As I predicted, people who saw the first free preview of Merrily here at the Annenberg are already saying it's great - uh uh. Cannot be great. I don't care what the production, what flavor of the month director is doing it, what his "vision" is or anything else - the book of the show has never worked and never will work - not the original, not the revisions made before Mr. Furth died, and certainly not now. When Maria Friedman's London production opened and garnered all those raves, I knew it was all BS and Sondheim nuts - they filmed it, showed it, and no one came - and guess what? It didn't work. The score works. Do a concert. But Sandy Bainum is in the ensemble, so I suppose I'll have to trek over there at some point to see it, but maybe not. Taking bets that the set is all scaffolding like all these shows do nowadays. And taking bets that some idiot producer, believing all the "critics" and their raves, will put on a stupid hat and take it to NY where it will do exactly what this director's production of Spring Awakening did - lose its entire investment. Then we'll have to endure the "some things are just worth doing, loss or not" - of course, it's not the producer's loss, it's all the suckers he got to put up the dough. That's whose loss it is.
