Back from our reading of act one, and I must say it read even better than I'd hoped it would. And that's with some pretty bad acting going on and a LOT of stage direction being read. The first act ran exactly one hour, which seems just right to me. There were some things I heard that probably need a bit of tightening, but I won't know that until I hear the second act, and also when the actors are a bit more comfortable with their roles. I'm sure there's a few lines that can go, however, and I also thought that one character (well, not really a "live" character) could use some punching up on a few lines of dialogue. The songs all seemed to work - there's one longish stretch without music (it used to be even longer, but I put in a reprise of a song) that I have to look at, to see if I want to shorten that sequence or maybe add a short song in there. We shall see. Next week is Spring Break, so we don't get back to act two until a week from Tuesday.