car at stage right that both obstruct views. That seems like a pretty dumb move.  Why didn't they move those things?

[Owen22]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 7:49am

I will concede that it is probably the best of the Spring 2024 musicals (though not my favorite, but I did like it very much).  However, it is far from a classic with a very mediocre score with an adaptation of a very old novel which, by no fault of its own, makes it now seem predictable and stereotypical. That fight scene, though, is a monumental piece of stagecraft.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 8:52am

I’ve enjoyed the score since the first time I saw the show and now having listened to it a bunch, it’s easily my favorite score of the season with some songs I’ve had on repeat pretty much non stop for a couple weeks. It’s not the greatest score in the history of the American Musical Theater (few are) but for what it is, I really do love it. 

[always bway]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 8:53am

I found the whole show twee and predictable. Nothing groundbreaking. Grease at least knew what it was... this is the same, but pretending to be self important. The pretension is tedious and absolute BS> but alot of theater going youth seem to think 'ohhh this is high art" lol. 

Score was mushy and the effects tried to hide the lack of actual interesting storytelling. I know everyone loved the fight scene at the end, I thought it could have been half the length. The repetition of movement was boring and we saw the same moves over and over again. no build. the rest of the show...doesnt stay with you. 

[stagepotato]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 9:20am

I enjoyed The Outsiders enough that I bought a second ticket through Audience Rewards. And by chance, I'm in the exact same seat again. I was relatively bored through most of Act 1 until the murder. After that, the show had my full attention and flew by. I think the lighting is great, the choreography is really neat. Especially the rain rumble. The fire was done so well it felt real. And I generally like the music. But I do not think this show is Hamilton level by any chance. I do think it will win the Tony and have a healthy run on Broadway and tour. But it will not be running nearly 10 years from now. 

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 9:20am

I found the show to be fairly solid overall, but I left feeling slightly cold and indifferent to the evening's proceedings. The rumble in the rain was cool, but I honestly thought Ivo Van Hove's short-lived West Side Story did it better. I am enjoying the cast album, and it is one of the better scores this season.

[tomwsjr]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 10:02am

In my opinion this is a mediocre musical, at best.  The  plot itself feels dated, a cross between Grease and West Side Story.  The score is generic and doesn’t move the story forward.  The cast is “fine”, the best part of the show is the direction and choreography. 

[BeingAlive44Ever]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 1:54pm

I will say, it's a good adaptation with one of the best books in recent memory. The direction, the vision, the choreography-- it is brilliant and could certainly be seen as "genre elevating." Now, would I compare it to those other musicals you listed? No. Those other musicals all have one thing in common: They have incredibly excellent scores. ... Okay well most of them do. I dunno if I'd call Phantom's score "excellent". Rent... Well, ask me tomorrow and I might say it's great, but ask me the next day and I might hate it. That's irrelevant though. Outsiders is certainly a theatrical achievement, but a big part of musical theatre is storytelling through music. I would say a recent musical that is much more genre elevating than Hamilton or Outsiders would be Hadestown-- which also had very innovative choreography, direction, and set design that really told the story in conjunction with the music in a way not dissimilar to Wagnerian operas that inspired it. Really, it revived and refined an old style of theatrical storytelling that had been weakened and worn away over time. Plus the score was incredible. It actually had in common with Outsiders that it somewhat lacked real hooks in its score-- but the difference is that you could pick apart the brilliance of Hadestown and all of its lyrical and musical metaphors and symmetries for a very long time. Last week, I saw it again and finally connected that Persephone's references to her mother refer to "Mother Earth," or Gaia, who was literally her mother (and most of the Gods') and I started sobbing. It was this line Orpheus says a few times-- "Who walked up above in her mother's green field". He said it in Epic III and it finally clicked. I cannot tell you any line in Outsiders, music or otherwise, that left me as floored as something like that. Every time I see Hadestown, which I have seen it four times now, I find a new angle to appreciate it from. It's a show that gets better and better the more you think about it. Even a snob like me who swears by Sondheim's lyric books is willing to let the slant rhymes go because of the very operatic structure of the piece and appreciate the text from a poetic standpoint and the music as dominating the text rather than propping it up as it would in a typical musical. I cannot say the same about the sometimes somewhat lazy lyrics in The Outsiders. I actually enjoyed the show quite a lot, but I just can't agree that it's the most genre elevating musical since Hamilton. It's a good show. Maybe a 7 out of 10. Maybe a 6 or an 8, I'd need to see it again. But to put it on the same level as West Side or Gypsy is just disingenuous, I think. A lot of people dislike Outsiders, I think that there's a lot of prejudice going into it that gets in the way of enjoying it. I personally saw it for what it was and thought it was a great show-- certainly a lot better than Gatsby (which is also largely a good time because of the choreo and cast) but not as purely excellent as Hell's Kitchen or Suffs, which I think are the front runners for Best Musical. 

[jagman106]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 3:06pm

Personally, although I enjoyed the show, I don't think it's genre-elevating or even a very outstanding show. Along with most people, I thought the rumble scene was brilliant, but I also agree it could have started maybe a quarter of the way through its current form. Although the staging was interesting, i didn't see anything groundbreaking. I didn't think the special effects were anything special (one crucial scene looked cheap to me). A lot of people are commenting about the music. I think it fit the show and was somewhat appropriate for its setting, but as someone else said, much of the score is repetitive. I enjoyed some of the songs better than others, but I won't download the cast recording for future listening. I do think some of the actors deserved their Tony nominations (Joshua Boone's u/s was on the night I saw the show), but I didn't see any tour de force performances. Overall, it was a pleasant night at the theater, and I've recommended the show to others, but I don't think it's in any way altering the future of musical theater.

Updated On: 6/3/24 at 03:06 PM

[theatreguy12]

Posted: 6/2/24 at 9:41pm

I haven’t seen it either so can’t add a horse to the race here, but I do have numerous friends who saw it at La Jolla.

They all liked it for one reason or another, but none of their reviews would have suggested it was anything groundbreaking or “genre-elevating.”

Some did remark the music was okay but the overall show had a “dated” feel about it. Something a couple of people on here noted as well.

Again, they all said they liked it okay but the overall vibes I got from them didn’t really excite me enough to sit on the 5 south to La Jolla in OC/SD traffic to see it. Even though I knew it was heading to Broadway. 

Typically subjective the theater is though. 

I will admit that I do wish I had seen it now to see for myself. 

[LYLS3637]

Posted: 6/3/24 at 8:25am

I mean, if we're talking "genre elevating"-- look no further than the musical currently at the Walter Kerr-- When I think of elevating the art of the musical, I feel Hadestown is really the only one that fits that description...

[dan94]

Posted: 6/3/24 at 12:53pm

bwayphreak234 said: "The rumble in the rain was cool, but I honestly thought Ivo Van Hove's short-lived West Side Story did it better."

For all the talk about the rumble in The Outsiders, I also keep coming back to this. Whatever shortcomings Ivo's WSS had (and it had many), that rumble worked. It was exciting. It felt real. And the cameras gave a visual focus to the rumble that is missing in The Outsiders.

Personally, I thought The Outsiders was fine. I saw nothing new or nothing inspired on that stage. The train was reminiscent to Hadestown. It was Ivo's rumble they were presenting. Teeth was blocks away with a similar fire effect.

It was very professionally put together (the less said about the score the better). And for me, it was deadly dull.

[broadway86]

Posted: 6/3/24 at 2:04pm

I loved The Outsiders so much more than I expected to going in. It's not perfect, but it has so much heart, the technical aspects are top-notch, the cast is immaculate, and the score is really lovely and evocative, and (unlike many original scores in the last decade or two) has its fair share of melodies that actually stick.