Your thoughts on the 2010 Promises, Promises revival — Page 2

darquegk said: "For all its misfires, it tweaked/"fixed" an interesting issue with the original show. Neil Simon, the librettist, is not a big fan of traditional musical structure, and prefers to write a straight play with songs that comment, rather than a fully integrated musical. This is almost always changed in revivals and adaptations: "Promises, Promises," "Little Me" and "Sweet Charity" all added reprises and finales in the revival, where they original had only non-recurring numbers and dialogue finales.

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Well in the case of Sweet Charity keep in mind he was brought on after the score had been written, and the scenes laid out. PP was his conception (Merrick asking him what property he would like to do as a musical and who he would choose to write it with him.)

Theatreguy--that's fascinating. I know the Bennett estate can be quite controlling, but in this case I wonder why they didn't just say yes (certainly the other moments in the show Bennett got kudos for were nearly all about how well he managed to choreograph the scene changes--something that obviously has not been notated in any form of dance choreography.)

At intermission there was little audience buzz and some left. But they missed what I thought was a hysterical second act courtesy of Sean Hayes, Katie Finneran and Dick Latessa. My audience agreed with me. I still find it hysterical (not quite as much) when I watch it again.

With the first two thirds of the second act played so broadly for laughs, I think that any actress would have had a hard time turning the audience from laughter into sudden pathos.

Lifeless and terribly dated. I loved The Apartment and the original production, which I saw 3 or 4 times. Somehow, this seemed sleazy to me…and dated. I hated Katie Finneran’s performance, clearly impacted by my memories of Marian Mercer’s great performance.

The seats and costumes brought me back to a place I’d never want to revisit.

If you can’t preform an amazing Turkey Lurkey Time don’t even bother.

Just irritates me that the revival cast recording is readily available, but the original cast recording doesn't have an iTunes release (and the CD is no longer in print).

As a longtime fan of the OBC - I saw it tryout in DC when I was a senior in high school (fall of '68) - I was majorly disappointed. The show is about a nebbish-in-a-crowd and a naif, two young cogs in a dehumanizing corporate wheel, the strength of the storytelling the ways these relative kids are exploited. Hayes wasn't entirely wrong, but his comic self-awareness was at odds with the everyman-ness of Chuck. Hayes was something Chuck can't be: cute. And aware of his cuteness. (Jerry Orbach, a character actor, nailed what Lemmon brought to the Apartment: that ordinariness) And Chenoweth was at least ten years older than Fran. Rather than self-present as a poor-ish office worker, she was dolled up in Mad Men drag. The younger Chenoweth might've landed the role with poignancy. But in 2010, at 42 (admittedly passing for 35ish), she was a New York sophisticate, one who burst into "I Say a Little Prayer" a song never in the show, and not really in the lexicon of a girl-woman in over her head It killed the sense of the corporate machinery smother innocents .

That highlights the real problem: the revival was determined to give a singing star more to sing and interpolated songs that added no character information, only chances to express the same emotional states as existing songs. Most egregious, in the already long first act, Chuck exits the party and Fran unnecessarily torches "A House Is Not a Home," a rueful meditation on domestic disharmony that wouldn't remotely occupy the thoughts of a young urban worker - and steals the excavated angst from act 2's "Whoever You Are, I Love You," a less analytical and more personal confession of a young woman involved with a married man. Thus Fran ended up with three songs about her unsolvable-except-by-suicide plight: "Knowing When to Leave" "House is Not a Home," "Whoever You Are," all of which basically covered the same plot turf. She ended up the most emotionally paralyzed heroine in a musical comedy.

Craft was always present in the original - it's Chuck's story - and juking a well told Simon-structured show to serve the Bachrach songbook just added running time. From what I've heard, the interpolated songs cannot be licensed with the show.