i dont really understand...- Page 2

[senzarigor]

Posted: 6/17/06 at 7:01pm

you make some good points, but this is theater and it's very subjective. She had a very different take on Clara than O'Hara did... She's a very good actress, and she seem comnforatable on stage. BUT to ME she sounded like a average "Belle" in Beauty and the Beast. However; I think if she had been given more time to prepare the role VOCALLY she could have managed the highs. One can hear a glimps that they are there in "Statues and Stories". and the opening "ah's".

When you think about it, the casting people and Adam Guettel propably WANTED something that was very different than Kelli. Kelli is (was) hard to replace! In some ways there will be LESS to compare becase there is nothing similar about these two (ok, they are both blonde in the show).

They did not promote any of the understudies because it's just too hard to replace swings and ensemble memebrs in a show like this. Katie was brought in to audition because the conductor knew her from a summer program. So, to a certain degree, it was an inside job. From that point on she earned it!

[best we know x]

Posted: 6/17/06 at 7:28pm

I thought that Katie had a very pretty voice, and her acting was good, but I was expecting her to go into full-out head voice on those high notes, and...she didn't. They sounded strained. I had never heard the Piazza music before the telecast, though, except for "Statues and Stories", which was done on the Tonys last year, so I went in not really knowing what Kelli O'Hara sounded like.