I hope DR ELMORE gives us the PIPE DREAM report.
Be careful what you wish for,DR JRand61. I stayed awake, I wept through much of the score: the orchestrations are so brilliant and some of the songs - "Everybody's Got A Home," "Sweet Thursday," "The Next Time It Happens" - are just glorious and heartbreaking. The charts bt Russell Bennett and hsi team are funny, romatic,band often merely ravishing. Second rate Rodgers - and there a couple of low raters (not as low as ME AND JULIET!) is still better than a lot of first raters writing today, and Rb Berman and the orchestra just make it sparkle.
Th book is pretty bad, but full of heart: these skid row bums are endearing and dumb, the local cop's a good chum, the whores all have enormous golden hearts, and the plot limps to a weak conclusion, thanks to a really fantastic cast and staging: I loved Tom Wopat and his malaprops, Leslie Uggams had really wonderful moments as a madam running her whorehouse like a den mother for brownies, I think Will Chase can do littlw wrong, and Id never seen Laura Osnes before and I thought she was wnderful. It was exactly the kind of show Encores! should do: a mediocre show that would never get a major revival but needed to be seen on the strength of its creative team. I really look forward to the recording.
