I had a hard time deciding whether to give this mess one star or two, then decided, thanks for the holiday season, to bump it up... but no higher.
Poor Stephen Sondheim. This much ballyhooed revival consists of the cast, each playing an instrument (except, of course, for Robert! -- think Concept, people!), as they also sing and dance through one of Sondheim's most brilliant scores. The original production had the added benefit of Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations, while this has the thinness of sound that suggests a dress rehearsal with a proxy orchestra cobbled together while we wait for the real thing to get changed and appear in the pit.
It is, in a word, dreadful. The opening number is staged not unlike a marching band encircling the woefully miscast actor playing Bobby. While they stumble (in some cases, literally) through the music, he does his level best to sing. Were this a UFC battle, he would have bludgeoned the score to a pulpy mass; as it is, he just sings, and we all cringe in response.
Were that not bad enough, we have to suffer through John Doyle's remarkably inept staging, in which everyone circles and circles and circles around the centre column that makes up most of the "set", if one can call it that. The design is remarkably unimaginative, especially when seen in comparison to Boris Aaronson's original design, and the pitch black backdrop (or at least it looked that way under the highly focused lighting) simply swallows up the nearly all-black costumes, reducing everyone to disembodied hands and heads holding their instruments as they march ever more in circles around and around and around.
The actor (and I use the term loosely here) playing Bobby does so on a single emotional note... until, as one might expect, the Big Emotional Outburst at the End, in which he *finally* sits at the damn piano and starts to play. I suppose this is the Moment Doyle had planned for all evening, but it comes off flat and anti-climactic, with Bobby coming close to a 40s femme fatale crying jag as he "breaks through the emotional wall separating him from the rest of the company" (Get it now?). It's thoroughly unbelievable.
That this won Best Revival simply suggests that it was a lousy year for revivals. That this got any kind of critical acclaim suggests that it was a lousy year for critics in desperate need of *something* they could enjoy, no matter how awful it might be. That this is available on DVD is an insult and a sop to the many Sondheim fans who can never see Harold Prince's original production. This, by comparison, is an embarrassment.
Poor Stephen Sondheim. This much ballyhooed revival consists of the cast, each playing an instrument (except, of course, for Robert! -- think Concept, people!), as they also sing and dance through one of Sondheim's most brilliant scores. The original production had the added benefit of Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations, while this has the thinness of sound that suggests a dress rehearsal with a proxy orchestra cobbled together while we wait for the real thing to get changed and appear in the pit.
It is, in a word, dreadful. The opening number is staged not unlike a marching band encircling the woefully miscast actor playing Bobby. While they stumble (in some cases, literally) through the music, he does his level best to sing. Were this a UFC battle, he would have bludgeoned the score to a pulpy mass; as it is, he just sings, and we all cringe in response.
Were that not bad enough, we have to suffer through John Doyle's remarkably inept staging, in which everyone circles and circles and circles around the centre column that makes up most of the "set", if one can call it that. The design is remarkably unimaginative, especially when seen in comparison to Boris Aaronson's original design, and the pitch black backdrop (or at least it looked that way under the highly focused lighting) simply swallows up the nearly all-black costumes, reducing everyone to disembodied hands and heads holding their instruments as they march ever more in circles around and around and around.
The actor (and I use the term loosely here) playing Bobby does so on a single emotional note... until, as one might expect, the Big Emotional Outburst at the End, in which he *finally* sits at the damn piano and starts to play. I suppose this is the Moment Doyle had planned for all evening, but it comes off flat and anti-climactic, with Bobby coming close to a 40s femme fatale crying jag as he "breaks through the emotional wall separating him from the rest of the company" (Get it now?). It's thoroughly unbelievable.
That this won Best Revival simply suggests that it was a lousy year for revivals. That this got any kind of critical acclaim suggests that it was a lousy year for critics in desperate need of *something* they could enjoy, no matter how awful it might be. That this is available on DVD is an insult and a sop to the many Sondheim fans who can never see Harold Prince's original production. This, by comparison, is an embarrassment.