I bought a ticket solely to see Joshua Henry but his standby Ryan Vasquez was on instead. Within 5 minutes Mr. Vasquez and the entire Company had the entire audience hooked.
This show grabs you with the sheer intensity of its staging by Kail & Wall. And Mr. Golan's music and lyrics...a welcome new voice on the theater scene.
2
I saw this show and loved it. Travis Walls choreography was gorgeous and the show itself was tight and powerful. Not sure what Ben Brantley is talking about here.
2
@Michael - I'm even more interested now that it feels from all the notices that this is unlikely to move without real changes. I'm recalling a tough-subject show like "Next Too Normal" went out of town to D.C. after off-Broadway and really listened to the critics, then came back a big hit.
I don't see it until November. (I'll duck as I write this, and hope it's not offensive but just a joke.) I wish someone had video'd the show and illegally posted it, so I could see it sooner than that. :)
This show is a huge hit with theater goers. No, it’s not plot-driven. Neither was “The Band’s Visit,” a show I’ve heard many people describe as follows: “Nothing happened.” Yes, it functions on an archetypal level. So did “The Lehman Chronicles.”
“The Wrong Man” is a show with terrific music and dance, and of course the amazing Joshua Henry. If you can get tickets, you will enjoy it.
That Brantley happily includes spoilers here with no alerts is unimpressive. I think he was the wrong man to review this show.
4
Regarding "Yet unlike those shows, “The Wrong Man” feels like a repetitive internal monologue, one that never leaves its protagonist’s aching head to freely roam the world. And there’s little originality or variety in our hero’s thought patterns."
I don't see this for a while, but this sounds like a rare case where pretty much everyone's at the top of their game, but trying to pull off something that's hard to make an audience connect with. Maybe that's the essence of what costs in non-profit spaces can be, to try with full commitment - and hooray when it works, but not lose as much investment money when it doesn't work.
The first act of "Groundhog Day" felt like it was doing something like this, and what kept it soaring for me was finding the variations were hilarious and tuneful, and were deepening the already revered movie, then payoff in act 2. Maybe a strange leap, but suddenly, I miss the Sondheim "Groundhog Day" that didn't happen - though I wouldn't have wanted to miss the one we actually got for anything. But clearly, there, audiences just didn't convince their friends to go see it in enough numbers. (Or maybe when I see it, I'll see it's totally different, LOL. And even if not - I've never seen the new MCC space - my spouse ended up having to go without me to "Moscow Moscow..." for some reason I can't recall, but I saw "Tootsie" without him which makes no sense either; and I keep hearing the new theater is terrific.)