budlvsdk

Played with him this week, terrible experience. Very expensive and quite the jerk.

2 hours ago, Benjamin_Nicholas said:

So many people forget that as soon as Effie is done singing the song, Michael Bennett immediately rushed the new Dreams onto the stage to sing 16-bars of Love, Love Me Baby.  It was his way of taking away Effie's thunderous applause and giving it to Deena, tricking the audience just before curtain for intermission.

While I wasn't around yet for the early days of the show, reading stories on how Bennett wanted to play these kinds of mind games with the audience was fascinating.  It reminded me quite a bit of Cabaret when the Emcee, singing If You Could See Her, hits that last sentence and flips the whole audience on their ass.

You're absolutely correct on all counts, thank you. As I wrote the comment, I wanted to remember being gobsmacked by Ms. Holliday and wallow in the memory. She was a force of nature like I'd never seen, and Bennett's work was gorgeous. However, I was remiss in describing the structure of the play. Dare I say it? I was lazy.

I was disappointed that the revival and "recent" tours of Dreamgirls weren't using Bennett's concept and staging.  His work was brilliant, and I felt it would be lost. I have been friends with a number of people who worked on that original Broadway production. Bob Avian being one. I asked him why no one uses Michael's blocking, keeping in mind the tight reign the Bennett estate holds on major productions of A Chorus Line. I assumed there was an artistic issue or the current producers didn't want to lease the choreography, something along those lines. He said it is not economically feasible to mount the same production today. Building the original set design, costumes... would make it impossible to recoup the investment. Perspecive, $11.5 million to mount Hadestown.

Had a great time reading this thread. Thank you.

Great experiences:

The original Broadway production of Dreamgirls with Jennifer Holliday. During AND I AM TELLING YOU I'M NOT GOING, people were lifted out of their seats and then standing on their seats, screaming as the curtain came down on the first act. Great show, great production. I used to second act it as well.

I saw that last revival of Carol Channing's Hello Dolly in Denver before it came into Broadway.  It's an old warhorse of a musical and I didn't have high expectations, however, it does have a good book and score. Channing was amazing. Seeing her up there carrying that musical so brilliantly actually brought me to tears.

The Scottsboro Boys was fantastic.

Music Man is my favorite of the older shows, haven't seen the current production yet.

Not so great experiences:

Contact was... oy. I thought, you gotta be kidding me. I thought that girl on swing number wound never end. Broadway ticket price with canned music, left at intermission.

Once. It seemed everyone I knew was raving about this show, crying, holding their hearts. I guess I'm a heartless bastard, I wanted to take the guitar away from the leading man.

Cats.

Oh, and I saw a regional production of 1776 I really liked except the actor playing Rutledge (sings Molasses to Rum to Slaves) had a bilateral lisp.