Good morning, all!
It's another Toyland day; I have to wait for this UPS shipment - AGAIN! - and I've got the last couple of 2nd proof scores to check out.
DR JohnG, I saw the 2nd to last performance of RAGS: after the first act, the feeling was "why is this wonderful show closing?" Then Act Two answered the question: it was a mess. The cast was great with one exception, my late friend Larry Kert, who didn't want to be the villain, and that was his role in the piece, and his material wasn't very good. There were too many missteps:
1. Tammany Hall doesn't like Jews but needs their vote, and the political scene ends with all these snobby Catholics and Protestants happily dancing the hora with Stratas' character leading them? Isn't it fun to be a poor Jew from the lower east side? The scene should have been her first clue her husband wasn't an honorable person and a political pawn.
2. Stratas' character has been compromising in every way to keep herself and her son safe; I believe she should have been the character who dies, if anyone needs to, standing up to the rioters at the union meeting.
3. There never was much drama to the Stratas-Kert-Mann triangle.
4. Killing off Judy Kuhn's character in the Triangle fire wasn't a good move.
It was a wonderful cast and I wished the show much good, It deserved a run of several hundred performances like TENDERLOIN or other "almost hit" shows, but it couldn't run with the funding it had.
