Seemed to be a full house for tonight's ENCORES OFF-CENTER production of WORKING. The production was rather slow paced and while it had nice moments (and some very eye-catching choreography early in the show) it pointed up the inherent weaknesses in the material. The small cast does OK with the material-- Helen Hunt is fine and does a serviceable job with JUST A HOUSEWIFE; Christopher Jackson is a very skillful performer. It's a grab bag of songs and monologues-- many of them entertaining in isolation but disjoined as a collection.
HOWEVER: the show (and this production) come alive in the last quarter of the evening, when the wildly talented Andrea Burns delivers an IT'S AN ART that brought down the house. It was followed by David Garrison's exquisite JOE song/monologue. Which led to a really touching and nicely done A VERY GOOD DAY-- a 'new' Lin-Manual Miranda song-- sung by Andrea Burns and Javier Munoz. These three numbers were just fantastic, among the best moments I've had in a theatre over the last year. Is it the material? The performers? The production? I don't know, but the room came alive for these three songs, all in a row, near the end of a rather more subdued evening. |
