WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN begins previews TONIGHT! — Page 33

bk, your post on workshops.

It's tricky because, as you pointed out with a perfect example like Seusssical, workshops allow everyone to see a different show - an ideal in their mind - happening at once.

But once a show is designed, staged, and an audience added, the weight of the scenic elements and design can both complete their vision and distort what the audience receives.

I could see how a show like this could work in a workshop, when you are only asked to imagine the craziness of all the set changes and projections. Filling that all in in your mind, it might be easy to think it would give the piece momentum.

What a workshop also needs is a director who keeps his eye on the sparrow throughout development. I just don't think the man who once referred to himself in a Seattle publication as "the world's greatest ADD director" is quite up to it.

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I think history will show that workshops of new musicals have often been a false indication of the readiness of the material. In recent memory, I remember the buzz coming out of the workshops of THE ADDAMS FAMILY and TARZAN were that they were going to be absolutely amazing.

In addition to what wonkit says above, I think the fact that so much for the audience is left to the imagination in a workshop allows people more often than not to fill in the gaps with rose-colored glasses on their views of the material.

Lincoln Center does not have great luck developing their new large scale new musicals, even though they spend a lot of money workshopping all of them extensively. Its hard to believe that the talented people behind THOU SHALT NOT, MARIE CHRISTINE, THE FROGS weren't able to create better products after all those readings, but you can't really judge the quality of a product until you get it in front of an audience.

The real problem is that a) shows today are so technically extensive, its almost impossible to do major changes once a show is in production (even during an out of town tryout) and b) most of the current creative teams of Broadway musicals don't have the ability to doctor and fix new shows.

miracles DO happen... they are just few and far between....

WOTV = between

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If this show is a hit or gets any raves from anyone of note, I am going for a psychiatric evaluation.

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For those who have heard it, is "Shoes From Heaven" a good song? From what I was reading, it seemed like it wasn't working as a finale to begin with...why did they put it back?

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Are you getting back to see it soon, Ljay?

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There's a possibility that I might be there that week too! With all that I've heard of this show, it seems like something I would really like. From a score that people have labeled "bland" and "forgettable" comes songs that I think are some of Yazbeck's best work. The title number is pretty dynamic, I think, and Island is still haunting me. And it sounds to me that putting Madrid at the top of the show and after the curtain call is sort of giving the show a better focus.

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The place in which I listened to the songs made it really hard to hear lyrics...but Model Behavior is endlessly clever.

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So use them. Or don't. You'll just do what you do. Why even bother posting something like that? Even Kyle's posts seem useful compared to your post.

Troll.

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I saw it last night, and was pretty gravely disappointed. I was hoping, considering the calibre of the talents involved, for an entertaining evening, and didn't get it. At all.

The story is bizarrely uninvolving. I was never, for a moment, interested in the lives of those people on that stage. The score and book supplied some occasional flickers of interest, like the Model Behavior number, where Laura Benanti shows signs of life, but they remaind only occasional flickers. I found myself checking out the activities of the stagehands, who seemed far more engrossed in what they were doing than the cast.

By the way, if you are planning on seeing this show, YOU MUST BE SEATED IN THE CENTER SECTION. Period. Sitting on the sides, as I did, will guarantee you a gorgeous view of the comings and goings of cast members and large pieces of scenery and moving banks of lights. Patti Lupone was walking around backstage wearing a certain pink coat for quite awhile before she appeared onstage in it.

Back to the show: the opening "Madrid" number sets some kind of standard for sheer inertia. Zero energy at all, an entirely forgettable song, it sets up that cab driver as being a sort of narrator that he never really gets around to being. It's like having Pseudolus disappear from FUNNY THING HAPPENED for most of the play after having performed "Comedy Tonight."

The show, as I'm sure has been noted, seems to be more inspired by the spirit of the film's opening credits than anything else: all that moving scenery and all those projections that I'm sure look really great to the folks seated in the unobstructed center section.

Whatever. I could go on, but there's no point. They really should be charging reduced prices for the show as it stands now. I paid the subscriber price and feel exceedingly generous in not camping out in front of Bartlett Sher's office demanding a refund.

On a positive note: they did a gorgeous job renovating the Belasco, which is now one of the lovelier houses in town.

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First press show is tomorrow, so it's not terribly hasty.

Why do "we" know when the first press performance is? In my experience that isn't something that is usually shared with cast members and sometimes stage management, but kept with the producers and house staff.