2012 Tony Predictions: Best Play and Musical

And then there were two.  The only categories left to discuss are the two biggest awards of any Tony season, Best Play and Best Musical.  Winning either of these awards has a major effect on a show’s future prospects, ensuring a high profile that makes the work one of the first scripts regional and amateur theatres assess when programming their upcoming seasons.  For musicals especially, winning this award provides a document box office boost, increasing the length of the show’s run and raising the chances of it actually turning a profit.

As always, I must point out a couple of caveats:  1) I have not seen all of the nominated productions; and 2) I am predicting who will win, which is not the same as who should win.  History is riddled with examples of Tony’s top honor going to something other than the season’s best (find me one person who honestly believes The Music Man is a better overall show than West Side Story), and if that seems to be the case this year, I will say as much in the body of the article.

Best Play

Nominees:  Clybourne Park, Other Desert Cities, Peter and the Starcatcher, Venus in Fur

Since there is no separate playwriting category, the Best Play award functions as an acknowledgement of both the production as a whole and the script in particular, raising the desirability of a win in this category.  For the first time in years, every single nominee is a new American play, a refreshing change of pace from the recent domination of British shows winning this award.

While all of these plays are worthy, this is really a two-way race between Clybourne Park and Other Desert Cities.  Venus is Fur is a lean and thought-provoking work featuring two dazzling performances, but its early season opening has resulting in it losing a lot of buzz to more recent works.  And while many theatregoers are completely enamored with Peter and the Starcatcher, it will struggle to overcome its image as a kids’ play, something the high-minded Tony voters tend to scoff at no matter how well done.  Many would also argue that the direction has as much if not more to do with the Peter’s success than the actual script, a major problem since a Best Play win doubles as a writing honor.

Both Clybourne Park and Other Desert Cities have a lot of elements that Tony voters look for in potential Best Play winners.  Both are ensemble driven pieces that tackle serious issues with a healthy mix of humor and pathos, expertly acted and directed by some of the most talented people in the business.  And from a financial standpoint, Other Desert Cities is one of the most successful plays in years, having sustained strong box office and word of mouth despite being open for the better part of a year (name the last play that opened in October and was still running in early June).  In any other year, it would be the show to beat.

But there is something about Clybourne Park that compels people to vote for it.  While Cities had to settle for being “only” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the racially charged Clybourne won the prestigious award in 2011.  The show does seem like a new type of play, whereas Cities is very much in the mold of the dozens of family dramas that have come before it.  Helped by a pitch perfect cast who has been with the show since its Off-Broadway premiere, Clybourne Park has the most momentum going into this evening, and I expect Tony voters to crown it this year’s Best Play.

Will Win:  Clybourne Park
Should Win:  Other Desert Cities

Best Musical

Nominees:  Leap of Faith, Newsies, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Once

I have no idea who the Leap of Faith producers paid off to get their critically panned show included among this year’s Best Musical nominees, especially considering the show’s dismal box office and premature closing indicate they didn’t have a lot of money to use for such bribery.  Granted, this has not been a great year for new musicals, especially compared to last year’s incredibly strong crop of new shows, but I have to believe there was a more deserving potential nominee.  But all the money in the world couldn’t secure Faith a win in this category, so I guess there isn’t too much harm done.

Nice Work If You Can Get It really should be better than it actually is, but as last year’s Women on the Verge proved, putting a bunch of past Tony winners in the same room does not automatically produce Tony-worthy work.  Nice Work is perfectly serviceable, but there is nothing exciting or overly interesting about this by the numbers show.  Most of the people involved seem to be there only for the paycheck rather than a love of the material, as evidenced by the lackadaisical performances of both Matthew Broderick and, I hate to say it, Kelli O’Hara.  Kathleen Marshall would have been better off spending the year collecting Anything Goes royalty checks, and I can only hope her next show marks a return to form for the very talented choreographer/director.

From the moment its Broadway transfer was announced, I knew Newsies would be a frontrunner for the Best Musical trophy.  It is easily the most commercial new musical of the season, and potential touring profits have been a deciding factor in this category more than once.  The show’s family friendly song and dance routine is definitely entertaining, and now that Disney has finally stopped playing coy and announced the show for an open-ended run, I expect Newsies to easily outlast the rest of this season’s new shows.  It is not high art, but it is well-done escapist entertainment, which wins the Tony more often than not.

However, I think Disney got the timing wrong on this one.  Had the show opened in April instead of in March, it would still be riding high on its post-opening buzz and sail into an easy Tony victory.  But the show has been running just long enough that we are starting to see some backlash against its lowly ambitions, and the flaws in its slickly-presented façade are more apparent in hindsight.  And the people who realize that Newsies isn’t quite as good as Disney would have you believe will surely vote for Once as the season’s best new show.

At first I was skeptical of Once, fearing this stage adaptation of an Oscar-winning indie film would quickly devolve into two-and-a-half hours of emotionally manipulative sentimentality accompanied by plaintive singer-songwriter style music.  But the show won me over with its expert execution and genuine heart, moving me in a way no other new musical has this season.  While small in scale, Once is large in ambition, and I’m happy to say is succeeds in achieving its lofty goals.  There is more invention and feeling in Once than in the other nominees combined, and the cherry on top of this musical sundae are two fantastic leading performances by breakout stars Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti.

Once deserves the Best Musical trophy.  It is the best written show of the year, and the acting is the most truthful and heartfelt I’ve seen all season.  No one should be surprised if Newsies takes the prize tonight (I certainly won’t be), but I think Once has built up enough momentum that it might actually triumph over Disney’s pre-ordained classic.  Yes, this year has not been a great one for new musicals, but these two shows are definitely worthy of Broadway and beyond.

Will and Should Win:  Once

And that’s it for my 2012 Tony predictions!  Tune in to the Tony Awards telecast tonight at 8 to see how I did, and check back in the coming days for my reaction to Broadway’s biggest night.  If you’ve missed any of my previous prediction blogs, check them out below:

Best Revival

Best Actor (*Note:  I’ve amended my prediction for Best Actor in a Musical.  A lot of people seem to think Jeremy Jordan has this one in the bag, and since he was a close second for me I’ve upgraded him to “Will Win.”  Danny Burstein still “should win,” but I’m thinking this is Jordan’s year.)
Best Actress
Best Featured Actor
Best Featured Actress
Best Book and Score
Best Direction and Choreography

2012 Tony Predictions: Book and Score

Before I continue my 2012 Tony Award predictions, here’s a quick recap of the two caveats I elaborated on in my first article:  1) I have not seen all of the nominated shows; and 2) I am predicting who will win, which may be different from who should win (reasons for any variance in the two will be elaborated in the article).

Since Tony night is fast approaching, let’s not waste any more time!

Best Book of a Musical

Nominees:  Douglas Carter Beane, Lysistrata Jones; Harvey Fierstein, Newsies; Joe DiPietro, Nice Work If You Can Get It; Enda Walsh, Once

I died a little inside when I read that Douglas Carter Beane was nominated for his atrocious book to Lysistrata Jones.  Beane managed to completely remove the anti-war allegory that’s allowed the Greek Lysistrata to withstand the test of time, and replaced it with poorly developed characters and painfully unfunny one-liners.  He doesn’t deserve to be nominated, and rest assured there is no way he can possibly win (the fact that Lysistrata closed months ago is the final nail in Beane’s coffin).

I would put Harvey Fierstein’s libretto for Newsies and Joe DiPietro’s book for Nice Work on the same level artistically.  Both are perfectly serviceable scripts, free of any glaring plot holes or structural weaknesses.  Both segue nicely into their respective musical numbers while simultaneously crafting characters with the illusion of depth, even if many of them lack actual substance.  Unfortunately, neither libretto takes the extra steps necessary to qualify as Tony-worthy.  The book scenes in both shows primarily serve as filler in between the musical numbers, rather than adding much of substance to their respective shows.

By contrast, Enda Walsh’s book for Once approaches the depth and quality of a play script.  Despite some very long scenes (at least by musical theatre standards), the Once libretto remains engrossing and provides information that greatly enhances the already strong emotional impact of the show’s songs.  Once relies on such a delicately established mood that it would not work without the Walsh’s first rate contributions, and he will deservedly take home the Tony for his efforts on June 10^th.

Will & Should Win:  Enda Walsh, Once

Best Original Score

Nominees:  Frank Wildhorn & Don Black, Bonnie and Clyde; Alan Menken & Jack Feldman, Newsies; Grant Olding, One Man, Two Guvnors; Wayne Barker & Rick Elice, Peter and the Starcatcher

I could (and probably should) write an entire blog entry about the sorry state of musical theatre composition.  The fact that two of the four Best Original Score nominations went to plays instead of musicals proves how little good work is being done in this area.  Unfortunately, the year’s strongest score – the haunting and beautiful Once – was written for another medium and is therefore ineligible.  But while the Tony committee has shown a willingness to nominate play scores in the past few years, I don’t think they are prepared to actually give the prize to a non-musical, which rules out both One Man, Two Guvnors and Peter and the Starcatcher. 

Which leaves Bonnie & Clyde and Newsies, with their oft-nominated but so far unrewarded composers.  Now, if you had told me a year ago that Frank “Modulation” Wildhorn would be the most deserving of a Best Score Tony, I would have laughed in your face.  But this time round Wildhorn wrote a genuinely theatrical score, with many of the songs containing actual narrative action rather than an endless series of ever-higher money notes.  He has successfully fused the bluegrass and folk idioms with show music, and many of the show’s ballads are genuinely beautiful as opposed to his usual manufactured bombast.  All of this, combined with weak competition, makes Bonnie & Clyde legitimately the strongest work nominated this year.

Unfortunately for Wildhorn, there’s clearly no overcoming the tarnished reputation his past work has earned him.  Having his name on the marquee caused Bonnie & Clyde to be unfairly trashed by critics, and the show closed within a month of opening.  Meanwhile Newsies was embraced by critics and has been playing to near sell-out business, and its composer Alan Menken has managed to maintain a high reputation among the theatre elite despite some questionable shows of his own.  For all of its repetitiveness and overly-earnest emotion, Newsies does feature several catchy numbers and one genuinely inventive solo for its leading lady.  And since Menken has never won the big award, the committee will likely give him a Tony statuette that will in name be for this show, but will really be for his body of work.

Will Win:  Alan Menken, Newsies

Should Win:  Frank Wildhorn, Bonnie & Clyde (yes, I really just typed that)

That’s it for now.  Join me next time as I begin dissecting which performers have done award-worthy work this past season.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Review: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Judy Kaye and Michael McGarth sing "By Strauss/Sweet and Lowdown," one of the few instances where Nice Work If You Can Get It lives up to its potential.

The worst thing about Nice Work If You Can Get It, the slight new musical comedy currently playing at the Imperial Theatre, is that the whole thing looked so promising on paper.  Reimagining an old Gershwin musical (in this case, the 1926 Prohibition-era romp Oh, Kay) with a new book and Gershwin catalogue songs produced one of the most entertaining shows of the early ‘90s, the Tony-winning Crazy for You.  Hiring the ever-inventive director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall, fresh off the massive success of last season’s Anything Goes, seemed like an inspired choice, as her previous work demonstrates a strong grasp of this particular brand of musical comedy.  Kelli O’Hara is one of Broadway’s top talents, and teaming her with Matthew Broderick in his first musical since the similarly retro-modern Producers sounded like musical comedy gold.

Yet at some point during the development process, Marshall and her team (including new book writer Joe DiPietro) slightly but irrevocably botched the recipe.  Though the bright candy colors promise a sinfully sweet piece of frothy entertainment, Nice Work leaves you with an off-putting aftertaste that becomes more pronounced with each successive number.  You force yourself to consume the whole thing for fear of offending those who put in the effort to make it, all the while knowing that the next time it’s offered you’ll invent some way to politely decline. 

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with Nice Work. The score is filled with time-tested Gershwin standards like “Someone to Watch Over Me” and the title song, and those classic melodies are as beguiling as ever.  The plot, in which tomboyish bootlegger Billie Bendix (O’Hara) hides her liquor stash in the unused Long Island mansion of billionaire playboy Jimmy Winter (Broderick), is reasonably entertaining despite its predictability.  Joe DiPietro’s book may adhere too closely to the Boy-Meets-Girl formula – you’ll spend the last 15 minutes in particular waiting for the plot to reach the resolution you saw coming from a mile away – but the script is structurally sound and provides its fair share of laughs.  And Marshall stages the musical numbers with the inventive, playful wit and precise choreography that have become her signature, bringing the show closest to the greatness it could achieve with more revisions.

The cast is likewise hard to fault.  Ms. O’Hara’s beautiful voice is perfectly suited to this style of music, and there is a refreshing honesty about her performance that’s missing from too many of the slickly-produced entertainments currently populating the Great White Way.  Michael McGrath provides stellar comic relief as Billie’s sidekick Cookie, who is forced to impersonate the mansion’s butler to maintain their cover.  McGrath is surly but loveable in the role, and does exceedingly well with the multitude of one-liners and physical comedy handed to him.  And as a righteous Prohibitionist on the prowl for any stray bootleggers, Tony winner Judy Kaye really lets loose with her physically demanding and highly humorous supporting turn.

Of the main cast, Broderick is the only one who doesn’t seem quite right for his role.  Essentially reprising his Leo Bloom from The Producers, Broderick’s comic awkwardness isn’t very well suited to playing a womanizer who’s been married three times and is constantly visited by young women willing to take their clothes off for him.  And yet blaming Broderick for all of the show’s problems would be unfair, as he sings and dances as well as he ever did, and does land a consistent number of laughs throughout the course of the evening.

The real problem with Nice Work is that while all of the component parts are perfectly adequate, they don’t play off of each other properly, and the entire enterprise lacks spark.  The cast handles their individual bits quite well, but rarely interacts with one another in a convincing manner, killing any interpersonal chemistry the show might have had.  The show never drags, but it also never achieves the madcap energy and forward momentum needed to pull off the heightened farce that is the essence of musical comedy.

At the end of the day, you just have to wonder why anyone bothered.  Nice Work bears many structural and stylistic similarities to the aforementioned Crazy for You, but the latter work is simply better constructed.  Marshall would be an excellent candidate to helm a revival of that show, and many of this cast would do very well with that material, some of which overlaps with Nice Work anyway.  Instead, we are left with this forgettable “new” show that isn’t the best work of anyone involved.  While you won’t hate your time spent with Billie, Jimmy, and their friends, you probably won’t remember much of it either.  And you certainly won’t be asking for seconds.

Tony Watch: Assessing the 2011-2012 Broadway Season Part 7

Matthew Broderick and the cast of Nice Work If You Can Get It celebrate their Best Musical Tony nominaton.

We’re in the home stretch of the spring season.  Only five more shows to discuss before next week’s Tony nominations, and they are:

The Lyons

When Tony Award winner Linda Lavin passed on the Broadway transfers of both Follies and Other Desert Cities in order to play the lead role in The Lyons, she raised quite a few industry eyebrows.  But something about the script for this Off-Broadway premiere – which at the time had no intention of transferring – caught her eye, and in hindsight it’s clear Lavin knew what she was doing.  The play’s strong reviews prompted a late season Broadway transfer, where it again opened to much critical praise for the play as a whole and Lavin’s performance in particular.

It will be interesting to see just how far The Lyons can infiltrate the Tony Awards in this very crowded season.  Its transfer to Broadway has been entirely merit-based, and opening just before the Tony eligibility cutoff date ensures it is fresh in everyone’s minds.  Will that be enough to net the work a Best Play nomination against its higher profile competition?  It just might be. 

Lavin is in a very strong position to secure a Best Actress nomination, and some of her costars may even join her for the ride.  Fellow Tony-winner Dick Latessa is well-respected in the theatrical community and giving another critically praised performance, and the young Michael Esper is so strong in the show that he’s managed to stand out next to such industry heavyweights.  Neither performer can be ruled out of the Supporting Actor race, and The Lyons could well end up being the Little Show That Could.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

One of the biggest question marks heading into the spring season was the “new” Gershwin musical Nice Work If You Can Get It.  A thorough reworking of Oh Kay, one of George and Ira’s lesser known musicals, Nice Work sports a cast and creative team with plenty of Tony pedigree.  Both of its stars have multiple Tony nominations to their name, and director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall is still riding high on the success of last season’s hit Anything Goes.  Yet the show received little pre-opening press or buzz, with many taking the lack of info as a sign that the show was on the road to disaster.

But now the show has opened to good if not great reviews, and more importantly has performed quite strongly in New York’s other theatrical contests like the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.  Like The Lyons, being so new has certainly helped Nice Work in this area, and all that momentum makes the show a serious Tony contender.  I predict it will indeed manage to nab one of the four coveted Best Musical nominations, a major victory for a show no one was even talking about a month ago.

Other all-but-guaranteed nominations: leading lady Kelli O’Hara for Best Actress and Kathleen Marshall for Best Choreography (and possibly Best Direction), as the latter is definitely working within her wheelhouse here.  Another likely nominee is Judy Kaye for her scene stealing comic turn, and while his lukewarm reviews aren’t very encouraging, Matthew Broderick cannot be completely ruled out of the Best Actor race.  And I expect one or more of the show’s design elements to get nominated, with Martin Pakledinaz’s flapper era costumes a particularly strong contender.

The Columnist

This new play from Manhattan Theatre Club certainly has a Tony-worthy pedigree.  Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn (Proof) and directed by Tony-winning director Daniel Sullivan (also Proof, as well as last season’s Merchant of Venice), the show stars multiple Tony winner John Lithgow as a 1960s era newspaper columnist named Joseph Alsop.  Unfortunately, The Columnist seems to have been lost among the plethora of shows that have opened in the past two weeks, and I don’t foresee it being much of a contender for this year’s awards.

Don’t Dress for Dinner

Hopefully Roundabout will finally learn a lesson after their extremely anemic offerings this season.  They need to stop producing subpar Broadway revivals of plays no one has heard of or cares about.  With tens of thousands of existing plays to choose from, not to mention the thousands more awaiting a first production, there’s no excuse for Roundabout to continually pick such poor material.  Don’t Dress for Dinner has earned some of the worst reviews of the spring, and the best it can hope for is to finish out its limited run without a premature closing.

Leap of Faith

An extremely last minute addition to the Broadway season facilitated by the closing of the Harry Connick Jr. bomb On a Clear Day, the new musical Leap of Faith ended the Broadway season on a whimper.  Critically reviled, I can’t imagine Faith ended up among this year’s Best Musical nominees, even with such weak competition.  The score by perpetual Tony bridesmaid Alan Menken has a better chance at a nomination, especially since it was just announced that the score for Once will be ineligible since it was written for the movie and not specifically for the stage.

Since by all accounts the libretto for Faith is one of the show’s primary problems, I’m ruling it out of the Best Book category, which leaves Raul Esparza as the only other real chance the show has at some Tony love.  And even then, it’s entirely possible that the four-time Tony nominee will find himself excluded from the Best Actor race due to the poor quality of his star vehicle.

And that, ladies and gentleman, brings us to the official end of the 2011-2012 Broadway season!  Be sure to check back on Tuesday when the Tony Award nominations are announced to see how I did with my predictions, and look for further Tony chatter throughout the month of May leading up to the big night on June 10^th.  I can’t wait to talk more, and I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

And in case you missed my previous Tony Watch articles, you can catch up on them here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Where Have All The New Musicals Gone?

Elena Roger, if you're going to kick Follies out of the Marquis, you better be spectacular!

I know, I know.  It’s been a while since my last blog entry.  In my defense, I have been busy with work and starting rehearsals for my production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Plus, the winter is traditionally a slow time on Broadway and since the holidays wrecked my bank account, I haven’t been able to afford as many shows as I’d like.

Right now, most industry folk are busily preparing for the spring onslaught of shows, looking ahead to the ever-nearing Tony madness to come.  Unfortunately, I have also looked ahead, and I don’t like what I see.  Hence, the topic of this blog entry: the dismal slate of new musicals on tap for the spring.

I can honestly say the musical I am most excited about this spring is the revival of Evita.  Which wouldn’t be that odd if: a) I didn’t despise almost everything Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever written; and b) I wasn’t such a staunch supporter of new work.  I’m one of the ten people who actually paid to see Lysistrata Jones, for crying out loud!  And I didn’t do it because of glowing word of mouth (everyone warned me it was bad), but because I wanted to see something new.  But even my love of the new can’t override my complete lack of enthusiasm for this spring’s shows.

Part of this is a matter of timing.  Last season was a particularly strong one for new musicals; one of the best in recent memory.  Some were good, some were bad, and a couple were flat out amazing, but almost all of them were *interesting* ideas that were inherently theatrical.  The same cannot be said of these upcoming shows, which means a fourth trip to The Book of Mormon is likely in order.

Exhibit A in “Ill-Advised Ideas” is Ghost: The Musical, a show whose producers are clearly desperate to make into the big hit of the spring.  To which I saw “bleh.”  First of all, I cannot think of a single instance in which a show subtitled The Musical has turned out to be any good.  And not only is Ghost: The Musical based on a film – which like it or not has replaced the book as the go-to source material for Broadway – but it is based on a film that doesn’t lend itself particularly well to musicalization.  And thanks to the copious amount of promotional film available from the London production, it looks like Ghost: The Musical has fallen into all of the traps awaiting a film-to-stage adaptation, including generic music, pretty but bland leads, and an overreliance on high tech scenery in a desperate attempt to replicate film’s ability to quick cut from location to location.  I’m looking forward to it about as much as I’m looking forward to my next dentist visit.

The show that seems to be generating the most industry excitement, at least among the 30 and under set, is the quickie transfer of Disney’s Newsies, also based on the film of the same name.  Now maybe I’m a bad music theatre nerd, but I have never seen said film in its entirety.  I saw about 20 minutes of it in high school with a group of friends who clearly *loved* it, and couldn’t quite discern what all the fuss was about.  I suspect that if I were to watch it from beginning to end, my opinion would coincide more with the critics who panned it upon its release than with my peers who consider it a treasured part of their childhood.  Add in the fact that the show exists solely because it was the most-inquired about Disney property among amateur theatre groups (meaning Disney expects to make a mint from licensing fees), and I become even warier of the show.  The only reason I haven’t completely written it off is that Disney swears Broadway wasn’t originally in the cards, and that popular demand and the encouraging reviews prompted the transfer.

A great deal of positive word of mouth has also accompanied Once (again based on a film).  Like Newsies, it is something of a cult hit among my generation, and its earlier production was well-enough received by critics and the public to prompt the Broadway transfer.  But while the Oscar-winning song “Falling Slowly” is hauntingly beautiful, the thought of two hours of similar singer/songwriter hipster bait makes me vaguely nauseous.  I’m very afraid that outside of an intimate Off-Broadway setting, the entire endeavor will come across as pretentious and more concerned with being “art” than being “entertaining,” which despite what most critics would have you believe are not mutually exclusive pursuits.

Finally, we have three accomplished Tony-nominees returning to Broadway in two dubious sounding vehicles.  Raul Esparza, an interesting actor who has made some dubious career choices, is back in yet another film adaptation, this one based on a 1992 movie I’ve never heard of called Leap of Faith.  Oscar-winner and reliable songsmith Alan Menken is providing the music, although his recent track record (Sister Act, The Little Mermaid) leaves me skittish about the quality of Faith, especially since he will be splitting his focus between it and Newsies.  And golden-voiced Kelli O’Hara returns with Tony-winner Matthew Broderick in the new-ish Gershwin musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, which is suspect due to its pseudo-jukebox nature (it is made up of Gershwin trunk songs with a new book).  This is the one I’m stubbornly hoping will turn out amazing, if for no other reason than it will help ease the disappointment that Nice Work effectively precludes any chance of the delightful Crazy for You getting revived in the near future.

Making matters even worse for me personally is the fact that two musicals originally scheduled for the spring that actually looked promising have been postponed until a later date.  The Susan Stroman-helmed adaptation of Big Fish may be based on a movie, but it is a movie with a particularly theatrical premise that would benefit strongly from Stroman’s imaginative staging and inventive choreography.  It was also supposed to star my TV boyfriend Michael C. Hall taking a needed break from slaying serial killers over on Showtime, which made it all the more appealing.  And while I was suspicious of its Germanic origins (Germany, let’s not forget, loves David Hasselhoff as a *singer* and has an inexplicable fascination with Starlight freakin’ Express), I thought Rebecca sounded intriguing.  The gothic-tinged novel(!) it’s based on easily lends itself to musicalization, and as an entirely character-driven piece I think it would adapt to the stage quite well.  Plus, announced star Sierra Borgess has a ridiculously pure soprano that deserves to sing something other than sappy Lloyd Webber ballads.

So while I will likely end up seeing most of these new musicals, I am most looking forward to hearing Elena Roger recklessly belt her way through “Buenos Aries” and “A New Argentina.”  And if I don’t understand a damn word she says, at least I can blame it on the fact that English is not her first language, an excuse unfortunately not applicable to the otherwise divine Patti LuPone J