[title of show] an insular joy

I was thrilled to hear that the plucky little musical [title of show] would be headed to Broadway. I missed the show in its previous incarnations, so I was glad to have the chance to see it in its newly revised, ready-for-the-big-time form.

I inadvertently bought a ticket to the very first [tos] preview, which turned out to be quite a thrill and a bit of an annoyance at the same time. While it was great to experience the unbridled enthusiasm of all the hardcore [tos]-sers in attendance, the piercing shrieks did tend to grate. At the very top of the show, when beloved [tos] pianist Larry Pressgrove came on stage, he got an ovation that lasted two to three minutes. This was but a taste of what was to come: overall, first-night tosser enthusiasm easily added more than ten minutes to the show's running time.

On the whole, I loved the show, particularly for Hunter Bell's funny and fresh book, and for the cast of four incredibly appealing performers. I mean, what's not to love about a show and a cast that are as crazy about the minutia of musical theater as I am? Bell himself is charming and sweet. Jeff Bowen is more than just the hot gay guy (to Bell's adorable, aw-shucks, teddy-bear gay guy), he's also very personable, and a talented composer to boot. And Heidi Blickenstaff and Susan Blackwell are just about the best darned hags you could imagine. Blackwell has a hysterical deadpan delivery, and Blickenstaff is the resident brassy belter, a role she handles with great aplomb. On the whole, this wonderful cast of four comprise the kind of people you'd really like to be friends with: smart and funny, but at the same time genuine and vulnerable.

Much as I adored [title of show], I do have a few quibbles with Bowen's lyrics. For someone whom the show portrays as a grammatical nitpicker, Bowen doesn't seem all that fastidious when it comes to prosody and scansion. His lyrics often place the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LAB-le. (e.g. "CRE-ating a vehicle" "Car-RIE," "mar-RY," etc.) Granted, this is a pet peeve of mine, but he also doesn't seem too particular about consistent meter (i.e. he often throws in extra syllables to accommodate certain words in a line).

[Oh, and a grammatical note to Bowen: There's absolutely nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition. That's an old grammatical wives' tale that no current grammar maven of note really adheres to, just pedantic English teachers.]

But on the whole, I loved [title of show], so much so I that went back the next day to see it again. It was great to experience the show without a theater full of hardcore tossers, and it gave me a better sense of how the show would play to a more mainstream audience. There were still plenty of the faithful in evidence, but a few of the lines that got an uproarious response the night before were met with relative indifference the next day.

As funny as the show was for me, the humor is very insider-y, making me wonder whether [title of show] will appeal to anyone besides theater queens. For the show to enjoy a long run, it will need to catch on with non-tossers. There's no question that little shows can make money on Broadway: Avenue Q and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are evidence enough of that. But both of those shows would seem to have more universal appeal than [title of show]. Of course, people said that A Chorus Line wouldn't run because the inherent drama was too specific to the theatrical community. How wrong they were.

Last week, [title of show] played to about 50% capacity, and had an average ticket price of $42. It's certainly possible that the $163,000 the show took in could cover its presumably modest expenses, but things are going to need to pick up if the show has any chance of lasting. I would certainly love to live in a world in which [title of show] would enjoy a long, healthy, profitable run.