Fly By Night at Playwrights Horizons

[macnyc]

Well, sad to say, I did not like Fly By Night. I found the score unmemorable except for a little fragment of a melody that we were encouraged to sing a couple of times in the beginning. The characters were mostly two dimensional, and I didn't find the story interesting at all. The ending came out of left field and was particularly unsatisfying. The whole thing felt kind of pointless. I had been looking forward to this and shelled out serious money (for me) in the absence of TDF tickets, so this was really a ticket purchase to regret. The only aspect of this production that wasn't a miss was that most of the performances were professional.

[Mike3]

Loved it. Beautiful. Quirky. And in the end, deeply satisfying.

[ThorouglyModern2]

Is it just me or does Adam Chanler-Berat always seem to play the same roles on stage? After seeing him in both Fortress of Solitude and Fly By Night he seems almost interchangeable. Just once I'd like to see him with some good posture and confidence!

[NicoleMWright2]

Does anyone know how the rush has been for this show?

[MrBaxter]

What are the chances this gets recorded? I loved the music.

As for rush, I was there last night and saw at least six people get in for rush--and there was a big donor event going, so presumably it was a pretty packed evening.

[haterobics]

"Is it just me or does Adam Chanler-Berat always seem to play the same roles on stage? After seeing him in both Fortress of Solitude and Fly By Night he seems almost interchangeable. Just once I'd like to see him with some good posture and confidence!"

Is he consciously playing different roles in the same manner, or getting cast to play similar roles? Those are two very different things.

[RippedMan]

I've met him in person, and can attest that he's pretty much just playing himself. Maybe with slightly worse posture.

[Mike3]

Looking forward to a review from the Times.

[macnyc]

Here's Brantley:

The Deli Guy, the Waitress, the Actress and the Blackout
‘Fly by Night,’ a Metaphysical Musical

You’ll be happy to hear that “Fly by Night,” gracefully directed by Carolyn Cantor, is a lot easier to follow than “If/Then,” which features confusing parallel universes. But this latest exercise in time warping is similarly hobbled by a sense of stasis and a tendency to repeat itself, both thematically and musically.

That’s too bad, because at 80 or 90 minutes, instead of two and a half hours, “Fly by Night” would have been just the ticket for audiences with a taste for sentimental quirkiness set to music. I mean, the kind of theatergoers who get misty listening to the 1960 original cast recording of “The Fantasticks” and sob happily over vintage movies about mixed-up, madcap young things who love and lose.

http://nyti.ms/1oVZOwB