I saw Diner last night, and would rate the show in the good to very good category. I just don't think it's quite good enough for a successful Broadway run, at least at this stage, but perhaps it could make it with some work, though I have my doubts.
First and foremost, I thought that the music was terrific. As dramedy said, Sheryl Crow wrote 50's tunes that sounded, to those who are old enough to remember, like hit tunes blaring from our favorite jukebox or record player in someone's basement at a junior high school party. The music, and there was a lot of it, was first rate. Some of these songs ("Gotta Lotta Woman" comes immediately to mind) WOULD have been hits in the 50's, and others would have made it onto the "flip side", an inside joke for those who have seen the show.
But as dramedy also said, the show it too long. Perhaps way too long. (Perhaps this post is way too long also.) The sign as you walk in says that it runs 2:30 with a 15 minute intermission, but in the Playbill it says it runs "approximately two hours with one 15 minute intermission." What does that tell you? It tells me that there are a lot of cuts that have to be made. And for those of you who are counting, the show last night ran 2:37 and change.
The biggest drawback to me with respect to the show's future is that it suffers from the "what's it about" problem. What's Diner about? Well, it's about this group of young guys in Baltimore at the end of 1959 who seem to spend all of there spare time at a local diner. (Great set, by the way.) One of them is a bit OCD with a marital problem, one has a gambling problem, one has a drinking problem and one has a commitment problem. Oh, and there's also a Mommy problem and an "independent woman" problem. OK then, that's quite a mouthful, but is it a story? And most people who go to the theater, I think, want to be told a story.
The cast was excellent, top to bottom. I did not see or hear a weak link. My biggest problem was with the sound, and I know nothing about sound design. I had as good a seat as you could have, fifth row, dead center. And all of the sound (and it was a bit over amplified) came from one huge speaker set above the stage, dead center. So no matter where the actor on stage was standing, the sound always came from the exact same location. So you experts, is that something that can be corrected? The problem was that on occasion, there were close to 20 actors on stage at the same time, and it wasn't always possible to quickly identify who was speaking because you had no directional cue. Does that make sense?
The cast was really large, 23 in all.
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