Back from seeing a new musical. It was just what I thought it would be - a vanity production on which was lavished a HUGE amount of money for a three-week run in which the producers will lose every cent. I would have to imagine they probably spent $350,000 to 500,000 on this. It's about Ronald and Nancy Reagan meeting at Chasen's and their relationship up until they marry. Scenes with wretched songs scotch taped to them - there's no real reason for this to exist - maybe as a play, but the songs do nothing and are just bad. Some of the laziest and worst rhymes I've ever heard. Fella and tell ya. Sorry, F for fail. There's nothing compelling going on and the ninety minutes seemed like three hours because the show has no momentum. I can only say that people slave over musicals to MAKE them musicals - real musicals, where songs come out of the libretto, where there's a flow. None of that on view here. I can't tell you how many meals Doug and I had where I just was absolutely focused and quite maniacal that everything be precise, everything make sense, everything flow from one thing to the next - that was not always easy, we had tense conversations, but in the end we have a show that, while perhaps not brilliant or the greatest thing since white bread, that works because you care about the characters and everything moves forward logically from thing to thing - and its ninety minutes never feel over ninety minutes. Musicals are perhaps the hardest theatrical art form of them all.
