| re: Is there any chance this will extend again?? oddities | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 09:06 pm EST 12/17/24 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 09:03 pm EST 12/17/24 | |
| In reply to: re: Is there any chance this will extend again?? oddities - WaymanWong 10:59 am EST 12/17/24 | |
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| I know you don't mean anything by it, and most people use "regular performances" aka not previews, but I always have to say this... Can we PLEASE stop talking about Merrily like it literally played for 2 weeks? The show for for SIXTY performances not 16. It's not like I'm yelling on the hilltop to make sure people acknowledge 6 previews or something... the show played 44 performances on Broadway before it "opened" and the performances started to count as "performances." Please. There is absolutely no point in not including the many many preview performances the show had to public paying audiences on Broadway. It ran for 7 weeks of 8 performances sold to audiences, not 2. And I bet the 10k-30k people who saw the show during previews would tell you they saw Merrily... because they did. People can credit Friedman's often terrible, but sure, sensitive, direction all they want. The show has been performed for decades quite often, and the show was always way way way better than it got credit for in the original production which was met with coldness from critics and audiences for many reasons. A select few of us feel very strongly that the original version is still a much better and much more emotionally effective show. Nonetheless, you can't argue with the numbers. However... the *cast* of this particular production (and not her Boston mounting of the same production, or the film mounting from London which I thought was terrible) on Broadway seems to be the magic touch that put it over. Perhaps the reason Friedman didn't actually win is because people saw that despite that the show itself was succeeding and working and the cast was especially special, her direction was too much of a mixed bag, and outside of the lead actors, was maybe even not very good... to deserve a Tony for it. Best Revival was very much Maria's award, and I think that is very fair. She did helm and steer this production which, over all, was clearly a revival of the show that worked for people. But picking out her direction as deserving the Tony that year, I'm glad they didn't. (It's also not as if she's been steering and shaping the rewrites over the decades since they started re-working it... she did not, and was involved in, I think, none or very little of the rewriting that was mostly overseen by James Lapine. I personally think almost all the rewriting made the show worse, but hey, I know no one cares. Good or bad, it wasn't developed or overseen by Friedman, she got a version of the show that had been tested over and over again in mannnnnny major and minor productions for 20+ years before she got to it.) PS I was at the reunion concert too, and it remains one of my top experiences in the musical theater. |
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