NY, NY may be on its way to closing-NY Post- Page 8

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 10:19am

I feel it they would have stayed faithful to the original 1977 film and strictly followed the journey of Jimmy and Francine, it would have found an audience as its a complicated love story reminiscent of A STAR IS BORN.  Kept all the songs written for the film and written new ones to fill in the rest.  They tried to slap on a 2023 diversity quotient and created a Robert Altman scenario with all the subplots checking off every box on the diversity list.    

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 12:04pm

^ Agreed. There were so many sub plots and it's tough to care about 39494 people in a span of 2.5 hours. 

 Nowhere in my reply did I say I didn’t understand the show

Oh, you didn't have to doll. 

 

[Huss417]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 12:11pm

Sutton Ross said: "^ Agreed. There were so many sub plots and it's tough to care about 39494 people in a span of 2.5 hours.

Nowhere in my reply did I say I didn’t understand the show

Oh, you didn't have to doll.

"


 

Can't you just give it a rest instead of constantly attacking people? The condescending attitude should really not be tolerated here.

Updated On: 7/31/23 at 12:11 PM

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 12:24pm

Huss417 said: "Sutton Ross said: "^ Agreed. There were so many sub plots and it's tough to care about 39494 people in a span of 2.5 hours.

Nowhere in my reply did I say I didn’t understand the show

Oh, you didn't have to doll."
 


Can't you just give it a rest instead of constantly attacking people?"

 

But then we would have missed out on the pleasure of seeing Sutton, who's constantly pouncing on the spelling and grammatical mistakes of others, omitting the comma after "to," rendering the sentence gibberish.

"Didn't have to doll"? How the insufferable have fallen!

Updated On: 7/31/23 at 12:24 PM

[perfectpenguin]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 1:08pm

MemorableUserName said: "Huss417 said: "Sutton Ross said: "^ Agreed. There were so many sub plots and it's tough to care about 39494 people in a span of 2.5 hours.

Nowhere in my reply did I say I didn’t understand the show

Oh, you didn't have to doll."



Can't you just give it a rest instead of constantly attacking people?"



But then we would have missed out on the pleasure of seeing Sutton, who's constantly pouncing on the spelling and grammatical mistakes of others, omitting the comma after "to," rendering the sentence gibberish.

"Didn't have to doll"? How the insufferable have fallen!"

Like I said in the first place, Sutton didn’t actually read what I wrote and if Sutton did, we wouldn’t be here. 

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 5:57pm

I'm glad I was able to catch this before it closed. It wasn't very good, but it was not good in so many ways, which I always find fascinating, particularly in how you can see the shape of something really terrific hidden under all the everything else.

The best parts were Colton Ryan and the score. Ryan was just totally captivating to me, he completely owned the role and I loved how much seemed to be going on inside him whenever he was onstage. He managed to reflect the darker side of De Niro's performance in the film while buoying it up with the show's lighter treatment, and making the connection between the two works feel almost natural. The score, of course, is lovely, and a great reminder of the absolutely massive talent of Kander and Ebb.

The problem with the score, and the rest of the show, is that there's way too much of everything, and it's all so mawkish. While I can accept that they would discard Scorsese's original vision of a dark, toxic relationship juxtaposed with the syrupy theatricality of classic musicals, I can't accept the unironic, unreflective cartoon world they put on stage. I'd go so far as to say the writing in this show was insulting.

Form-wise, it was an endless parade of missed opportunities and baffling, unnecessary inclusions. I try to enjoy shows for what they're clearly trying to be, but there were so many moments in this where I thought, why? There are so many examples of missed opportunities, but one that stands out to me is how they sing A Major Chord on the street outside of the bar where Jimmy was just playing piano. But now that they're on the street, he has no piano, so they have to mime playing the piano. It's like if the dance-off in West Side Story took place outside of the gym, after the dance.

The unnecessary inclusions contribute to this, because it means that everything has to be hustled offstage every five minutes to physically make room for one of the sub/side plots, or just to Do A New York Thing. The scene of snow falling in Central Park is broken up so Francine can throw Jimmy out of her apartment and everyone can come out on the fire escapes, because Dats Da Big Apple, Baybee! Now get off the stage, we need another scene of the violinist and the mom! That's enough of that, here comes the (insultingly vaguely) gay Puerto Rican guy and the woman who...makes dresses? Or something? Wait, we have to do the park bench pose from Manhattan! Move, move!

What really ground me down was the hokey flatness of the characters. The loveable news-stand guy, the overworked talent agent, the smarmy Broadway producer (with one of the most predictable heel turns I've ever seen), etc etc. They're archetypes that would work as clowns in a Cirque production, but here they just crowd out the story. The fact that all of this is done with absolute sincerity is what fascinated me, because it's all completely unbelievable hokum of the kind I didn't know still existed.

That plus the jittery pacing demanded by the sheer volume of content means that the songs are rarely able to be born organically from the action. The times that they are are thrilling (Sorry I Asked was particularly good), but then there are all the unmotivated songs that just fall flat for various reasons, like My Own Music, or the two Emily Skinner songs. Even the title song comes across as little more than an obligation. When Liza sings it in the film, it's a release of the traumatic hell she's been through, but the journey the stage version of the same character goes on is so trite that the song is robbed of its cathartic power. It just becomes That Song.

I think that sums up this whole show. In the middle of all the nonsense, there's something that could be great, but the inauthenticity of the whole thing was impossible to ignore. I'm glad I saw it, because it was fascinating, but I don't think this show could've worked without a massive rewrite.

[Skip23]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 6:39pm

I saw it too, Sunday - last performance.  2nd time after seeing it in previews.

 

Colton grew on me. I wound up liking his quirkiness.  But, again, the sound design of the whole show was dreadful.  Missed a lot of lines.  And it had a tinny quality.  

 

Problem 1:  Anna Uzele.  As it says in the script - she's LOUD.  But that's about it.  Not much to attract Jimmy to her or her to the audience.  Weird how this is about the 5th show where the casting of the lead woman was bad.  They can sing, but no great stage charisma, "Wow" factor, or charm.  

 

Problem 2:  The songs - this after seeing CHICAGO last week.  These songs just don't grab you.  Bland and generic.  Except, of course, A Quiet Thing, The World Goes Round and NY, NY.  

 

Problem 3:  The choreography - too much and not enough all at once.  Tommy Tune used to say about Michael Bennett's choreography - he always knew to make you kvell (orgasm) in his numbers.  Stroman's steps are never ending, yet, numbing. 

 

Problem 4:  The separate stories.  I didn't have a problem with them, but none of them were very interesting or gripping (except maybe for Emily Skinner's story).  Throwaways.  And the central story was a big yawn.  

 

So nice to see Clyde Alves shine.  And so nice that they gave Jim Borstelmann such juicy, scene-stealing (albeit almost-cringey) bits.  What a ham!  

 

Could they rewrite it for the tour?  

 

 

 

Updated On: 7/31/23 at 06:39 PM

[yyys]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 6:47pm

would they tour a Broadway flop?  

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 6:52pm

yyys said: "would they tour a Broadway flop?"

I don’t expect we’ll see this show on any large stages ever again. Maybe a producer in the UK will rework it like they’ve done with a few recent Broadway flops. 

[PipingHotPiccolo]

Posted: 7/31/23 at 11:15pm

perfectpenguin said: "PipingHotPiccolo said: "the way Sutton cannot help but make every single post sound as if they are in charge around here, declaring who is right and who is wrong on literally every subject. It literally make me laugh out loud.



i thought Colton Ryan was one of the few highlights of this production, but i understand perfectpenguin's point. his demeanor, attitude, tone all would have worked wonderfully in Sopranos the Musical-- and since this show was Nothing In Particular the Musical, I thought his shtick worked great, actually."

Thank you. His demeanor, attitude, behaviors screamed mob.


But thank you Sutton and NotASoundtrack for accusing me of not understanding the show. Nowhere in my reply did I say I didn’t understand the show. If you would actually read the post I replied to, my comment was about his behavior and mannerisms gave off mob vibes, not struggling musician vibes."

No reasonable reader would think you misunderstood the show; you didnt say you thought there was a mob subplot. Your comment made perfect sense, although people could very well disagree with it. Just take the whines and gripes in stride as part of posting on a public forum.

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 8/1/23 at 5:59pm

Skip23 said: "Problem 3: The choreography - too much and not enough all at once. Tommy Tune used to say about Michael Bennett's choreography - he always knew to make you kvell (orgasm) in his numbers. Stroman's steps are never ending, yet, numbing."

The flatness of the choreography really surprised me. Wine and Peaches has an impressive set for a single song, and tap is an invigorating dance medium, but the dancing itself was kind of generic and did very little to play up the setting. They're not actually a hundred stories up, so why not have them going over the edge of the beam? Or leaping (as suggested by the song's lyrics) from one to the next, like the waiters in Dolly? Or, or, etc, etc. Instead, it was just slightly nervous-looking tap dancing. That heightened, fantastical element was missing.

I can see them doing some cuts for the (or a) tour, but I can't imagine it getting the kind of overhaul it needs. Every scene needed work, and a lot of them should just be removed entirely, which would entail the creation of new material to fill in what remains.