Saw this on Saturday night from seats halfway up the huge mezz/balcony. This is one big, honkin' theater!
We had seen BOM the first month it was open in NYC from the first row of the Mezz at the Eugene O'Neill, and as big fans of South Park expected to love the show and were not disappointed.
Got a chance to go with a big group this past Saturday night in Boston, with limited expectations, after having been disappointed more than once in touring casts after having seen the originals on B'way. Get the playbill and see we have a Standby (not an understudy) for Elder Cunningham (Cody Jamison Strand is his name). Considering the regular Cunningham is in his first professional role, we figured "how bad could it be?"
He was excellent. The whole show was excellent. The sound had some serious issues. The whole time the Training Center Voice was pairing up the missionaries and telling them where they were going there was a serious echo in the house that made it quite unintelligible. There were a couple mic drops and scratches during the show as well.
Additionally, after having listened to the OCR many many times, it was easy to tell that the orchestra on tour is much thinner than the B'way orchestra. I didn't count the pieces in the Playbill, so either they're just not as good or, more likely, there are fewer of them.
We gave BOM an A+ when we saw it in New York. Only A+ we've ever given out (and there are very few straight A's, either. We gave the Boston performance an A-, which is very high praise.
Next up: An Iliad with Denis O'Hare in Boston in 2 weeks. My guess is there will be less dropoff in quality of this from when we saw it at NYTW, but it will be an interesting comparison!
I don't think the understudy Cunningham (Michael Buchanan) has gone on yet; I'm glad you liked Cody! I wish I could see him. I saw the tour when he'd first joined, but he hadn't gone on yet. The standbys always go on before the understudies.
Based on Cody's twitter, it looks like he did both shows here Saturday, and maybe did one prior in Pittsburgh?
I know there are lengthy discussions here about Understudies vs. Standbys. From my recollection of those nasty slips of paper falling out of Playbills, I only seem to recall understudies filling in, but I could be wrong.
Pretty sure it was 4 understudies at my performance of Once, that I gave my "Emperor is Wearing no Clothes" review to.
Thought I should point out that the orchestrations in the cast recording do not reflect those of the staged production. They definitely beefed up the big brassy Broadway sound for the OCR.
Having heard the original cast once in person, but the OCR a couple dozen times, the latter has taken over in my mind being the only one I had previously heard.
Can't believe a guy would schedule his wedding during his big debut! :)
They added a 1PM matinee tomorrow (Thursday) because of the canceled show last Friday night. Tons of tix available. Not the best seats, but rear center orchestra, and middle of the mezzanine are out there, plus all the cheap seats.
On their Facebook page they also mentioned holding a lottery of "biblical proportions" for Thursday's matinee (get there between 11am and 1pm), so assume there will be a lot more tickets available than normal to fill in the gaps in the audience.
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joined:3/10/11
Posted: 1/8/13 at 08:04pm