Remembering NICK & NORA 25 Years Later

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 12/8/16 at 7:24am

It opened 25 years ago today, after two full months of previews. It closed after only one week and 9 performances.

I only just heard the score recently, and it is quite lovely. Did anyone see it?

Publicity shots:





Production Photos:







A very odd commercial:

 

If it Only Ever Runs A Minute segment:

 

Posted: 12/8/16 at 2:44pm

WOW!  25 years ago... Sadly, I can't remember one damn thing about the show because it was so boring save for one somewhat funny segment of Faith Prince getting kicked across the stage.  

[DCS]

Posted: 12/8/16 at 3:28pm

I saw the show during one of the final previews with a theatre friend of mine.  It had a wonderful cast, although Bostwick and Gleason were no Powell & Loy, but the talent up on stage was amazing.  Sadly, the show around them was a real mess.  We didn't care at all about the mystery (the murder of Lorraine, played by Faith Prince) and the score was a mix of some nice songs and some very forgettable songs.  The thing we remembered most was Faith Prince.  Neither of us had seen her onstage before and she easily walked away with the show, especially with her showstopper number "Men."  She was amazing and it was no surprise that right after this flop closed, she was cast as Adelaide in the Guys & Dolls revival and would win the Tony Award in the exact same season!  The cast recording does have some nice stuff, but this was a real missed opportunity.

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 12/8/16 at 3:55pm

I once heard Joanna Gleason basically say their main issueswere they needed an out of town and they shouldn't have been Nick & Nora, but just in the style of or even spoofing the style. 

[Cesare2]

Posted: 12/8/16 at 6:36pm

I also saw the show.  By the time it was drawing to the reveal of who had killed Faith Prince I also had given up caring who did it.  All those reconstructions of the crime!!!  And then IIRC the killer turns out to be a very minor character SPOILER ALERT Christine Baranski's "house boy" (and, it turns out, secret lover).

Strouse was experimenting with how to tell a story in song.  The CD is worth a listen.

[mtcond]

Posted: 12/9/16 at 8:43am

I saw it twice in a row during previews. The first evening I was so taken aback by what I saw that I had to come back and watch it go wrong all over again. I also came back because I had been told by a friend that there was a new number going in the next night, and indeed there was. Early in Act One, Christine Baranski had a song called "Puff" (I think that was the name), in which she stood alone in a spotlight smoking a cigarette, singing about her Hollywood fame which had disappeared like a puff of smoke. The next night, in the same spot, was "Everybody Wants to Do A Musical", which is on the cast recording. It was a big production number ending with a stage full of people. It was much more successful, but that wasn't the problem with the show. The problem was the book. As Nick and Nora interviewed characters about the murder of Lorraine, the scenes they described would come to life in front of us. Everyone's version of Lorraine was different--first she was a mousy little secretary, later in the show she was a coke-snorting lesbian. This gave Faith Prince the opportunity to come back again and again, playing a different version of the same character, which was a fun idea. It culminated in the infamous kick-line, where all the suspects lined up and kicked her dead body down the stage towards us, in the style of a Rockette kick-line. It was the best moment of the show. However, Laurents didn't trust the songs. They were constantly broken up with dialogue, pulled apart to the point where a number would finally end and there would be only a smattering of applause--we'd lost track of the song because of all the talking. And the gentle double-entendres of the films became leering, crass, bad jokes. Bostwick and Gleason did their best, but he in particular was absolutely lost in the proceedings. He sang the last song in Act One, "Look Who's Alone Now" at a table far stage right with a drink in his hand. Not only was the character miserable, it was clear Bostwick was, too.

[Miss Jezebel DuPree2]

Posted: 7/7/17 at 12:21pm

Where is Debra Monk these days?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 7/7/17 at 1:28pm

She was a regular on Mozart in the Jungle for a while, but I haven't seen the latest season. She'd lost so much weight, it took me a while to recognize her.

[markypoo]

Posted: 7/7/17 at 1:48pm

She was also in Visiting Edna at Steppenwolf in Chicago just this past season.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/8/17 at 11:40am

WOW!!  25 Years?  That makes me feel old.  I saw the show twice.  Once in early previews and once in previews two nights before it opened.  During that time they wrote a completely new song for Christine Baranski.

There were two problems with the show:  the script and the music!

It was an excellent idea to musicalize.  And they assembled a top notch cast.  The main problem was Arthur Laurents.  The script was dreadful.  It had Nick and Nora going against each other and splitting up to solve the mystery.  And there was no "sparkle" in the dialogue.  It didn't have that snappy delivery that the movies had.  In addition, the show was boring because in one scene they were trying to work out the possibilities of the different murderers and they sort of did a "tape rewind" sequence that had Faith Prince laughing manically about 10 times.  That got annoying very quickly.

The music is just so-so.  There was no song that really stood out.  It's a very mediocre score.

Updated On: 7/8/17 at 11:40 AM

[bk]

Posted: 7/8/17 at 4:42pm

What a piece of crap it was from start to finish.  Jack Lee, the conductor, who was a friend of mine had warned me - I was in his house seats.  Just before he began the little overture he turned to me and rolled his eyes just before he gave the downbeat.  It all went directly into the toilet with one of the worst opening numbers in the history of musical theater in terms of its not servicing the story at all (Is There Anything Better than Dancing - awful).  Nobody cared about anyone, Laurents' book was a complete failure as was his leaden direction.  The cast did what they could with the very substandard book and score and yes the score is completely substandard in every way.  An appalling mess and waste of time and money.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/8/17 at 9:32pm

It's the only musical I ever saw where the furniture got more applause than the actors.

In the opening, the Art Deco furniture comes swirling onstage and everyone applauded profusely.

[morosco]

Posted: 7/8/17 at 11:38pm

Not surprisingly, Arthur Laurents steers clear of claiming even the smallest amount of responsibility for the failure of the show in his autobiography.

 

 

[denali.fire]

Posted: 7/9/17 at 10:46am

Personally I thought it was worse than your description bk. 

Updated On: 7/9/17 at 10:46 AM

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 7/9/17 at 1:22pm

Ahhh I love hearing these scathing reviews!