Welcome to the show, please silence your cell phones.
Welcome to the new home of my theatre reviews! Some readers may already be familiar with my brand of opinionated stage critique, but if you’re not: Wilkommen, Bienvenue, etc. I used to post these a lot on Facebook to which my mother’s Gen X friends would use me as their go-to theatre guy. After a long hiatus which involved moving countries and surviving a panini press, I’ve decided to return to the craft. If you’re here from my drawing content, I intend on also drawing some visdev pieces for each show as practice. As this is mostly a personal project of mine, and literally opinion-based, do know that anything I say here is my own opinion and does not reflect any employer. I’m currently based in DC as of June 2022, but I go to NYC every so often for a batch of shows and actively keep up with Broadway news. Maybe someday I’ll end up in the City for real and review stuff professionally. A man can dream, right?
Now I want to explain how I’ll be reviewing shows. I’ve always enjoyed a fragmented approach to media consumption, as I find a clear-cut X/10 format for the entire thing does not give the whole picture. For a format like live theatre, it’s especially important to value everything on its own; sure, Carousel (2018 Revival) was pretty bad, but tell me Justin Peck’s choreography didn’t deserve that Tony. I’ll be breaking down each review into four sections:
ACTING, which covers the acting and/or singing performances of the cast and ensemble.
PRODUCTION, which covers the staging, choreo, lighting, costumes, and set design.
BOOK & MUSIC, if applicable, covering the story, songs, and script. This also does apply to revivals where I am familiar with the material, or if its a “classic” that hasn’t been changed; no show is safe from this.
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT, which covers the “worldbuilding” of a production — not the show itself, but how it throws itself out to the audience. What is their advertising presence like, and how accurate is it to the feel of the show? How is the merch scene? Things of that note that aren’t usually covered, but as an aspiring visual development artist, I pay lots of attention to — not to bring up Carousel again, but I will NEVER forgive them for not using this. which was plastered all over the Imperial exterior, as their Playbill design.
Each section themselves will get rated out of 10, and then added up Famitstu-style for a total out of 40. I know it’s easy to treat X/10 scores as basically “anything under 7 isn’t worth my time” (shouts out to the US education system for that one) but I promise that I would, and have, see(n) things with elements as low as 1 or 2 that I have still enjoyed overall. The only irredeemable score would be a 1 or 0 out of 10 individually, and even if the overall score is low, the “Verdict” section at the end will clarify whether or not you should see something at the end of the day.
0: Close the whole thing down
1: No effort
2: Low effort
3: Disappointing
4: Ok
5: Good
6: Pretty Good
7: Great
8: Amazing!
9: Incredible!!
10: Must-see!!!
Now: onto the show!
