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| re: NBC Live's production of Pulitzer Prize winning play "All the Way Home" is on Amazon Prime | |
| Posted by: BHandshy (bradleyleroy@hotmail.com) 04:30 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
| In reply to: re: NBC Live's production of Pulitzer Prize winning play "All the Way Home" is on Amazon Prime - AlanScott 08:36 pm EDT 08/18/20 | |
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| Thanks for all of that info! The productions I saw of FIORELLO were community theatre productions. The groups that performed it are pretty good, so I don't really blame them (other than for choosing the show - LOL!). Part of why I find FIORELLO to be so bad might have to do with expectations - a Pulitzer Prize, a Bock and Harnick score, etc. I just expected better. Further, the story seems a little thin. Lastly, I have little interest in the lives of politicians. |
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| re: NBC Live's production of Pulitzer Prize winning play "All the Way Home" is on Amazon Prime | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 05:37 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
| In reply to: re: NBC Live's production of Pulitzer Prize winning play "All the Way Home" is on Amazon Prime - BHandshy 04:30 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
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| I think biographical musicals (and plays, too) are generally problematic, unless they focus on just short periods of people's lives. Sometimes they succeed when the person's life is still so well known to audiences that people can fill in the blanks and bring their affection for the person to the experience, but later they seem terribly insufficient. Of course, there are exceptions. After all, Gypsy is a biographical musical that covers a long period of time. I feel Fiorello! has a terrific score, wonderfully orchestrated and performed on the OBCR. I think that even when I first read the book, when I was 12 or 13 or so, I found it pretty insufficient. I think time has been even less kind to it, especially the scene where Fiorello advocates for America to enter World War I, which I suspect bothered some people even in 1959. It might be OK if it didn't seem so clear that we're supposed to think this is the right position. It's too bad because the score is full of terrific stuff, some of it really brilliant, but the show tries to cover too much. I imagine that the original cast put it across with a lot of feeling and commitment, and in New York at least, enough of the audience knew enough that they could fill in some of the blanks. I wondered what productions you've seen because the last time Encores! did it, the book was apparently so heavily cut that it seemed worse than it is. (The first time Encores! did it, the book was cut even more heavily.) So I wondered if you'd seen one or both of those and were basing your assessment on those. A friend who saw the last one and who didn't know the show found some of it just puzzling. Then he read the script and he said, "Well, it's not a great musical, but at least it makes sense. At Encores! it didn't even make sense some of the time because of the cuts." |
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