The score is great, O'Keefe and Benjamin clearly understood the tone of the show and wrote a catchy, tuneful, and appropriate score, given the characters, I still listen to it pretty often. The original Broadway cast was fantastic, especially near the beginning of the run when Laura Bell Bundy's voice was still in pristine condition. IMO, the jokes with the "PMS Girls" were at their funniest with Annaleigh Ashford, Leslie Kritzer, and DeQuina Moore. Honestly, I thought those roles were really nothing until I saw Haven Burton, Asmeret Ghebremichael and Tracy Jai Edwards (who was lovely but surrounded by mediocrity). And then you had Orfeh (who is a STAR no matter what she's in and what she's doing) and Andy Karl, who really tore it up....can't say enough about what a great group of people were onstage when the show opened.
As for faults, there's no shortage. The book is a hot mess. Heather Hack totally butchered Elle's character, especially by making Emmett her fairy godmother. It made believing Elle was actually smart really hard, and unfortunately, people faulted poor Laura Bell Bundy, when in reality, it was the complete hack job done by Heather. The direction was nonexistant (Jerry Mitchell should stick to making up hip-hop dance routines and leave the direction to those who understand it's purpose), and the choreography was passable, but I thought could've been improved. It was also unfortunate how long it took for Orfeh to get a real ending for "Ireland", the one-liner that was in there for awhile ("Make sure you wear four inch heels" or whatever it was) realllllly gave me second-hand embarrassment. Oh, and once Christian Borle started cheating on his wife with Laura Bell Bundy, the quality of his performance suffered, and it was hard to watch the pair of them onstage together. Andy Karl, in my opinion, was a better Emmett than him by a clear mile, but at the same time, you never want to see anyone else as Kyle. Cloning obviously is the answer here, but until that's possible, it would've been nice for Christian Borle to attempt to do something besides alternately snooze and flirt his way through the show.
That was kinda long. And don't even get me started on Bailey Hanks.
"Get mad, then get over it." - Colin Powell
Updated On: 8/15/09 at 11:36 PM