The story, with its emotional range, is warm and touching. The performances by Jim and Steve are brilliant. Steve with his gaunt face plays completely deadpan, firing off some hilarious lines without cracking a smile. Burly Jim has a very motile face and uses unabashedly nellie gestures. When they move around the stage together, seemingly independently, they are professionally, unobtrusively and totally aware of each other’s presence. Their comic timing is quick and precise, never stepping on each other’s lines and always coming in right on cue. Their singing voices through the fourteen songs are generally well controlled, but with little musicality.Little musicality? Jim sings like Sinatra and Goulet? LOL. And why would you end the review on that last sentence? It's a punchline, guy. Oh, well. I liked "the performances are brilliant."
When Jim sang “You Are a Stranger,” the slow romantic ballad allowed his tonalities to be more fully developed, with some hints of Sinatra and Goulet. When they sang the duet “One New Hell,” Jim’s voice soared, but Steve’s cracked occasionally. Steve at the onstage keyboard missed his lyrics a few times, but recovered well. When he sang about being “wounded by the closet” back in Arkansas, his voice was plaintive and affecting. When Jim belted out Merman songs, Steve complained that he wished he would sing in his own voice.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
SF Bay Times Review.
Great notice from the SF Bay Times, but it's a strangely written review where he matter-of-factly spends a lot of time describing the play, plot-point by plot-point, revealing punchlines. That kinda drives me crazy when reviewers do that. Then, finally, he says this:
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