Count me among the underwhelmed. I did appreciate the craft, but the evening felt insubstantial, the sort of small show that I could see working very well off Broadway. The stakes are low and the character development is not what we might have gotten from a fuller evening.
Still, I like Yazbek , and his scores always deserve a re-listen, so I am happen to reappraise it when the cast recording is out. My initial take, though, is that as much as I admired the craft of the comic numbers, they were a bit too broad and stylistically inconsistent with the naturalism of the story. The more lyric pieces for the soprano were better and often quite lovely (although is it just me, or does the chorus of "Omar Sharif" sound a lot like the chorus of "If I Could Tell Her" from Dear Evan Hansen?). I could see myself appreciating it more on repeat listenings. |
