LIFE AFTER - Pre-Broadway at Goodman Chicago

[broadwayindie]

Posted: 6/13/22 at 8:56am

Anybody see this? Just started over the weekend. Looks promising with a great cast and creative team and was pretty well received in San Diego.

 

https://www.goodmantheatre.org/LifeAfter

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 6/13/22 at 8:13pm

Saw this in San Diego and enjoyed it though I can't say it's stuck with me that much.  It reminded me a bit of Fun Home in the broad sense, in terms of coming of age and uncovering family secrets so to speak.  But it was quite lovely and a bit of a tearjerker, curious to hear about how it plays now since it's been a while.

[BookandLyricsby]

Posted: 6/13/22 at 8:43pm

At least on the surface, this musical seems to have a few similarities to a show that premiered in Seattle a couple months back:

https://www.5thavenue.org/shows/2021-2022/afterwords/

Even down to their titles. Dealing with grief, difficult parent-child relations, and family secrets. I guess millenials, myself included, are growing up and starting to deal with some ****.  

[Menken Fan]

Posted: 6/13/22 at 9:42pm

I saw this yesterday (pre-Tonys), and I was seriously unimpressed. I had seen the good reviews from the prior run, but I thought it was monotonous and annoying. No fault of the wonderful cast. The plot involves a girl trying to unravel the situation that resulted in her father’s death. After 100 intermissionless minutes, we never really find out. There’s a lot of dealing with grief and learning to move on, with some possible red herrings thrown in. Nothing in the show got me interested in the characters or the direction of the plot. There’s a scene where three characters are painting a wall. For several minutes. In silence. It was meant to represent moving on while redecorating the father’s office, but it was literally like watching paint dry. There’s a trio of women serving as a Greek chorus, commenting on the action, but totally weird and unnecessary. 

I may have just missed the point. I hope others like it more than I did. 
 

 

[Mark_E]

Posted: 6/15/22 at 10:36pm

Pretty much concur with with the comments above made by Menken Fan. This went nowhere. The score was the same “generic musical theatre song” we’ve become accustomed to, and the book and premise overall pretty poor.

To quote what I overheard leaving the theatre, if I was going to say something nice about it, the set design was great.

And it was, really wonderful set. 

[broadwayindie]

Posted: 6/16/22 at 8:03am

I saw it last night. I really enjoyed it! I think the second half needs to be changed as the ending just doesn't quite fit. I also am not a fan of the use of the ensemble or "furies" as the intention was not very clear.

I actually thought the best scene was the painting scene. It just should've been the very last scene and song to close it up.

I also thought the:

 

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House breaking apart and flying away was unnecessary. Like the set was BEAUTIFUL but was doing too much for what is a small show with a small story.

I think if they change some things around and figure out what they want to say, the show could work. I think it has good bones, good technical elements, great cast, but it just need some fixing.

[joshdog2014]

Posted: 6/17/22 at 9:50am

I really enjoyed this but I agree the material is a bit weak. I’d compare the way I felt about it as similar to Dear Evan Hansen. I walked out with the emotion and such of it really carrying the show through and making me like it, *almost* forgetting the issues with the quality I had it with earlier in the show. Although DEH has the music to carry it through whereas this music does sound very generic and cheap at parts. I think the story was pretty good, I liked it a lot, but it’s hard to evaluate right coming out of the show, especially with the emotion.

I also didn’t like the chorus. I agree they were unnecessary and I also found their material really annoying, to a point where I was wondering at some points if that was intentional. During a lot of the first half I went back and forth between thinking “this feels kinda cheap and generic and not that good” and “^ all that but it does work and maybe I kinda like it?” That’s the thing. Throughout the chaos and genericness and ehness, it does work a bit, and is enjoyable.

Are they making changes to this? I wonder if the painting scene has changed at all because I also found this (and the song leading in, Bryonha Marie Parham is great) the best part. Sure it was in silence but SO MUCH happened in that silence and it really set up the rest of the show to work a lot better than the first half. Samantha Williams was also great in this and in the second half she had some really good moments.

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 6/18/22 at 12:24am

I just got out of this. I thought it was solid, but there's definitely room for improvement if it moves to New York.

Contrary to most of the other commenters, the chorus didn't bother me that much. They had some of the funnier moments of the evening (like when they play the popular girls that flock Alice when she comes back to school), and they filled out some of the vocal arrangements really nicely.

The cast was all around excellent. Paul Alexander Nolan has some really beautiful solos, and Lucy Panush stole the show as Alice's friend Hannah.

Beth's song about the wallpaper was the highlight of the music. It's a truly gut-wrenching moment, and Bryonha Marie Parham knocked it out of the park. There were several of the songs that felt very repetitive, like it was all one song going on for thirty minutes, but when the songs stand out, they really stand out and get you invested.

Probably the biggest thing holding the show back would be it's structure. The way it tells the story is through Alice's thought process, which has worked with other shows, but it robbed this show of a sense of drive. It didn't feel bogged down, but by the time we get to the final number and the lights go down, I was left feeling like there wasn't all that much that was accomplished in the last 100 minutes.

Narrative aside, I think this show has some good bones. If the writer and director can figure out how to give the show more of an arc, I can see this making it to Broadway.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 6/18/22 at 1:02pm

I bought a 10Tix for this for Tuesday. I’m looking forward to seeing, it’s been a while since I’ve been at the Goodman. It was the last theatre I was at prior to the theatres shutting down.

[markypoo]

Posted: 6/20/22 at 9:06am

The brief appraisal I heard while coming out of the theater yesterday afternoon:

"Too many screechy female voices."

[JasonC3]

Posted: 6/23/22 at 4:07pm

Three stars from Chicago Tribune's Chris Jones in his review along with some suggestions to improve the book.

" ... if you fear for the form of new musicals, here you have a fully original, strikingly nonderivative show from scratch, compositionally formidable, closer to chamber opera than pop pastiche and lush, melodic and musically haunting to boot. It’s near through-composed (it could all the way) and it’s a very sophisticated affair that’s not only about something to which everyone can relate but a topic that really matters in the world."

[forfivemoreminutes]

Posted: 6/30/22 at 6:00pm

I just saw this today (for the matinee) and I thought it was enjoyable but not particularly groundbreaking. I think many parts of it felt very true to life, ex the friend attending the party, the older sister being jealous/angry, the teenager blaming herself, the mom feeling pushed aside (and the mom’s solo was a highlight). The other highlight was the scene with the snow towards the end. I wasn’t a huge fan of the last song - I didn’t feel like it tied things together or really had any conclusions. I think this is a “good” musical that could be elevated to “great” with some tweaking to create a more coherent arc for the characters.

[markypoo]

Posted: 7/11/22 at 7:44pm

Any affirmation that this is going to land on Broadway this season?

[lachri5]

Posted: 7/18/22 at 12:42am

The show is streaming on demand from July 15 to July 31 for $25: https://www.goodmantheatre.org/LifeAfter

[Alessio2]

Posted: 7/21/22 at 11:26pm

I saw this in San Diego three years ago and I loved it so much.  It really moved me and has stayed with me this whole time.  Based on the pictures from Chicago it looks completely different as far as production design goes ( I know its a whole new team). Just interesting to see the different take and direction this particular production seems to go.  I really hope this eventually ends up in NY.  I will definitely stream this!