"The first act is a fairly consistent delight. But the whole starts to wear out its welcome long before intermission."
Never a good idea to start trying to make a point with a contradiction. But from the reader's standpoint, it's a useful red flag to what follows. The remainder of the first paragraph is devoted to the tiredest of tired banalities: the assertion that anyone who likes something you don't does so out of ignorance and unsophistication. (Notwithstanding the unaddressed fact that many people with a solid pedigree saw something far more worthwhile than you did.)
Never a good idea to make the central part of your argument a revelation of your ulterior motive: the "arrogance" of the producers. Again, from the reader's standpoint, it's a useful red flag.
And finally, never a good idea to put on blinders when trying to make a point with facts. You've hit the jackpot here, wearing them in both directions: seeing only the good in what Broadway was, and only the bad in what it is. Reality illuminates that there has always been crap that ran (a subject rehearsed with facts in response to earlier posts that want to forget that). That's not to suggest that there is not crap on Broadway now (there is, and too much) but simply that Broadway is (and has been within your viewing lifetime, unless you are a centenarian) first and foremost, a destination for that which is commercial, whether good or bad. Reality also reveals that during the same viewing lifetime, off-Broadway has developed as a destination for other, often better work, some of which then ends up on Broadway.
None of this suggests that you should like Something Rotten any more than you do. Nor does it suggest that you must have an interest in Broadway anymore. But that exposes yet another set of blinders (where do you store them all?) since you seem not to have opened your eyes to the riches of off-Broadway. Why not talk about Hamilton instead of something you regard as "claptrap" when you are hunting for "acceptable representations of the American Musical"? And then you can mention where it's headed in a couple of months.
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