Why in heaven's name didn't Little Women do better?!

The score isn't that special. The story plods.

It's not a bad show, but it lacks a WOW factor. It's a nice, enjoyable night at the theatre. But...that's all.

I never saw it on Broadway, but the only thing that kept me coming back to it on tour was the cast. They made it special. Not much else was.

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I saw the show shortly after it opened and I did enjoy a lot of the music, and I loved Sutton Foster and Maureen McGovern. What I didn't love was the book. It was extremely dull and it tried to condense pages and pages of a novel into a two and half hour show. And IMO, there were just as many dull or bad songs as there were good songs. When I listen to it on the cast recording, I do enjoy the score more, so I can understand why you think it's so wonderful. The score works better on disc than it does in the theatre.

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Just like you I love the score, then I saw it live and realized how BORING it was, not completely like I want to cry because its so boring but it wasn't great. The score is pretty amazing though.

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Hard to be interesting when the story has so little in it. Four girls and a mom waiting for Dad to come home from the war. Other than Beth's death, it is a time passing type story. Nice in a book, long day in the theater.

I think that while some of the score--especially the period numbers--was quite beautiful, too much of it was sort of dull pop ballads. It was just not quite good enough.

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Right, but it still wasn't a good show even for them.

It was my favorite book as a child, and still remains one of my favorites to this day.

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I never found the score very good. Very clunky and amateurish melodies and let's not even talk about the lyrics. Furthermore, it's so modern musical theatre in parts.. songs like the terrible Astonishing are just not appropriate given the subject matter and time period.

SallyBrown...EXACTLY! Little Women is one of my all-time favorite books (I've read it several times), and the musical did not do it justice. The characters in the musical were written in a rather stereotypical, cookie-cutter fashion. (ex. "Amy is vain and whiny", "Meg is motherly", "Mr. Laurence is gruff".) Giving a character one characteristic will not carry him or her through a show or make him or her even remotely realistic. The romance in the novel is sweeping and beautiful, while the musical seemed to purposefully make it cliche and almost laughable.
I suppose Laurie bothered me the most...because I practically fell in love with the character in the novel...They COMPLETELY rewrote him for the musical. He was nebbish and overly-polite and very unlovable! I totally understood why Jo said "no" in this instance.

Somehow, B3T, that was not annoying in the book, but hearing Foster screech it every 10 minutes really got on the nerves.

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I saw it on tour and found it enjoyable. I think that the book was one of the show's major weak spots. I felt that the March sisters (with the exception of Jo) were poorly developed. For example, Beth's death did not have the emotional impact it should have because the character was not developed. I went into the show not reading the novel and knowing next to nothing about the story and as a result, I didn't really connect with Beth because I hardly knew anything about her. The time changes didn't really make sense to me because in some instances the audience was never told of the change in time. (I found that telling the first act in flashback was kind of confusing)

The score is ok. There are some very good songs (Five Forever, Days of Plenty) , but also several VERY forgettable ones (The Most Amazing Thing, Take A Chance On Me, More Than I Am ). I agree that some of the lyrics are pretty generic and full of cliches.

Despite all this, I did find the show to be pretty good, mostly due to the very talented cast I saw on tour. I can see why it had trouble lasting on Brodway in a season with Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels & The Light In The Piazza.

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Updated On: 12/27/06 at 03:29 PM

Four words: Directed by Susan Schulman

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Updated On: 12/27/06 at 03:31 PM

I also saw it early in its Broadway run and I remember walking out of that theatre and...... Well, honestly that's about all I remember. It was absolutely tedious and I do recall that as I left I couldn't recall one single song. No melody, no words, no nothing. I was so excited about having Maureen and Sutton back on stage and I couldn't have been more disappointed.

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