Very disappointing. The actors work hard to overcome the silly plot, but there's not much they can do so save the music. Boring and dull.
3
@johnb - regarding the music (and again, the only one I know here is an usher, and she gets paid whether this show gives or not) - I got to sit with the score out of curiosity (it was sitting there in a friend's apartment), and the melody lines are pretty idiosyncratic, in a way like the melody lines of Menken's best work, and the orchestrator (and arranger?) brought the songs to the correct pastiche we now hear, presumably working with the composer since as in "Little Shop," that's what the "Scotland PA" charactes are. Maybe that led to the director seeming to dispel the genius aspect (he just is, sorry!) and what you'll hear will be accessible? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/theater/adam-gwon-scotland-pa.html
(This isn't IMHO like Yazbeck - "Tootsie" trying to match the hilarity of the book and he had no need to PROVE himself as a composer.)
It notable, though, that the regular guy look he had now seems in that article's photo ready for the school locker of teen "Wicked" fans, akin to the "Tiger-Beat-ready" makeover for Pasek & Paul from the hard working guys on NY1 during "Dogfight." ( If you've got it, why not? Stephen Schwartz always looked like a dream. Even John Weidman always looked stunning during "Pacific Overtures" - as a pal joked after the making of "Someone in a Tree" TV show, you can't go wrong buying based on what the writers look like. In that, even the 25-ish Frank Rich looked like the great guy you'd want to bring home to the folks.)
We felt sorry for the actors--working so hard to make drivel into entertainment!
4
Whether you see the musical or not, watch the movie, which is fabulous.
@AHP - I just watched it, and found it more intense than I was expecting. I wondered if it would have felt different in the movie theater with others reacting.
I see CSC is already doing a rip-off of the plot. (Kidding, in case that's not clear.) It's a critics pick, too. With both stage shows pretty short, our English teacher Mrs. Blaine would have kvelled to make a field trip in one day - but I think the wouldn't have had us see the "Scotland PA" film.
(Mrs. Blaine was a local celeb with a Sunday morning WNBC TV show The Jewish Scene, and she at times arranged amazing things I assume through folks at channel 4. We kidded her when she put on sunglasses stepping off the bus, but indeed, she was stopped twice for autographs, and again in the theater! Like 16 year olds sitting around and chatting with Vanessa Redgrave about Ibsen as if we were talking to a pal's mom, and she let us ask about the PLO. An old old classmate was just saying these things would happen like in Mary Poppins or Auntie Mame,
and we actually didn't realize how abnormal that was, but get that now looking back.)
This was the most inane show I have ever seen. The presumption of using "Macbeth" as a baseline for the story was an embarrassment to all concerned, including the audience. Yes, I laughed during the show, but only at how juvenile it all seemed. What are we coming too when musical theater is becoming nothing more than adolescent's who think putting on a show is worth the price of a ticket? Shame on Roundabout!
8
@Ray - if you saw "Book of Mormon" and "Something Rotten," both IMHO so well written within the type of show they were and with some interesting themes sneaking in (along with an often Porky's by way of Animal House style), did you feel that way, too?
I wonder if just as what some people call generic if they're not having a good time, others might call comfortable and enjoyable if they enjoy it; or what's predictable to detravtors may be reliable to others - what some might call outrageous if they're enjoying it, others might call juvenile if it doesn't grab them the right way.
2
@Freddie Freddie, the number of comments you continue to make praising this show leads me to think you have some connection with it? If so, you really should disclose it. I note that you indicate in an early comment that the wife of a relative is Lady Macbeth. I took that as a humorous metaphor but maybe it was a fact?
2
@Emma - seriously, it turns out we know one of the ushers! But I went down the list and it really is rare, that not even anyone from our building is involved.
And we know one of the ushers at "Little Shop," too (though sadly that doesn't get staff rates for that show, which it seems we got for "Curvy Widow" and the hip-hop "Othello, the Remix." Even if there were one for "Little Shop," what would staff rate on a $399 ticket be, $349?)
I think the photo accompanying this review pretty much spoils the "Mc" surprise, doesn't it?
2
Wow, Jesse Green, did we even see the same show? Was there a single musical number that didn't sound exactly like the last one, all of which were generic? And what about the pathetic attempt at adolescent humor? Doesn't this belong in a High School auditorium?
14
Totally agree --- the adolescent humor --- it made us leave at intermission?
You claim a strong book? It's a dime a dozen.
Is this a review or cheerleading squad?
8
@tobin Ah yes, the Upper West Side elitist snob contingent have the guns blazing for this show. We just can't have anything that the public might like--we want the theater to be completely for our own musty tastes and ordinary people can go to hell!
This was a fabulous production and everyone in our group, which spanned 3 decades, loved it as well. It seems like there are a lot of negative comments here but methinks these people were somehow expecting high theater. This is a fun, rollicking show with a supremely talented cast. Not just another play, it has witty dialogue and songs.
Frankly, some of the biggest and most popular shows of this ilk that are on Broadway right now I found trivial, boring, and downright dumb (as well as much too loud). I would love to see this on Broadway someday.
3
You say, "I was worried the witches would be Charlies Angels" like it is a bad thing.....cant wait for that version
1
It is incomprehensible that the Times is praising this musical. It has third-rate production values, mediocre music, amateurish staging, and singing, dancing and acting only at the level of a decent college drama club. I was shocked that Roundabout would stage something so utterly lame, and doubly shocked that the Times would encourage its readers to patronize it.
16
(I was dared to do this.)
And yet even the commenters are afraid to say a word about the costumes. But that melisma was simply stunning.
"It is admirably well sung and acted by the spirited cast, especially the smoky-voiced Jones as Pat and Alysha Umphress as the stoner who spouts both prophecy and melisma."
1
@Freddie The singing was barely competent and the acting was stilted. Every musical number sounded like the one that preceded it. I wouldn't have minded that the premise of the show was so juvenile and that the staging was so uninspired if at least the music and singing had some originality and quality. Overall, this show was pathetic and is an embarrassment for Roundabout. (I had no problem with the costumes.)
3
@Claudia - LOL, now I'm going not sound like a shill for the work almost all the NYC non-profits are doing, but if they're doing work that would please everybody, they'd just be commercial organizations billing the non-profit system (which folks like Mnuchin act like all the non-profits do by pointing to the occasional abuser of tax exemptions, but the abusers among non-profit theaters are rare.)
I think the Roundabout, Lincoln Center Theater, MTC, MCC, Art Nova, AMAS, NYTW, the Public, etc, never have anything to be embarrassed for when they try something that might be too risky for commercial producers to try, including in their non-commercial missions developing unknown talents in anything modern based on classics, and trying for something thatbgets enhanced like a "Hamilton" (the Public) or "Hadestown" (NY theater workshop and the producer is from the McCarter) that meets their nonprofit mission but when they have a "Rent" or "Chorius Line" goes on to finance more risky work.
When you take risks that commercial theater can't take, of course by definition you're not always going to please everyone. Today many of us act like some money-minded people said "let's make a surefire premium fortune adapting a big biography of Hamilton," or "let's rake it in with two generations dealing with a teen suicide and another would-be teen suicide." There were dozens that were just as risky that didn't work for those to pop out. With NEW work, hits can't be planned - hits happen!
1
This show was an abnormally boring take on strange material, lacking in focus and clear storytelling. It felt amateurish and frankly unfinished. At intermission I found I didn't care for any of the people in the show, so I had a decision to make. Many people around me at intermission were looking at each other, trying to find a friendly way to communicate the same "what the...?" I believe I made the smart choice for my own mental health, and saved the rest of my evening.
11
@Boo - these comments have a pretty high amount of people who walk out at intermission. I almost never see this happening. Are people getting free tickets, and therefore have nothing whatsoever invested in hoping to at least know what's on writers' minds - even if they go on to not like it? What brought them to the piece to begin with?
1
@Freddie -- Myself, I go to many new pieces of theater, especially musicals. I'm fascinated by different approaches and styles of storytelling. This particular telling just didn't get me involved in any way, and the juvenile approach left me cold. I paid full price for my ticket -- happy to do it. It actually gives me full ownership of what I'm seeing and how I'm responding. But I'm also happy to walk out and claim my freedom. It sounds like many others have claimed their freedom from this show as well. Deservedly so.
4
Maybe it's the passion people who bother to comment online have about the theater? Perhaps that brings them to shows without knowing what they're in fro in advance, that they feel they need to see everything they can?
I almost never see walkouts at intermission happening, these days when I pick and choose what to see, and also before premium started, when I used to easily see literally every musical in Manhattan and at BAM, and every Broadway play.
What an interesting take; sadly, I found this show to be idiotically juvenile and uninteresting. What I do find fascinating is how the same piece of entertainment can inspire widely divergent reactions among the same small audience. Our intellectual variety as a species is amazing.
12
@PW - when I saw a commenter the other day saying emotionally that "Little Shop" demeans women (I think it's comically hopeless about everyone and everything being doomed, with hope by way of a gentle warning not to do this in life) and maybe should be retired, I can't say that anyone's feelings are correct or incorrect, but it was really a moment to acknowledge that some segment of a theater audience will react differently.
As someone who found "Moulin Rouge" unique in conception from pretty much any jukebox show, since its potential songlist was infinite and from that so carefully chosen to fit the tragedy-bound plot for drama and often needed humor, and IMHO the script is by one of today's top film and stage artists - and we know that some actually find it vulgar, and even some who really enjoy it feel it's just an occasion to see a big well-staged show with their friends and a full bottle of champagne.
The past week or so, even with Lynn Nottage writing the "MJ" musical, there are so many who absolutely don't want it to happen already, not trusting that she will not let her already great legacy be diminished for commercial reasons, that with her there, integrity will prevail, which it always has in her work.
Views are expressed intelligently at times. You just have to fill the house enough to be viable (and avoid protests), not make everyone happy. (PS. Boy, I'm hitting the comment box space limit more than when I was 50!!!)
It's a zany show. Not everyone's cup of tea, but we laughed a lot. You have to be in the mood for something very silly.
9
They better extend the run.
7
Fries and Strawberry Milk Shakespeare! Love it!
5
Whatever pleasant but slight charms this show may hold (including a winning cast), the overall effect is still that of a well-meaning college or community theater production. Almost all of the audience members at the performance I attended looked at each other at intermission as if to say, "Huh? That's it? Why is Roundabout spending so much time and money on what at best is a doodle?"
8
@njray - Light-seeming work at non-profits by developing writers goes back at least to the lighter-than-air "Lucky Stiff" paving the way for more risky work from the same emerging writers, or even "Little Shop" at WPA before that. .
A friend kept trying to get seats improved and got annoyed that even the "rush" line was getting better seats than she had. When the subscriptions person told her, "It's that we have a very loyal subscriber base," she said (this is the gist) "I know, I've subscribed since you were on 23rd Street. I've seen your loyal subscriber base for years now , and surely you're not suggesting that there isn't at least some turnover." (She got an improvement that time.)
I'm into that demographic now, where you really never 100% know our heirs may be inheriting our subscriptions at any time (remembering when LCT memberships were so red-hot they really were being left in wills because for an event like "Godot" at the Newhouse, be a member or be left out). And we love and support theater, but I could describe the reaction to the feel of the plane crash at "Napoli, Brooklyn" similarly, or the overwhelming end of the first act at "Joe Egg." I could never be a reviewer, as I found on the school papers, like Beto O'Rourke at Columbia when he reviewed "Will Rogers Follies" no holds barred not knowing he may run for Pres. someday - for example, it's a rare skill to reflect that reactions of that night's crowd (either way) never are indicative of always.
This is also exciting on another level, because the wife of one of my relatives actually is Lady Macbeth, so the story resonates! If she smells money, maybe she'll put in for a piece of the inevitable great royalty pool. Seriously, while many audiences may not identify with these characters, I have a feeling every family has either a Macbeth or Lady Macbeth, or if not that at least a co-worker or two, who we can imagine thinking like this, just aren't pushed to these extremes. That may be where the universality of even this outrageously plotted work can potentially bring it even to premium.
1
@Ted Pikul - I certainly have a little McDonald's in me, with the power of suggestion from the photos in the reviews today! Nothing's better than fast food that's really bad for you than being able to get it delivered to you these days without having to walk two blocks and burn 40 calories picking it up.
Do you mean troubled people think others are Macbeths when they actually mean well, or that Macbeths are troubled people?
I sure hope not everyone has Macbeth in them, that not everyone will decimate other people for their own gain in money or power. (Reading the Patti LuPone article, it hit me that while Evita as written in that show was a Lady Macbeth, she didn't have consequences for it; that she would have died when she died even if she'd been a totally giving person.).
it's fascinating that Adam Gwon, who had made a mark as masterful and idiosyncratic, winning every prize in the early 2010s, is breaking through to the big time finally - by pulling back. I guess it really is the story and how it moves and draws us in that makes a show a hit, and this feels like it could make it big.
He won everything for such exciting fresh work in the early 2010s. He won the Kleban Prize in 2011, the $100,000 award Ed Kleban set up, in practice not so much for the joy it brought the two winners, but the character-building suffering it brought the 298 aspiring writers who lost each year. (IIRC, he won CPA of the Month at my office, an I'm pretty sure he didn't work there.)
It was a little odd seeing in the feature piece on Adam Gwon last week that even Mr. Price and Mr. Haimes were pushing that the music here was accessible. Wishing him so much money from this, that investors line up to make this artist's uniqueness heard as well.
1
This was the first score of his I'd known: "String (Village Theatre World Premiere 2018; Richard Rodgers Award; NAMT). String was developed at the O'Neill Music Theatre Conference, NAMT '14, and the inaugural Oscar Hammerstein Festival at the Bucks County Playhouse. String also won the Frederick Loewe Award at New Dramatists, a NAMT residency grant, the Weston Playhouse New Musicals Award, and the Richard Rodgers Prize." (from his collaborator's site). Back in 2011 or so, I'd never imagined it could succeed on Broadway - but Hadestown and Evan Hansen have pretty much exemplified that the rules have changed, and therefore almost no rules, as to subject matter that well-to-do audiences can go for and can become premium if handled right and open at the right time.
I see I actually checked with Adam Gwon before using this widely via his site, his name at 1:07 (the "gone, love is never gone" part). I was doing one of these every week then.
WHAT I DID GOT SNUBBED, parody of WHAT I DID FOR LOVE. Kleban Award 2011 parody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZn00NbxLbM
(Ed Kleban, who endowed the prize, was a known curmudgeon who was so great writing warmth for characters, and it was said roast-style that "A Class Act" notwithstanding, it was as real about him as "Gypsy" or "The Cher Show" - his good friends always knew Ed was straight because he disliked women less than he disliked men.)