I'm so tempted to start this with "It was the best of musicals, it was the worst of musicals," but I will resist the urge. If Jill Santoriello, composer/lyricist/book-writer of the new "A Tale of Two Cities" musical could manage to put off quoting those opening lines until the top of the second act, I can resist the obvious as well. Then again, not opening the musical with what must surely be some of the most famous opening lines ever written in the opening of a "Two Cities" inspired musical, may have been the only obvious thing Ms. Santoriello managed to avoid. While I think everyone was expecting this to be "Les Miz 2," I found it much more reminiscent of Frank Wildhorn's "The Scarlet Pimpernel" - with the title character missing, of course. Isn't that also a big musical about the same revolution (the French one), and the same two cities (London and France)? I'm not sure why, because the two songs most likely have absolutely nothing in common, but for some reason the bit of a song I have stuck in my head from "Tale of Two Cities" is the cheesy 'let's get the revolutionaries excited' song called "Until Tomorrow." And since the only part of that song that I can remember is the title phrase, when I hum it in my head, I sing most of the chorus of "Into the Fire" (from "Scarlet Pimpernel"), except when it reaches it's climax I substitute the words and melody from "Until Tomorrow." They really fit quite nicely together, especially considering I don't know and of the words to "Into the Fire."
Getting off of that bizarre and random tangent... yes, this is a big overblown 80s style pop opera. But I don't think that genre has to necessarily be bad. The one aspect of the show I quite liked was the music. Yes, it's really power ballad heavy. And I don't think I would be able to make it through a cast recording without falling into a coma. But in the context of the show, with extremely boring book scenes stuck in between the songs, and with a fantastic cast (especially James Barbour, whose voice is absolutely perfect for this sort of stuff), it comes across as pleasant and melodic and sort of pretty. The lyrics were decent enough - I wasn't offended by them too often anyway.
The big stumbling point for me was the book. There is just so much plot crammed in, and there are so many characters, that I really found it hard to care what was going on, or who was going to die, or who wanted revenge on who. What I think was supposed to be the comic relief of the show was this guy referred to a "The Resurrection Man" - he even gets this whole song about how he steals bodies from graves. But other than that one song, I'm not sure what he added to the story. His character could have easily been cut and nobody, other than Dickens die-hards who missed him from the source material, would have noticed. And considering his song wasn't actually funny, there wouldn't have even been any "comic relief" missing. I would say the most bizarre example of cramming too much story in, was this long ballad the lawyer character sings after the woman he apparently loved, even though he never spoke to her, or really expressed much interest in her at all before that scene, sings about how he's sad he's lost her to this other man. And over the course of this song, she gets married, hold an infant in her arms, and then this little girl runs on stage dancing around with a ribbon - apparently her daughter. All of this over the course of one ballad, about how this guys loves someone else's wife. I guess he stood there singing for around six years. That's one long song.
Speaking of long, the show runs a very long two hours and fifty minutes, and that was the main complaint I heard on my way out of the theatre. Perhaps if the show had used its extended running time to make us care about its characters, the audience wouldn't have minded so much.
A lot has been made about how fabulous the set is supposed to be. Or maybe all that hype was just in my head. Because I didn't think the set was all that wonderful. There are these sparse wooden structures, that when all put together form a circle, but otherwise serve as houses, inns, or whatever other indoor piece of scenery is needed. You know you're in Paris if there a red backdrop, and you're in London if it's a blue backdrop. It seemed a bit too sparse and simple for my tastes. Looking at the set, I couldn't help but be bothered about how the architecture of London and Paris just looked exactly the same.
The worst part of the show, as far as I'm concerned, was the staging of the final scene (this is your cue to tune out, if you don't want any aspect of the staging to be spoiled). I'm assuming everyone knows the story, and I'm not giving away the ending. Well, the lawyer walks up a set of stairs, against a black backdrop, and then the stairs move slowly towards the center of the stage so he's facing the audience, and the black backdrop and the podium he's standing on top of, are all filled with stars, and he recites his big "It's a far far better thing that I do speech..." in front of a star drop. I almost fell out of my chair, I was so shocked that they would resort to such a lame cliche for the finale.
As I mentioned briefly before, the show cast is really fantastic. My favorite was definitely James Barbour, who gets sappy power ballad after power ballad to remind us how much we've missed his fantastic voice on Broadway. Also quite good is Brandi Burkhardt, who plays the daughter of the doctor (who is also the woman the two men love) - she's apparently making her Broadway debut, but she has a lovely voice, and her acting is quite fine. Natalie Toro plays Madame Defarge, and though her voice is lovely, I found her Defarge came across as overly whiny and bratty, and I was rooting for her to get shot at the end (I was also rooting for her to get show at the end of the first act, or really any time there was a gun pointed in her general direction.) I mean, I know Defarge isn't supposed to be nice, but I think there's a difference between being nasty, and being a brat.
I think mostly because of the music - because it was both quite pretty (though a tad repetitive) and well sung - I liked the show more than it really deserves to be liked. The book is so poorly crafted, and the characters are so two-dimensional (I think the character I cared most about was the woman who got one scene at the end of the second act, to explain how scared she was of going to the guillotine), it really shouldn't work at all. But I guess there's some sort of base connection that all of the power ballads make, that surpass the obvious criticisms, that at least made the show not painful to sit through. It's not quite good enough for me to call it a guilty pleasure, but it's one of those shows that peeked over the line. I might consider seeing this again, if I can get a cheap ticket later in the run. The audience seemed to love it (standing ovation and all), and I think this could do well at the box office if it's able to tap into the crowd that's sad that "Les Miz" and/or Frank Wildhorn are currently missing from Broadway. The performance was being filmed (I'm guessing for a commercial), and at the end they were interviewing a woman standing at the front of the orchestra. I only caught the very end of it, but I got the impression she was one of those "It was so good I bought the mug" type, bridge & tunnel ladies who will be used on the commercials to tap into that crucial audience.
One last note - I booked by ticket on tdf, and they put me in the last row of the mezz (actually, it was sort of a half row crammed in behind what should have been the last row). Almost everyone back there (including me) moved up the completely empty mid-mezz center section, which was perfectly fine, but you should be forewarned, in case you're considering using tdf for this show. Not that it's really worth forty bucks, but that's a dead horse that's been well beaten already.
