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Broadway Bound Review

By • Sep 27th, 2005 • Category: Reviews

Listen to our review of the Little Theater of Alexandria’s performance of Broadway Bound [MP3 5:30 5.4MB].

Laura: This is ShowBizRadio.net’s review of Broadway Bound as performed by the Little Theatre of Alexandria on Saturday, September 17th 2005.

Mike: And we really enjoyed this show. It was pretty good.

Laura: Yes, it was. We had been used to going to musicals and this was the first, I believe, live play that we’ve seen so far this season. It was really very enjoyable.

Mike: It was really very enjoyable. We had not seen the first two parts of this. This is a trilogy all written by Neil Simon. The first was called Brighton Beach Memoirs and then Biloxi Blues, which I’ve seen the movie, but it was a long time ago. It stood by itself, but it did build of characters from earlier plays.

Laura: The set construction was very well done. Pretty detailed.

Mike: It was a house. It was the house of this family living in NY. They had cutaways so you could see the second floor. They actually had stairs and they went upstairs and actually had part of the scenes up there. They came downstairs. You didn’t see the kitchen, but they went into the kitchen a lot.

Laura: Plates with food would come out during th evening. When the brothers were upstairs writing. They each had their own room so there were times when they were in their own bedroom and then hey would go into one or the other of the rooms upstairs so it was good. It felt separate, but at the same time it was all very open because here were no true walls.

Mike: No walls between the brothers two bedrooms. There were only six actors in the whole play. One of the actresses, Blanche. Her part was pretty early on. She was ok.

Laura: She felt a little stiff.

Mike: A little stiff.

Laura: Actually, although I enjoyed the performance. I felt throughout some of their lines were rushed. There were times when I felt that they were thinking ahead a line and said that line instead of the line they were supposed to say. There were some rough spots throughout it, but it was good.

Mike: The father had one scene with the grandfather. I don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t seen it because you need to see this thing live and just not hear people talk about it. But there was one part where the father. I don’t think he invested himself. He didn’t play it the way I think he would have been feeling if I had been in the same situation. I think I would have been more angry. He was almost sad and depressed. It didn’t feel right, the conversation he was having with the grandfather figure. So that was one comment that it didn’t feel right.

Laura: The lighting was good. They did well with the timing of the upstairs and downstairs. So in a way you got kind of mini scene changes without anything really changing.

Mike: The lighting for the scene changes and that was pretty effective. They had actual light switches on the wall other characters would hit when they came home and in the dining area. They actually worked which was kind of nice. One thing that could have been done maybe a little better was they had a house with windows on the walls on the left and the right side of the stage. One thing they could have done was this play takes place over several months and it took place in the evening and the day and things like that and they could have put lighting outside the windows. They were real windows. They had frost on them from the snow because it was the winter. They could have put lights outside to signify daytime or nighttime or evening or things like that. That would have been a really nice small touch. Because there were a few times where you had to listen to what they were saying to realize, “Oh, it’s been months since the last scene.”

Laura: The character of Eugene played kind of a narrator part during the play. And so you kind of got the idea of time passing in the context of what he was saying during his monologue.

Mike: But it worked, it was fine. There was one scene at the end that I was going to ask you about, Laura, where Eugene and his mother were having a nice conversation about some of her memories. She talked about her grandmother and some of the dances she went to as a kid. I’m not going to give too much away, but at the end, I guess I’ll give a little bit of it away, they had a dance together and I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s very intimate to be dancing with your mother like that. ” and then he talked about that in his monologue,”Boy that was weird. Dancing with my mother like that.” So I really felt it was a kid dancing with his mom and that was neat.

Laura: Yes, it was very believable.

Mike: And he wasn’t a kid. He was 20 I guess.

Laura: It was good. It was very intimate. I don’t know if I could ever go dance with my father.

Mike: Or me with my mother. It was a good show. I would go see it. I want to go see the other two parts of the trilogy now. If they’re ever on the list of upcoming shows we’ll have to schedule that. We’ll definitely have to make it to see how the first two fit into the trilogy. Ok, so that’s Broadway Bound performed by the Little Theatre of Alexandria and this is Mike.

Laura: And this is Laura at ShowBizRadio.net.

Mike: And now, on with the show.

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