| Oliver last night (spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 01:58 pm EDT 05/11/23 | |
| Posted by: mikem 01:45 pm EDT 05/11/23 | |
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| I made it to Oliver last night, and I had a swell time. Raul Esparza was in, although he is clearly still sick. He was taking in huge amounts of air while holding for applause at the end of his first big number. His makeup job doesn't look that much different than it does in the NY Times review photos, but I think they may have been overcompensating a bit in the first act so it actually made him look more sick rather than less sick. (It was better for the second act.) I'd be very curious to talk to Esparza someday and get his review of the situation about how intentional the impression was that he left on me, but he is a brilliant actor and it seemed much less that Raul Esparza the actor was sick but more that Fagin the character was sick. Not that Fagin had a sinus infection, but that he had cancer or some other kind of serious chronic illness. His Fagin is desperate, incredibly desperate -- much more so than I normally think of Fagin. And there was this subtext that he was desperate because he had some kind of serious illness and knew that he had to do what he could while he could still do so. His Fagin is deliberately making compromises in standing by and watching Bill Sikes abuse Nancy and threaten Oliver. He knows it's wrong but he is going along with it because he feels he has limited options. I don't know how much I'm finding subtext that Esparza did not intend. Lilli Cooper was great. She really sold me on As Long as He Needs Me as almost a tragic song sung by a complicated woman in a complicated situation. Nancy is making compromises, just like Fagin. Before the show, Jenny Gersten from City Center came out and announced that five cast members were out (1 female actor, 1 kid, and 3 adult male actors), and that actors were doing split tracks on minimal rehearsal, and basically asked for forgiveness and understanding for imperfections. I thought it was very smart of Encores to do that, because it got the audience on the cast's side from the get-go. Not that it was needed. Extremely little bobbling from the cast. The kid who was out was not replaced, so some of the dancing was asymmetric. There are only 1 female swing and 1 male swing in the Playbill (I think Into the Woods also had 1 swing of each sex), and there were 2 additional male swings added on who had cast bios in the insert (Albert Guerzon, who was in the ensemble for Into the Woods at Encores, and Matthew Steffens). Special shoutout to Ryan Worsing, the male swing in the Playbill, who played both Noah Claypole and the Knife Grinder in Who Will Buy, and was great in both. A few random thoughts: - Who decided that choreography should be all about gymnastics moves? All too often nowadays, I feel like I'm watching the Gymastics Floor Exercises at the Olympics rather than a musical. But it gets huge applause, so I don't think it's going anywhere. -This production had fully choreographed numbers and a two-tiered set, and while watching, I was thinking, "How exactly is this alleged staged concert different from any production on Broadway?" The set is not as elaborate as a typical Broadway musical, and there are fewer costume changes, but the costumes themselves are pretty elaborate. -The ending was incredibly rushed. It felt like it was literally around five minutes between the time Nancy gets killed and the show is over. Bill Sikes gets shot, Fagin loses his cache, and Oliver gets reunited with Mr Brownlow very quickly, and the Fagin moment in particular kind of got lost. Is the rushed ending true for the original script as well? Jesse Green made reference to the script being shortened in his review, but I don't know what the changes were. |
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