What off-Broadway musical did you see? In what ways was it a mess?
So, uniquely for a city that is not NYC, Chicago is currently playing host to Paradise Square---a pre-Broadway musical from a star-studded creative team, who nevertheless decided to debut their rough draft in Chicago as opposed to somewhere off-off-Broadway like New Jersey. And to be fair, it's had solid ticket sales since it opened, one of the few "Broadway in Chicago" shows that a) has dared brave the world of 2021 ticket sales, and b) isn't a Disney property.
I---and my mother, who has vinyl Streisand records and took me to my very first production of Phantom of the Opera in Detroit in the 00s---had an amazing time watching it. Even for two Midwestern musical theater fans, it was unprecedented to see something that hasn't been fully polished, finalized, won a Tony. No wonder people have such strong OCR/OBC feelings!
However, it is very clearly a rough draft of a rough draft---Paradise Square as it exists now is probably 3 different musicals crammed into one. They desperately need an editor to streamline and focus the narrative and character arcs, give it a coherent framing, trim the excess themes. There's too much going on, too many songs that are repetitive or don't meaningfully contribute to the forward motion of the story. They badly need a dramaturge and hopefully one that can bully the songwriter and whoever wrote the book, because it all needs a lot of elbow grease.
Not to mention all the clumsy references to other musicals---the John/Abigail duet from 1776, the barricade scene from Les Mis, more than one Billy Elliot-style political dance-off...the story might be burnished into something original with work and time, but right now it's all echoes.
And yet...still...there's a kernel there. The idea that Black and Irish immigrant communities have more in common than tears them apart, could be vitally relevant in Chicago. The Five Points draft riots are intensely interesting, and ripe for storytelling. And holy shit, coming out of the theater, my mom and I kept turning to each other and saying something along the lines of "who cares about plot when [actress Joaquina Kalukango] is singing."
(Honestly, how does anyone notice anything when she opens her mouth? I mean, I hope she's slumming it for the holidays, because she deserves actual Broadway Broadway.)
It was a lot of fun! I've never seen a play or musical in anything less than finished form, so it was a new experience---plus, with a day-before-Thanksgiving, the audience was almost entirely young people and wine. We were predisposed to have a good time.
