2018 Audience Reviews

Company: The Skyline Collective
Show: Wasn't This Supposed to Be a Musical?
Venue: Ritz Theater Mainstage

Unflinching Melodrama

The total implausibility of musical theater's supposedly-spontaneous-but-actually-deliberately-engineered songs creates a sharp juxtaposition against the harsh reality of nonfictional relationships. Within the first five minutes of the production, the four characters have already successfully enmeshed themselves in a brambly tangle of friendship, love, obligation, denial, imagination, obsession, and doubt. The remainder of the story is a chronicle of their attempts to somehow pack their issues back into Pandora's box - or, failing that, to at least stop new issues from spilling out. It is all presented with a melodramatic awkwardness that at times becomes so true-to-life that it induces sympathetic pain in the audience - rather like watching an actual relationship trainwreck, really. The resolution is deliberately imperfect, as it should be. Technically speaking, the music is well-executed. The lyrics are perhaps unpolished at times, but that is heavily outweighed by all the times they shine. The characterization could use some more focus, but is fine in a "broad strokes" sense. If you have a chance, go see this before its gone.