According to my stack of Playbills, this the list of the shows I’ve seen so far this year:

January 18 – Regrets Only
February 8 – Follies at Encores!
February 11 – The Coast of Utopia, Part I
February 28 – 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2nd time; 1st time was Off-Broadway)
March 3 – Prelude to a Kiss
March 8 – Talk Radio
March 9 – Journey’s End
March 18 – Grey Gardens (2nd time; 1st time was Off-Broadway)
March 29 – The Coast of Utopia, Part II
April 8 – Legally Blonde
April 12 – LoveMusik

Also a production of Violet, in Brooklyn, that a member of my chorus was in.

This is actually not as many shows as I’d thought.

We went to see a preview of Mary Poppins on Broadway tonight. About 15 minutes into Act II, the show stopped. Three actors were performing a scene in front of the scrim, during which we heard what sounded like furniture moving around behind the curtain. The scene ended with the three actors walking offstage, and then… nothing happened. Silence.

We sat there a few seconds. Then a voice came over a loudspeaker announcing a delay. We sat tight.

About ten minutes later, one of the producers, Thomas Schumacher, walked onto the stage from the wings and told us that there was a problem with the foundation and they were trying to fix it. He apologized, quite charmingly, and said he hoped to return in five or ten minutes with the news that it was fixed. Then he disappeared again.

Fifteen minutes later, he reappeared and told us they couldn’t seem to fix the problem and that we would get refunds.

Sigh.

Of course, by the time we got home, we saw that an audience member had already posted about it on All That Chat while sitting in the audience.

Theater geeks…

We just got back from seeing the first preview of The Times They Are A-Changin’, the new Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan project on Broadway. (Bob Dylan’s song catalog; Twyla Tharp’s choreography.)

Incomprehensible. Not awful – just incomprehensible. There’s basically no plot.

When I read earlier today that the show takes place in a circus, I knew this was going to be a weird one.

The dancing is very circus-influenced. There are several clowns. Circuses and clowns scare me. Not just clowns – circuses themselves. I must have some hidden childhood circus memory that subconsciously haunts me.

The dancers are excellent, I’ll say that. And at least Twyla Tharp is trying to be artistic. This isn’t just an attempt to make money off an artist’s musical catalog. So I can respect that. But it’s basically a bunch of Bob Dylan songs strung together for no reason. Matt and I kept glancing at each other with puzzled looks on our faces.

I don’t know what Ms. Tharp will do to fix the show before previews, if anything, and I have no idea what the critics are going to say.

But at least Michael Arden plays the lead, and he’s always a joy to watch and listen to.