HOLLER IF YA HEAR ME Previews

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

First of all, happy first preview of first show of the new season. I always am filled with such hope at the downbeat of a new season, and truthfully I was looking forward to seeing Holler If Ya Hear Me tonight.

Kenny Leon started things off with a curtain speech reminding us to tweet, text and call everyone we know after the performance, granted that we enjoyed it. If we didn't like we were told to keep our mouths shut. One of the messages I took from the show was to stand up and tell the truth, so with all due respect to the director's wishes this one was a stinker.

There are no words to describe the book of this show. The first book scene was so deadly I felt like I was in the twilight zone. No dramatic thrust at all, no character development. It's not just that the plot is paper thin, the actors aren't even characters. The score doesn't help in this respect because none of the songs are character driven. They are all about social issues, which makes the characters nothing more than mouthpieces for the topics at hand.

The script is basically devoid of humor and there are so many dramatic pauses it would make Pinter blush. The actors certainly were expressive and emoted when they sang, but when given a page of dialogue they went all wooden. It was like they were so confounded by this book that they were scared to say the next line.

The songs fared better, but sometimes it felt like they were part of a revue rather than an overarching story. The lyrics discuss prison, the state of the neighborhood, drugs, violence, death- but they don't deal in characters so it gets old after a while.

California Love, the jam you could tell everyone in the audience was most excited for, kind of got shoehorned in there, and the worst part was it has an abrupt ending that denied us the chance to applaud. Many of the songs need buttons added instead of just fading out. Keeping the energy up in the audience is VITAL in a musical like this. Let us have a place to clap after the numbers.

The story is kind of like half of West Side Story. It's the Jets vs the Sharks, but the Jets' story takes place completely off-stage. The conflict is building up the to the big rumble in act two and you keep thinking, how are they going to pull this off because we've never seen the rival gang.

The worst crime committed is underusing Tonya Pinkins. She is the only one who was truly able to navigate her book scenes, and though her one song was somewhat extraneous, she sold it. Hey, it's a paycheck, and it's a step up from A Time To Kill!

The set = non-existent.

Despite having a negative reaction to this one, I hope others don't give up on trying to create a musical like this for Broadway. The unoriginal score really hurt it- imagine what In the Heights would have been like with a Jennifer Lopez jukebox score- and they needed a stronger book writer to string it all together.

[Wickedmonkey332]

Can't get the image to upload- but check #hollerifyahearme on instagram and there is a picture of the song list.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

Song List:

My Block
Dopefiend's Diner
Life Goes On
I Get Around/Keep Ya Head Up
I Ain't Mad at Cha
Please Wake Me When I'm Free/The Rose That Grew From Concrete
Me Against the World
Whatz Next
Dear Mama
Holler If Ya Hear Me

My Block (reprise)
Changes
Resist the Temptation/Dear Mama (reprise)
Hail Mary
Unconditional Love
I Ain't Mad at Cha (reprise)
If I Die 2Nite
Only God Can Judge Me
Thugz Mansion
California Love
Ghetto Gospel

[Wickedmonkey332]

Jesus- don't think this will be on my summer to-see list.

[Play Esq.]

Thank you Whizzer! Helpful as always!

...great start to the season, it seems.

[brdway411]

We were just comparing it to WSS over dinner.

[broadfan327]

Whizzer's review was a good summary. I thought about the West Side Story comparison while watching the show. I did thing even some of the dialogue was beautiful to listen to, even if it didn't help out the bad plotting of the piece. I also noticed they need more applause breaks as well.

[bwayphreak234]

No set?! Also, any reason for the stadium seating? How does his work in the Palace?

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

Well, of course we all thought of West Side Story, ha. It WAS the plot of WSS!


SPOILERS********************************************************


We were denied the rumble in this version because they actually listened to Tony's plea for piece and decided to drop the beef they had with the rival gang. This is what prompts them all to get together and singing Sante Fe, I mean California Love.

The trouble is all we've been hearing about for two hours is the rumble. The whole musical is building up to this point, and talk about edging a guy to near completion and then putting him the chastity device.

END SPOILERS*******************************************************

[Blackbird3]

Thank you for the song list, Whizzer!

[HenryTDobson]

Is the show at all salvageable? Or is it doomed regardless?

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

I don't think they'll be able to completely turn it around without writing a whole new book (and with their short preview period I seriously doubt that could happen), but there's lots of opportunity for them to fix things. It's about 20 minutes too long, and there are many places to make cuts.

It just feels like a rough draft to me, much more than a first preview should. There are ideas of a show up there, but it needed to be put through the developmental process a time or two more before playing Broadway. A try-out in California would have been most helpful.

[broadfan327]

I forgot to mention that the language is very explicit throughout, and not in The Book of Mormon humor style. I did notice that most of the comped older people returned for the second act, so it must not have affected them as much as I thought it would.

[RippedMan]

I'm surprised they didn't try this out of town first.

[brdway411]

I am one of the older comped people and I thought the language was right for the show. I was afraid we were going to get a watered down hip hop show. Again, as Clyde stated it is not the train wreck I was expecting, I think with some cuts and a little faster pacing this could have a healthy summer. It's not bad, but it is far from great.

Also regarding the stadium seating, it takes out a fair amount of seats, lowering the seating capacity of the theater. So if it bombs, it will not look as bad than if they left the original orchestra seating.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

In terms of tone it reminded me of American Idiot mixed with a harder version of In the Heights.

Passing Strange made commentary about race in a far more eloquent and interesting way than anything this had to say. So did Caroline, Or Change. (Oh, and Tonya doesn't get to say the word change A LOT. I was praying she would just ad lib, "Changin's a danger for a woman like me!")

[PlayItAgain]

I echo what others have said, not at all a trainwreck but not a masterpiece either and if Leon isnt an idiot they can make some fixes to knock it from a 4 out of 10 to like a 6, my biggest issue was with the tone of the last 10 minutes also Saul Williams needs to emote not scream, there is a difference,

[brdway411]

^^^ agreed about the screaming thing.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

I think the last 10-15 minutes are all over the place in tone because they were like, "Oh sh!t! We haven't found a spot for Thugz Mansion or California Love yet, and people are going to want to hear these songs."

[ClydeBarrow]

My thoughts echo a lot of what Whizzer has already said in a far more eloquent way so I'll try my best not to reiterate much. I, too, am going against Kenny Leon's advice about keeping my mouth shut if I didn't like it.

I think the main reason a plot summary isn't readily available is because the plot doesn't exist. To me it felt like we came into the middle of the show. There is the character of Benny who we never meet but he serves as the basis of the show. I don't care about Benny when we're forced to attend his funeral (not a spoiler because he's never seen and it happens five mins in). The relationships between every character on stage are never clarified to where I thought two characters were brother and sister but they were actually former lovers.

One of my main issues with the book is the lack of dramatic tension. As Whizzer said, there is so much talk of this rival gang but they remain unseen so it never feels like a real threat. It seems like everything is being told and not shown only nothing is really being told either. As I sat there I thought it seemed more like a Tupac revue with random non sequitur scenes interspersed.

I'm actually a fan of Tupac's music but this is just silly. These are so watered down and safe that you never feel any emotion. The prime example of this is "Thugz Mansion" with a white guy strumming a guitar and two guys rapping along. I honestly don't even know who this musical is for because Tupac fans won't be into the castration of the songs and regular theatregoers don't want to hear rap songs in a musical that don't progress the plot. I found myself tuning out for most of the songs because I knew I wouldn't be missing out on any story.

The actors seem to be fine but there isn't enough focus on any one person for me to understand the character they're playing. Just when you think you've figured out who the "main" character is focus shifts to someone else and it becomes that person's story.

The set is pathetic. There are basically only a few set of steps, a fence and random cars wheeled around. One positive I will say about it is there was probably the most useless example of a turntable. I don't understand any point of when it was used. The projects are silly too.

I think this will be a colossal failure, not because it's attempting to do something new but because it's doing something new poorly.

[LimelightMike]

Is the stage high? I don't quite understand the stadium seating? Is the first row too close to 'take it all in'? Is this immersive? I don't quite grasp the aesthetics.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Still very interested to see this next week. Hopefully they keep working on it.

[PlayItAgain]

the stadium seating is because there are floor projections on the stage a production element a regular orchestra layout wouldnt be able to see,

[JeffDaEgg2]

I completely agree that it feels like you're just thrown into the middle of the show. It took me 2/3 of the first act to realize that we actually did see Benny before he died, but either way I didn't care who he was. We as an audience are supposed to be mourning him within 10 minutes for no apparent reason.

Overall I agree with previous posters that the book is the huge issue. You have no idea who these characters are and you don't have a reason to care about them other than the fact that you're spending time with them and suppose you should at least pretend to be interested. It's a weird book in that in a way too much happens (focus on too many characters), but then also too little happens at the same time (like, er, what the hell is it about?).

It's really strange that they have so few opportunities for the audience to applaud. Even if the audience were really into it (which I don't think it was), there was no outlet for their energy.

Also, at least in the mezz, the audience laughed out loud at the SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS sudden jump from California Love to "Oh, by the way, since there's no other gang we're going to randomly try to shoot you!" bit. I guess that is supposed to be the dramatic part of the show (?), so I'm guessing laughter is NOT what they were going there for. But it was just such a strange transition from "YAY, popular song and fun dancing on top of a car!" to a dramatic scene that it was truly ridiculous.

Sigh. Anyway, there were some good interpretations of the songs and I'm all up for new ideas, but I just wish they had done out-of-town tryouts and figured it out better before bringing it here.

[RippedMan]

This makes me question the creative team. I mean, at what point does the director think this is a good show and at what point does he think he can't make it any better and gives up on it?

[JeffDaEgg2]

Also, I saw in the other thread (bah, 2 threads) that their site apparently says no late seating, which was definitely NOT true tonight. I don't attend many first previews, so I don't know if this is normal, but they were seating latecomers for the first 15 minutes of the show without even waiting for a song to end or anything (another reason for applause breaks!). It was incredibly distracting and annoying.