| re: Along Roll We Merrily | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:29 am EDT 09/24/23 | |
| In reply to: Along Roll We Merrily - peter3053 09:01 pm EDT 09/23/23 | |
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| Because a friend won the lottery, I saw it Friday night. Our seats were in the first row of the balcony, the last two seats all the way over on house right. The seats were marked partial view, and they were, but we missed relatively little that seemed important in act one. Although the house seemed almost completely full, for the second act we were able to move closer to center in the same row. Unfortunately, directly behind me in the second act was a man who very often clapped for individual lines of dialogue (sometimes for three or four lines in a row). And the two women to my left talked a good deal and one of them hummed along at one point. As someone who greatly prefers the original version to the revision, I must say that I think this is overall the best production I've seen of the revision. Some scenes that I have thought did not play well in previous productions I've seen of the revision did seem to me to play well here. And for the first time since the original production, I was very moved by "Our Time," although I think a mistake is made by not bringing in the ensemble where they normally enter and start singing. A lot of the reason why I think this is the best production I've seen of the revision is the generally excellent work of the three leads. Having said that, I think a good many details are off, and the first scene in act two seems to me a pretty complete botch. And I think a major supporting player has been seriously misdirected. Also, I thought some lines and lyrics got lost, partly because of the sound system and partly because of occasional line deliveries that seemed too quiet and too fast. Jonathan Groff especially does the latter in several places, although he is generally quite good. I know the text so well that I never really missed anything, but I was pretty sure that other people were missing some things. It's possible that this is not a problem in all parts of the house. This is something that ought to be fixable and perhaps it will be. Along with these other passing audibility and clarity problems, Krystal Joy Brown is almost completely inaudible under the blasting band during much of “Good Thing Going” in the second-act opening. And when she can be heard in the later parts of the song, she riffs on the vocal lines several times in a way that seems very out-of-period for Broadway in 1964. During the overture, the amplification was so loud that I took out a packet of tissues and made a couple of earplugs, but after the overture the volume adjusted to something less ear-splitting. And, as noted, very occasionally dialogue was probably a bit too quiet. Still, there is much to like about this production, most of all the performances of the three leads, who have terrific chemistry together. In particular, Lindsay Mendez seems to me the best Mary I've seen since Ann Morrison (although so much of Mary's dialogue is different than in the original that it's a bit hard to compare). In "Opening Doors," "Chinese laundry" has been changed to "Russian Tea Room." I don't recall hearing this in any other production. I wonder if this is a change that Sondheim made. |
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