Great Days

Well it's been one great day after another since Thursday. To start with, my emusic downloads refreshed and I downloaded the London cast recording of High Spirits. I have the Broadway version of "Something Is Coming To Tea" on a compilation and liked it, hence the downloading of the full London album, and their version is even better. Actually, the whole album is pretty superb. Seriously, we would have a fantastic Broadway season if someone would revive High Spirits, Raisin (with Audra), Applause (with Patti) and Coco (with Meryl Streep). Speaking of Audra and Patti, they were superb on Sunday at Ravinia. After Thursday's sturm und drang, it was so nice to enjoy the lovely weather, take my time, have something to eat, and really enjoy the day. They came the closest to starting on time, just a few minutes after 8, and set the bar high with "Pack Up Your Cares and Go To The Devil." They then alternated doing sets of solo songs, joining up again as one would leave the stage and the other return. The highlight was their joint performance of "What You Don't Know About Women" from City of Angels as well as Patti's performance of "Meadowlark" (and her accompanying story about her experience with Baker's Wife), and Audra's performance of "I Can't Stop Talkin'" In fact, the only real low point was the shortness of the show. There was no intermission, and it was over by 8:30, only an hour and a half, and they had to repeat their encore (another highlight, the Judy/Barbara rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy"). Really, knowing their audience you'd think they'd have another encore or two planned, and the show really could have gone on for much longer. However, they did follow the cardinal showbiz rule, they left everyone wanting more. Great, great night. Then this morning, I found out someone really is reading this blog. In addition to Avenue Q, coming next May, Broadway in Chicago is bringing The Drowsey Chaperone here in early April and Sweeney Todd here in late April/Early May. Hopefully we'll get the top flight casts (Georgia Engel and Bob Martin in Chaperone and David Hess and Judy Kaye in Sweeney). It's gratifying to see how much influence I'm wielding through this blog. I'm taking full credit for the producers of these shows changing their minds, no one else around here was raising an eyebrow at our omission from the posted touring schedules. Now, audiences, you need to do your part and show up, let's keep the shows coming.

And She's A Bigger Diva

Oh my dear Lord, what a day Thursday was. All morning and early afternoon it was so nice. Then, around 3, the storms came and came and came. It was worse than when I had been sitting on the plane at LaGuardia last month. There was thunder and lightening and the rain just kept coming down. Since Deborah Voigt was performing in the Martin theatre and not the Pavilion, I figured I might as well still go, the trick was going to be finding a way to stay dry between when I would arrive at Ravinia and when the Martin's doors opened at 7:30-ish. I left work at 5 and got to Ravinia's gate around 6:15, having driven through debris strewn all over local streets in Niles and Skokie, crawled in traffic on 94, then swam down the flooded out Dundee Road and partially flooded Green Bay Road. I didn't want to pull into the lot and then just sit in my car because there was still so much lightening and all those trees scatered around the lot would just be tempting fate. So, I kept going into downtown Highland Park and pulled into a parking lot at the train station. I figured I would wait for the rain to let up and then go eat somewhere, and then head back to Ravinia after the doors to the Martin were open. I didn't really want to eat at Ravinia's restaurants and spend that kind of money, and there's no indoor seating if you just grab something from the café, which is what I normally do. Well, the storms did not blow over. I sat in my car until 7:30 and just watched the lightening and rain continue. I listened to WFMT and there was no mention of the concert being cancelled, so at 7:30 I pulled out of the train station and went back to Ravinia. There were maybe 10 other cars in the lot, so I was able to take my pick of spots and stayed away from the trees and lampposts and on the gravel covered area so that I wouldn't get flooded out or stuck in a rut with my wheels spinning after the concert. At that point the rain finally died down to a drizzle, but the thunder and lightening were still substantial. I grabbed and umbrella and ran in, and got my seat in the almost deserted theatre. There were maybe 30 people in there, it was very sad, especially since it was sold out. Debbie waited until about 8:15 and by that time it was closer to half full, and by intermission it was about three-quarters full, so I'm glad she had a decent audience since it was a fabulous show. It was her and a piano on the stage and the intimacy really worked for her. She looked stunning in an elegant black dress (note to Covent Garden: she CAN pull it off) and she really played to the audience. She is definitely the best sporano performing today, I've seen both her and Renee Fleming in concert and in performances and Debbie V definitely is the better of the two. The best part of the concert was four songs by Respighi which she filled with so much emotion. I also enjoyed her five songs by Verdi and out of the seven songs by Bernstein, I really liked It's Gotta Be Bad to be Good and Somewhere. She also showed a lot of grace when some asshole's cell phone went off twice. She has such a great stage presence. The show was so great the audience called her back for four encores, in which she got to also show off her piano playing skills, and ended with a phenomenal Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, much bouncier and more full of joy than Heather's version on Monday. It ended up being such a fantastic show I was so glad I dealt with the weather and went. I had been exhausted, irritated, and hungry when the show began and she was so fantastic I totally forgot about all of that. Not even Cher was able to do that. Afterward, the rain had stopped and I was able to get home fairly easily except for a few traffic lights being out after I got off the expressway, but at that time of night it didn't create too much of a backup. Tomorrow it's Patti and Audra, the biggest divafest yet!

She's a Diva

Despite the nasty weather all day yesterday, it turned out to be a fantastic night to be at Ravinia. The rain stopped, the temperature was comfortable, and a Martin theatre event always means easy parking and exiting. Too bad the concert itself didn't quite live up to the pleasant night. It wasn't a bad concert, in fact for the most part it was quite enjoyable, it just wasn't the great concert it could have been. Now, for those of you who haven't been keeping up with my posts, I'm writing about Heather Headley's concert at Ravinia last night. I knew going in that there were no guarantees. While she's more known to the Ravinia crowd for her Broadway work, she's better known to the general public for her god-awful solo albums, and there was a sizeable contingent there last night that was obviously drawn there by their familiarity with the crap part of her output. Trying to balance the two factions would be difficult enough for any artist, but for a younger, less-experienced artist like Heather, it presents even more challenges. She started that night, albeit almost 15 minutes late, her first diva act of the night, by giving the majority of the audience, including myself, what we came for. The first act was Broadway and standards. I had been hoping that she'd surprise us with a performance of "What's New At The Zoo" from Do-Re-Mi, but apparently she didn't think the entire audience was as big hardcore fans as I am of her BWay work, and she did not. However, since I really wasn't expecting her to perform it, it wasn't that much of a disappointment, but as I mentioned above, it is one of the things that kept a good concert from becoming a great concert. She opened with what is hopefully a hint at her next project, "Home" from The Wiz, and while I wasn't fond of her band's orchestration, she nailed it. She came out looking great in an elegant dress and fabulous stillettos and set the bar quite high for herself. It's been confirmed that The Wiz will be returning to Broadway next fall, but casting and creative details are being held quite under wraps. It would be the perfect vehicle for Heather to make her return, and if this wasn't a veiled hint of her upcoming plans, let's hope it was her audition and the producers were in the audience. She almost capped it right there by saying "Thank you -- and good night!" and pretending to walk off stage, only to turn around and return to the mike, it was a great way to poke fun at her diva image. However, she then followed it up with about 10 minutes of inane and repetitive stage banter. We got it the first time, you're honored to be here and it's going to be a fun night. You don't need to repeat the words "honored" and "fun" fifty times, you're not Anne Rice. She then made another diva joke about continuing to play the role of a Nubian princess long after she left Aida and went into "Elaborate Lives," my favorite song from Aida, but held back a little too much on the bridge and left the audience underwhelmed. She made up for it with some nice standards, and then closed the act with a series of Broadway songs including "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man" and a gorgeous rendition of "Bring Him Home," dedicated to the soldiers in Iraq, which we found out through another excessively long and embarassingly awkward stage monologue. She's got the singing down, but she needs to work on the stage banter. We didn't hear Babs or Diana fumbling around and repeating the same phrase over and over again. If you want to join the greats, you've got to pay attention to your entire act, not just the music. Stage banter aside, my only real complaint about the first half of the show is that at times it felt like she was trying way to hard to prove that she is a Serious Singer. You could just hear the effort she was putting into lines like "God --- on --- hiiiiighhhhh," just really stretching it out. She let us know that she was working, while a true great would just work and make it look effortless. Again, good concert, not great. We then had intermission, which also went on longer than announced (the 10 minutes became almost 20), and then she came back for the ghetto part of the show. Obviously, if she had it her way, she'd devote her career to turning out more of her crap R&B music and ditch Broadway altogether. The band kicked off a Stevie Wonder song (I don't know what the title was, but the chorus was "I love you, I love you, I love you"), and she came out in some outfit that looked like it came out of the clearance bin at Nordstrom Rack. She had some sort of lumpy black sleeveless shirt-type thing and black capri pants, and a cheap looking gold chain that looked like it came from the jewelry counter at JC Penny. Now apparently she's married to some football player, so that may have some influence on her personal musical and style preferences, but it was obvious that she was much more comfortable and at ease singing Stevie Wonder with a WNUA-style-sounding orchestration, and ironically, it improved her vocal performance. It wasn't so painfully earnest and she was obviously having fun, which at least made the song palatable. She seemed much more at ease, the banter was more restrained, although still a little too rambling in some places, and she obviously was having more fun. She did a couple R & B songs, a great rendition of Elton John's "Your Song," and then blew the roof off the Martin with "I'm Not Your Superwoman," or at least I think that's the title, she said it was a song from about 15 years ago but didn't give us the name of it, and that was the chorus. Again, the orchestrations were awful WNUA style light R & B, but her voice saved the songs. However, she then ended the show with one song each from each of her CD's. She did "I Wish I Wasn't" from the first CD, which is probably the most tolerable, although still horribly dull, and then the title song, "In My Mind," from her newer CD, which was the lowest point of the show, and unfortunately the end. She didn't do an encore, it was the awful song and then she walked off and the lights came up. I had really been hoping she'd pull out "What's New at the Zoo" for her encore, but it was just not to be. However, while her musical choices left some to be desired, her stage presence was phenomenal. She had all the diva moves down pat, and would give Diana Ross a run for her money. Someone just needs to sit down with her and tell her that the R & B crap is not the way to go. It's too bad that she obviously enjoys performing it more than the music that made her famous.

Sweet CD's and a Big Week For Grease Guys

As expected, my weekend trip to Wisconsin last weekend was horribly dull, but hopefully I won't have to go for at least another year now, if not longer. The upside was that I got to stop at Barnes and Noble by my parents' and picked up the 1986 Sweet Charity Revival Cast recording. First of all, has anyone else noticed that track 9 is missing for the track listing on the back? It goes right from Track 8 to Track 10. Will this make it a collector's item in the next 50 years? The Sound Of Music had the same problem, it skipped track 12 on the back. Anyways, the Sweet Charity recording is far and away the best out of the 4 that I'm familiar with (the original Gwen Verdon version, which, as much as I like her, I find her vocals too grating, the Shirley MacLaine movie soundtrack, of which the less said the better, and the Christina Applegate revival recording, and again, as much as I love Christina, I was rather underwhelmed). Bebe of course is fantastic, and Debbie Allen is terrific, she's the only one that I don't cringe when she yells "Hey girls, it's me, Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarity" at the end of "If They Could See Me Now." My only concern is that it was put out by the same label that did March of the Falsettos, DRG, and while it appeared to copy ok, no Music Match shutdowns, I still have to listen to the copied files to make sure the sound quality is still ok. Speaking of The Sound of Music, I also picked up the 1967 revival recording of South Pacific with Florence Henderson, and boy, what a career she could have had if a certain television show hadn't come along. She's good on the Oklahoma! CD, but her star power really shines through on SP. She sounds almost exactly like Julie Andrews on "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair." It's definitely again, the best out of the four major recordings available (the original BWay recording, the movie soundtrack, and thwe 1986 studio cast). That's the one that's staying on my mp3 player. The other CD that I'm finding myself pulling out more and more is the Side Show cast recording. I liked it to start with but it is really growing on me in a way I don't think any show has lately. The last I can remember like this is Les Miz, I loved it the first time I heard it and then after I saw it, I couldn't get enough of it. Side Show is just like that, I keep hearing more and more every time, it was definitely an overlooked gem. Hopefully it'll be ripe for revival in about 10 years, maybe with Lea Michelle as Violet?

Speaking of CD's, the Grease recording is going to be released sometime in October. I'm still debating about whether or not I'll buy it, but since that bitch isn't in it, and I said I would if she didn't make the cut, I probably will. Hopefully there'll be some nice pictures of Max in the booklet to at least make it worthwhile. Speaking of Max, he's got a brief interview on playbill.com, and if his answers don't scream Big Queen, then nothing does. I do have to admit, it takes one to know one--the most played track on his ipod is the same as the most played track on mine, enough said. Hopefully he'll be done with constant rehearsals the next time I'm in NY and I can get a personal meeting. However, it's been a big week for former YTOTIW contestants. Gorgeous Derek is taking over the role of Matthew in Altar Boyz in New York. Hopefully he'll stay long enough that I can get a personal meeting in with him too. He's just got to watch his pitch and make sure he doesn't get so winded doing the dances that he can't belt out the notes. Fortunately for him he's cute enough the audience should be forgiving. While he's bringing faith to the masses, Derek will be losing his head nightly in Florida in a hoped-to-be pre-Broadway productio nof a musical Tale of Two Cities. At least if he cracks any more notes, the audience can see its wish fulfilled at the end of the show.

Apparently cute guys are heading all over the country, Xanadu will be touring starting next year. A definite tour schedule has not yet been announced, but producers did announce this week that the show will be touring the US and going to London. Please, come to Chicago, we've got several smaller sized theatres that would perfectly replicate the Helen Hayes's ambience. I'll be there every week if the producers could see their way to making us the first stop. However, while Xanadu has been enjoying unexpected success, Idol: The Musical is the new Carrie. After completely replacing the cast during previews, the producers closed the show on opening night. Why pay New York prices to see an impersonation of Clay when you can hop on gay.com and get him in person?

And lastly, after a lackluster summer (except for The Most Happy Fella and Philip Glass), Ravinia is kicking it into high gear next week, with not one, not two, but three fabulous events: Heather Headley on Monday, Debbie Voigt on Thursday, and Patti and Audra on Sunday. Look for my reviews next week!

It Sucks A Little Less

Well someone out there is reading this blog and paying attention, and I'd like to say a great big Thank You!!! It was announced this morning that Avenue Q will be stopping in Chicago after all, and not just at the very end of the tour. It will be playing the Palace from May 27-June 7, 2008. Granted, that's not a very long run, especially for a Best Musical Winner, but it's better than the original plan. So, now that the producers have stepped up, it's up to the audience to show up and keep the Palace filled to capacity every night. Let's show them that we appreciate their effors and deserve to have other big name tours (i.e. The Drowsy Chaperone and Sweeney Todd) come through as well.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

David Yazbek has done it again. He's adapted (with help) a popular non-musical movie into a terrific Broadway musical (for the right reasons, unlike Legally Blonde, The Wedding Singer, The Color Purple, etc.) and Chicago has all but ignored it. Granted, The Full Monty opened in Chicago on September 11, 2001, so it was doomed from the start (the tour ended after its Chicago run and the Broadway show closed soon after, along with several others that were dependent on publicity to survive), but there's no reason for this show to be so overlooked, and I've said this before, it's the producers' fault. I haven't seen such a sparse audience since the Supremes reunion tour in 2000. That theatre should have been packed. The company is top notch, and it's great to see Tom Hewitt in a role where he keeps both feet on the stage floor at all times. He did a great job, and I would venture to say I enjoyed his performance more than I would have John Lithgow's. D.B. Bonds was likewise excellent in Norbert Leo Butz's role, and the two of them played so well off each other, which worked to their advantage since this is one of the most subliminally homo-erotic musicals since Oklahoma!. However, the real standout was Hollis Resnick as Muriel Eubanks, the role Joanna Gleason originated on Broadway, but I honestly can't picture anyone else doing it other than Hollis. She was so terrific I wanted more about her. They could really do a spinoff show just about her character. The sets were terrific, and my companion, who did see the show on Broadway, although without John and Joanna who were both out for Christmas vacation, said there were exactly like the ones on Broadway, there's was no cheapening down of the show, as can happen with some tours (Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Aida). The whirling sets gave the show a needed sense of fluidity, it did a great job making the time period very non-specific so that jokes about Donald Trump and rap stars fit right in with the 1950's French Riviera jetsetting story. We were in the fourth row, so we got a nice view of the eye candy dancers, although without pictures in the program, I can't put names to the cute faces, but the chorus is very much worth the trip. The only quibble is that we were in front of the speakers and it was very loud. Granted, I've been to more than a few shows lately where the show was not amped enough, Frost/Nixon being the most notable, but at a couple times in the show, I still had difficutly hearing because everything was at high volume. Fortunately, that was only in a couple spots and was much more a function of where we were seated than a reflection on the show overall. It's here for another week, so everyone in the Chicago area needs to go support this terrific show.

Kerflufumoxed

Yes, I know the title of this post is not a real word. However, over the past 24 hours or so I've been in a state that I don't quite have a word for, it's a combination of being perplexed and flumoxed, with a bit of a kerfluffle thrown in, so I figured, what the hell, I'll just make my own damn word and there it is. So how did I get into this state you ask? Well, as I mentioned late last week, it was announced that Cheyenne Jackson and Kerry Butler were going to be roller skating onto The View yesterday to perform songs from Xanadu. I set my Tivo and spent all day yesterday at work in a state of charged anticipation. I rushed home, turned on the TV, started the recording, and settled in for a taste of New York at home. Well, there was no mention of them in the pre-show "Coming up on The View" features. Instead, they mentioned Jon Voigt (talking about Angelina of course, like we haven't heard enough about her), cool summer gadgets, and a big announcement. Well, I figured the big announcement was that the audience was getting Xanadu tickets or something, after all, it's the hottest show since Rent, and possibly since Phantom, which had a years long waiting list for tickets in the late 80's-early 90's. I watched the opening kvetching, which is usually good for a couple of chuckles, and sure enough, no mention of Xanadu. I checked the program info, and it still stated that the cast of Xanadu was going to be on. So, I fast forwarded through Jon and the cool gadgets, and with about 10 minutes to go, the show came back from commercial break with just the three women on stage. I figured they'd make the intro and then Cheyenne and Kerry would come skating out. So, they start talking about how they're lonely being three, and here's their new co-host, Sasquatch, I mean Whoopi Goldberg. So Whoopi comes lumbering through the audience up to the stage and they spend the rest of the show gabbing about how great it's going to be once she officially starts. That's right, she's not even officially on the show yet, but they still had to bump real entertainment to sit around chatting with her. Now don't get me wrong, despite her well intentioned but poorly executed sitcom, I like Whoppi as much as the next red-blooded liberal urban sophisticate, but goddammit they promised me Cheyenne singing Xanadu! Imagine how Whoppi felt on November 7, 2004, with all the news outlets promising a landslide win by John Kerry, and then the next morning, whoops, Bush is going to be the president for the next four years; that's how I felt when the Tivo got to the end of the show and still no Xanadu. Not even an acknowledgement that they were supposed to have been on and a promise of a future performance. The last time I watchted The View was over a year ago when they had Georgia Engel, Bob Martin, and Beth Leavell on, I don't think I'm going to be watching it again any time soon.

However, the kerflumoxing doesn't stop there. I then booted up my laptop, hooked up my cell phone for a faster connection, and hopped onto emusic to use up some of my downloads before I lose them (they don't roll over from month to month, they're like cell phone minutes). I pulled up the 1995 Pal Joey recording with Bebe and Patti, which was the deciding factor in my joining, and when I clicked on the album title to look at the tracks, there was a message at the top of the page saying, "One or more tracks may not be available for download!" WTF? Why are you offering a recording of a show if you can't give us the whole thing? You may as well not offer it at all. I scrolled down the track listing, and sure enough, there was one song towards the end that did not have the download icon by it. Again, WTF? What's the matter with that track? I'm not going to download the other 18 and have a big gapping hole in the show. So, I'm trying to be optimistic that they'll eventually iron out whatever licensing problems they're having with that particular track and eventually offer the entire album sometime soon, and I pulled up the Broadway Grey Gardens. Now, keep in mind they have both the Broadway and Off-Broadway recordings available. I went into the Broadway one and got the same damn message! This time, for some reason, they didn't have "Entering Grey Gardens" available for download, and this is an even bigger WTF. They're offering the entire Off-Broadway album, including that one's version of Entering Grey Gardens, what's wrong with the Broadway one? It's the same composer, and while there are different chorus performers on the two albums, the chorus appears on other tracks on the Broadway one that they were offering for download. Why can't they give us the complete Broadway one? I really don't want to have to buy it since I already bought the Off-B one, but I wouldn't mind using download credits to get it. So, I then looked up SeeSaw, an obscure Cy Coleman one that was one of Michael Bennett's first directorial efforts that I just heard about, and that one had three tracks not available for download. Feeling like I was getting ripped off, I then browsed through the theatre selections and decided on the 2004 Off-Broadway recording of Finian's Rainbow. The library system does not have any recording of it, and it's a classic, so I figured it would be worth getting. Before clicking on "Download All," I went to amazon.com and looked it up and discovered that it was a truly intimate show with only piano accompaniment. The one user review was very negative, but the professional review, and the both the professional and user review on emusic were all very positive about it. In theory, I don't have a problem with it either, especially since I've never heard a fully scored version. When I saw Flora at Heartland last summer, they did it with jsut a piano, and even though I love the Broadway recording, it worked very well. I also thought the stripped down Sweeney Todd worked well, not every show has to have a massive orchestra, although in Side Show's case it would have helped, at least if they could have had a couple more brass instruments (the trumpets at the end of "Who Will Love Me As I Am" on the cast recording give me chills), and after seeing Most Happy Fella at Ravinia, I would never even consider buying the 1992 revival recording which was done with two pianos as the sole accompaniment. However, I listened to a few of the previews and like what I heard, so I downloaded the entire thing. I looked around some more, and out of the rest of the ones I want to get, only those three (which were my top three choices) did not offer all tracks for download. It appears I can get everything else I want off of there. BTW, I did get Skyscraper with the rest of my free introductory tracks after I did March of the Falsettos. I've got 5 downloads left to use by August 20 and next week or so will get the first 5 tracks of High Spirits and then after they recharge I'll get the rest of that album and start on The Boys From Syracuse. I'm still disappointed, but I'm trying to be hopeful that at some point in the near future they'll offer the rest of the tracks from those albums, especially since there's no reason for them not to.

However, it hasn't all been doom and gloom lately. It was also announced yesterday that Frankenstein The Musical will open later this fall at 37 Arts. It seems kind of a small space for such an elaborate show, but given the run of luck they've had lately, we should be glad it's getting done anywhere. Of course they'll be competing for attention with that other Frankenstein show, but those of us in the know will be voting for quality with our wallets. I also found out that the 1986 Sweet Charity with Debbie Allen and Bebe Neuwirth is out on CD. However, of course, Borders is not carrying it, but Barnes & Noble is, except for the B&N at Old Orchard, which is the closest one with a music and movies section to where I work. However, the one at Geneva Commons has it, and I have to go home next weekend for my mom's birthday, so I'll be stopping to pick it up on the way, along with possibly the Will Rogers Follies and/or Applause, both of which Borders also is not carrying and the library does not have (actually they have WR Follies, but it's been checked out for almost a year, which means it's probably lost). I'm not a fan of what I've heard of either the 1966 original Gwen Verdon production or the recent Christina Applegate production, so I'm excited to pick up this one, which also has the distinction of being the first musical to win Best Revival at the Tony's (prior to 1977, no revivals were honored, and between 1977-94, there was only one Revival category in which both plays and musicals could be nominated, and one would win. A play won every years from 1977-85, and then in 86 Sweet Charity was the first musical to win it. Only two other musicals won after, Anything Goes in 88 and Guys and Dolls in 92, and then in 94 they established separate revival categories for plays and musicals). Seeing as how the original did not win Best Musical and the recent revival did not win Best Revival, this seems to be the one to get.

Locally, Steep Theatre's production of Inconsequential got a fantastic review in the Sun-Times. They're only about 4 blocks away from me so hopefully I can drag my companion to it before it closes. In another bit of good new for an often overlooked show, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre is going to be doing Passion this fall with Gary Griffin directing and starring Ana Gasteyer as Fosca. I didn't see her in Wicked and I did not like her in The Threepenny Opera (she shrieked all her songs, but then again, so did everyone else, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt), but I will love her forever for her Celine impersonations, so you can bet I'll be in the front of the line for that (granted, the line will have 3 other people in it, all older queens than me, but I'll still be first). Lastly, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels got a decent, although not enthusiastic review in the Sun-Times today, and I'm looking forward to it. They said it was about half an hour too long, dragged in places (including my favorite number on the cast recording, Ruffhousin' mit Schmidthausen, listen to it and figure out why), and isn't as much fun if you know how it ends. I think I can deal with most of that, the only shows I've seen that have been too long have been Chekovs and Threepenny Opera, knowing the ending I can enjoy the clues (does anyone think The Sixth Sense suffers on a second viewing?), and I'm very familiar with the cast recording, so I doubt that I'll feel that it drags. Plus, Hollis Resnick is in it and she rocks! So, look for my thoughts on Sunday. Until then, start sending emusic nasty emails demanding they offer only complete cast recordings.