Back from Bye Bye Birdie - I'm not going to be mean in the notes, but I am here to tell you that most of it was not very good. Everyone seems to love the choreography, which is very high energy and some of it is certainly appealing. But, as any great choreographer will tell you, it's just as important to know when NOT to choreograph as when TO choreograph. Every word, every beat had a step - too much until you read that the guy is the assistant to Patti Columbo, who is also a very busy choreographer. The book scenes were not well directed or perhaps not directed at all. The Rosie was very good because she got the humor and played it, so that was nice. The Birdie was awful - just terrible casting, a little Justin Bieber-type petulant runt - that may seem like a funny idea, but it's not funny for Bye Bye Birdie because it's nothing like the character in the show. Kim was too old (she certainly looked older than Birdie), the mother was okay, Jim Bullock was channeling Mr. Lynde and ad-libbing when he should not have been because a) the ad-libs weren't that funny, b) they took us out of the show, and c) the show is long enough without these sorts of additions. They added the revival song for the mother, which may be an okay song, but stops the show dead just when it shouldn't stop. They also added the movie's title song for some young kids at the top of act two - again, if you're going to add ten minutes to an already long act two, then you'd better cut ten minutes elsewhere.
The real problem is everyone thinks Bye Bye Birdie is a piece of cake. That would be incorrect. You have to cast it perfectly and you have to pace it perfectly, and you have to really understand the humor and how it must be played. We were in that theater for over three hours - fifteen minutes of which was a fund-raising curtain speech, and a fifteen minute intermission. I think the show itself must have run over two hours and forty-five minutes.
