| re: Kristen in ‘Versailles’ in Boston | |
| Posted by: PJ 08:00 am EDT 07/22/24 | |
| In reply to: Kristen in ‘Versailles’ in Boston - lordofspeech 07:43 pm EDT 07/21/24 | |
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| I saw this earlier in the week and had a similar reaction. My thoughts, in no particular order: *Chenoweth is giving it everything she's got and pretty much succeeding. She is funny, charming, scrappy, daring, and committed. The general vibe I got from eavesdropping on the thickly accented (hey, it's Bawstin, after all) almost-exclusively female audience members surrounding me that they were here to see Kristin/Glinda in her new musical. Many of them asked what it was about from their $129 seats at 3 minutes til curtain. The subject matter is a distant second to the return of their queen. I think they didn't leave disappointed, though I think they were shocked at seeing her play a pretty unlikeable character and in a show that is shockingly liberal with the f-bombs. *The writing is fair (the snappy dialogue, mostly), but the construction of this musical is lacking. At the end of the 3hr run time, I still couldn't tell how Schwartz and Ferrentino feel about Jackie Siegel. Further, I wonder what (if any) involvement the real Jackie has in this piece and whether or not that factors into the telling. There isn't a strong enough condemnation of her actions and ignorance to make it a cautionary tale, nor is there a true investigation into the why of it all with her. This show won't be good until the creatives sack up, find a true and clear point of view on this woman, and write THAT show. *Schwartz needs to write some honest-to-goodness melodies. What I heard last week was snippets of tunes and lots of speak-singing over guitar lines and harpsichord tweedling. He wrote perhaps 5 songs and yet this musical has about 247 musical moments. The only ones that stick with me after a few days are a deeply Best-Little-Whorehouse-coded "Biggest Home In America," a western TV theme song about the timeshare industry (for F Murray Abraham, who acquits himself nicely), and a truly lovely trio called (I think) "Little Houses" for Chenoweth, Nina White, and Melody Butiu that gives some life to Act 2 before things totally fall apart. There is also a song at the top of the second act during which the two younger women bury their dead lizard, which they killed through neglect (I'm not making this up, I swear). While I've never considered Schwartz a strong composer (his lyrics are nearly always head and shoulders above his music), I would place this score below works like Wicked, Pippin, and Godspell. It's like "The Magic Show," perhaps, but with a lot more music (none of it particularly good). Upon leaving the Colonial, I had songs from "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" rattling around my brain. Of all the people to adapt this, Schwartz is absolutely not in the top 50% of who it should've been. *There is a major thread of the French Revolution and the court of Louis XIV. It's a fun element, but it goes on too long, recurs too often, and loses its impact after a while. *The physical production is equal parts lavish and avant garde. There was a scene change in the second act that now holds the record for noisiest business going on behind a monologue in one. I suspect this will be worked out with rehearsal and the payoff (the completed mansion) is pretty cool. But maybe it shouldn't sound like The Big Dig to get there. *I'm wondering now if this musical might be the opposite of The Devil Wears Prada in that perhaps Jackie is the *only* character who should sing. In Prada, Miranda suffered from being a singing character in a musical; her menacing unknowability was directly at odds with the musical convention of a character singing their interior life. Here, perhaps Jackie should be letting us in by singing as everyone else is in a different reality? Chenoweth is already shouldering this massive sing. Cut out the cancer of everyone else singing and now we have a musical world that supports Jackie's dreams and delusions. *I was excited to see another musical adaptation of a documentary after Grey Gardens. This is about as far from Grey Gardens as one can get. I'm still thinking about it days later, but mostly in a "how can this be improved?" way and not a "I want to relive this experience in my memory" way. Looking forward to preview reports and probably going back to see it once more before it closes, PJ |
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