WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN begins previews TONIGHT!- Page 26

[After Eight]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 10:48pm

"If someone disliked all or most of the show they are viewed as "unfair" or "not to be believed.""

Not at all. I was addressing Dubrovnik's statement, "if the ORIGINAL posters are to be believed," caps mine. That means the original posters, the first two who ran to their computers the minute they returned from the first preview with these cataclysmic pronouncements, "unfixable," and "disaster." And yes, I believe strongly that such reactions are not to be believed, because they are using words inappropriately. And when one does that, the words lose their value, and the user his/her credibility.

Come on, now, let's get real. "Women on the Verge" is a DISASTER?? Well, then what does that make genuine disasters like "The News," "Late Nite Comic," "Raggedy Ann," "Into the Light," or "Truckload?" These are what real disasters are. And that's what I objected to in these original comments. And that's why I say they are not to be believed, and I stand by it.

[Sauja]

Posted: 10/19/10 at 11:27pm

So it looks like it's my turn to give the 626th post about the show. The thread devolved a few times into some random discussions, but there are a lot of thoughtful critiques on here. And based on tonight's audience, it's dividing the crowd. A number of folks left at intermission. Plenty of others were ranting outside afterward about how much they hate it. Me? I really enjoyed it.

Was it a case of lowered expectations? I like to think not. For one, it seems like some pretty real changes have already been made during previews. But for another, perhaps more important, I think it's just a pretty divisive show. It's incredibly over the top in every way and the storytelling is almost a pastiche of a pastiche. Though some people around me claimed it was too confusing, I thought it was all pretty straightforward. You just have to be ready for the completely absurd to happen.

The show is imperfect, certainly. The score is uneven (though I preferred it to both Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels); the first act takes some real time to build any steam; and the second act fizzles at the end. And that set! I know they were going for cinematic, but it would have been nice if there were more times when it would just. stop. moving.

But when it's on, it's on. And you can't ask for a better cast. I thought there were real standout numbers--"Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Today," "Island," "Invisible," and...bless Laura Benanti: "Model Behavior." It is troubling that almost none of the best songs go to the ostensible main character.

LuPone, Mitchell, and Benanti are perfection. I also thought Justin Guarini was really endearing in his Broadway debut. And I was NOT expecting that. Sherie Rene Scott, I'll admit, has never been my favorite performer. I find something a little cold about her, and that was still true here. I wanted to see a warmer actress in the part to anchor the show because that is what it's missing: an extremely solid center for everything to revolve around. It isn't Scott's fault alone that she isn't it. The material really should tie back to her more closely. But I think another performer might have had a better shot with what's on the page.

My biggest question for the production, though, is why do the Spanish accents? They seem to be holding some folks back, and they're all so uneven throughout the performance. I know it's set in Madrid, but...without actors more secure in these voices, it seems like dropping them would have been the way to go. I think more of the cast would be spot on with their comedic timing if they had one less thing to think about.

But again, I quite enjoyed this. I thought there were many fantastic moments, absurd, charming, and delightful. I also think some people will continue to hate it, and I get that. But to me it's already so much better than a lot of what's currently playing, so I hope it will win over more fans and have a healthy life.

And I hope that Laura Benanti will perform "Model Behavior" on some talk show so that I can watch it over and over on YouTube. That girl is funnnnnnny.

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 1:04am

to me it's already so much better than a lot of what's currently playing, so I hope it will win over more fans and have a healthy life.

I totally agree. Is there still no finale song? And is the curtain call still only a company bow?

[i*heart*fame]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 1:08am

Well they cut Shoes from Heaven, the old finale. Personally, I thought that Shoes from Heaven was the best song in the show, so I'm sad to hear it is gone.

[i am the one]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 1:28am

This thread is a train wreck and I can't look away.

[dramarama3]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 6:05am

Guys, quite being gay...this is musical theatre.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 7:56am

I've been thinking over my very harsh review of this show and I kind of feel bad for posting it. Perhaps I was being too nasty. I love David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane, as they created my most favorite show of all time, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." So maybe I just caught "Women on the Verge" at a bad time, both for me and for the cast. I did go in there with very high expectations, and I was very excited to be sitting right behind Yazbek and right in front of Lane. That's huge. I don't know if they are making any major changes to this show before it opens. I truly hope that they are.

[theaterdrew]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 10:14am

What has been the makeup of the audiences so far? I'm assuming they've been mostly LCT members using their discounted ticket, but who do they tend to be?

I've been reading this thread and the comments at ATC as well as the twitter feed, and trying to see if there is any kind of trend. So far, it seems that the people who love the show have tended to be younger and/or female, while it seems a high percentage of people who see it as a trainwreck are male. Not everyone falls into those categories, of course, but I'm wondering if the show has not been attracting enough of the right audience so far?

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 10:23am

From what I saw and what I have heard anecdotally, the audience seems to be a high percentage old folks (probably subscribers) and gay men.

I think old folks, at least those I have heard from, aren't getting the show.

[kyle4]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 2:39pm

mimi judith..............

you can keep the stuffed animal, but we are THROUGH!!!!!

i want a strong POOKS.... someone who is strong in there opinion... i am so sorry you began to doubt yourself... trust yourself, mimijudith.... you are wonderful, vibrant person with strong opinions... the world needs more of you...

first tthought, best thought...

you will see this is true on november 6...

p.s. for the record, ONE of the perfect audiences for this show is GAY men.... a musical based on a campy forein film starring broadway divas... please...

i'm a gay man!!!!! (who goes to the gym, donthate!!) and i found this show to be boring and artistically insulting...

i was the "right" audience.... it sucked!

oh,my judith, we'll always have the highline!!!

[broadwayboy101]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 2:45pm

Saw the show last night; the audience was made up of about 75% older folks, 15% gay men, and 10% of younger females/couples on dates/etc.

Might post a review later, but I'm not that great at 'em.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 2:49pm

Aww, Kyle! I still disliked the show very much. I just felt bad for Yazbek and Lane.

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 2:51pm

Give it a go, broadwayboy101. I wanna hear from Everyman.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 3:16pm

I did find it odd that the entire audience, except for me and one or two others, was over 75 years old. And mostly women, for that matter. The only men I saw were literally using walkers to get in there. I was surprised that the "target audience" was missing here. I figured that it was because they knew via word of mouth that it wasn't worth showing up, even for Patti LuPone. I knew before the show started that something was wrong because of the audience demographic.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 3:18pm

Any word on how the show went last night? Or on whether the posted opening date still stands?

[theaterdrew]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 3:30pm

Up thread, I believe it was AfterEight (but I apologize if my memory doesn't serve me correctly) who suggested the show could be Wicked for grown women. My reaction was yeah, that's exactly what I thought when I heard about the show. In her interview on broadway.com, Patti called it "contemporary musical theater," which suggests that folks going and expecting a grand spectacle in the more traditional mode of Gypsy, say, with belting divas doing showstoppers, would be disappointed.

If their audience is (probably) younger women, especially those under 75, LOL, I hope they have a marketing plan in mind. They should be sending Justin and maybe Laura out to appear on The View and Regis and Kelly, etc. I don't think using Patti is going to do it.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 3:39pm

I do think that the audience reaction would be no different if the theater were filled up with young women and gay men. The show's just not good. I'm a young woman and I really hated it. It's so disjointed and forgettable. Actually, it's not that forgettable -- I wish I could forget it.

[perfectlymarvelous]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 3:46pm

theaterdrew, the audience when I went seemed to be mostly older folks (who I'm assuming are subscribers)...I was there with my parents who are both in their early 50's and they were on the young end of the people around us if that gives you any idea. There were a few people there who were younger (20's-30's) but not too many.

[theaterdrew]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 4:44pm

MimiJudith, I'm not saying all younger women will like it, but that so far, following tweets especially, it seems that the ones who have loved it have been mostly women and mostly in the younger category (by which I mean younger than retirement age). A lot, but not all, of the ones trashing it have been males of any age.

Thanks, perfectlymarvelous. That fits what I suspected.

My point is that if this show is to find an audience once the subscribers use up their one discounted ticket, it has to reach out and pull in a group more likely to appreciate what they are trying to do. The current audience is too divided to sustain the show.

[MimiJudith]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 4:47pm

theaterdew, I see. Didn't know about the tweets. Perhaps those women were drunk. :)

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 4:48pm

I am a younger male who enjoyed the show. I really don't think Twitter is the best indicator of a show's life.

[broadwayboy101]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 5:00pm

Since ghostlight asked so nicely haha...

**Spoiler Alert**

The songs aren't the greatest in the world, but I thought they fit nicely with the tone of the show. "On the Verge" and "Model Behavior" were definitely the best, with Brian Stokes Mitchell's songs being the worst - they do nothing to further the plot and are obviously thrown in just to give him a chance to sing.

The story itself was pretty easy to follow, for those that were asking. I'd never seen the movie and could easily understand what was going on.

The cast is indeed great, but not quite to the level I expected with such "names" involved. Benanti was easily the standout, garnering 90% of the laughs and arguably the best song in the show ("Model Behavior"). LuPone was good, but not great; there were a few points when she was singing that I couldn't understand a single word coming out of her mouth. That being said, when she was on, she was on. Her number in the second act ("Invisible") got the loudest applause of the night. Scott, I felt, was overshadowed by her co-stars. She never really got to the level of insanity that it seemed the character needed to achieve; her longing for Ivan seemed more of an initial break-up reaction rather than actual love (though whether this was Scott's fault or the book's I couldn't say). Justin Guarini is fine, nothing more. He has one worried facial expression that he wears the entire duration, which got on my nerves. Brian Stokes Mitchell is, for lack of a better term, completely random. It almost seemed like Ivan wasn't supposed to be there until they got BSM to play him, if that makes any sense.

The set is insane, which works for this show I suppose; I don't think it stayed still for longer than 5 minutes. Scott's song involving the flaming bed took me by surprise; when the bed first caught on fire, I thought "Oh, this isn't so bad, I don't know what the problem is." Then when the key changed and the bed practically erupted, I nearly wet myself - so, just a warning to those who haven't seen it yet. "On the Verge" was a good way to end act 1, but the four main ladies being suspended on ropes wasn't necessary. I didn't feel that any of the women were, at that point, "losing it." It just came off as them blowing things out of proportion.

As I said earlier, the audience was made up of 75% older folks, 15% gay men, and 10% couples on dates/younger women/etc. What shocked me was the fact that a majority of the older people seemed to be pretty upset before even entering the theatre, and it seemed to influence their enjoyment of the show. I didn't hear many people complaining about the show or singing its praises; the only comments I heard were about how the kerosene smell lingered throughout the rest of act 1. Also, I don't think I've ever attended a show with that little of applause; when there was applause, it was very light and almost polite, in a way - the only numbers that seemed to get a genuine reaction were "Model Behavior" and "Invisible."

[Sauja]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 5:32pm

broadwayboy, you point out something interesting: the crowd really did seem against the show from before it even began. The opening number which is pretty innocuous got applause that I actually thought was less than polite. Uncomfortably so. And while I think it's a particularly weak number, the feeling around me was pretty tense. And a number of people were already bitching before it started about the bad word of mouth.

[heo1128]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 5:57pm

^ It felt that way at the first preview, too. There were the enthusiastic and vocal first-preview junkies, but the rest (majority) of the audience barely applauded. I think it was party because there wasn't any built in room for applause, but that certainly wasn't the entirety of it. There was hardly a standing ovation at the end. Which wouldn't have been so weird, if it wasn't the first preview. It was a very odd atmosphere.

[Katurian2]

Posted: 10/20/10 at 6:01pm

I'm delving into this madhouse thread...

Just a comment that Lincoln Center subscriber audiences in general seem to be the bitchiest types of theatregoers. Every single rude crowd experience I've had has been at a Lincoln Center production early in the run w/majority subscribers in the audience.

I'm going to make the stereotype and say they are primarily wealthy, old, white couples who are used to getting their way. The most audacious instance of this behavior was at an early performance of Coast of Utopia Pt.2 where an older man yelled, yes YELLED at the top of his lungs for the actors to speak louder and more clearly because he 'couldn't understand a damn thing.' Maybe he was senile. But I certainly learned to expect less than cordial tidings from these people when at related shows.

Updated On: 10/20/10 at 06:01 PM