My random thoughts on Promises x2

Thursday, September 9
8:00pm performance

• I was frankly a bit bored during act one. The music is kitschy and fun, but that book - Oy vey! Those punch lines might have worked on Laugh-In circa-1968, but seem quaint and even groan-inducing now.
• A show glorifying marital infidelity just doesn’t play quite so hilariously post Tiger Woods, Jon Gosselin, David Letterman, et al. The audience was weirdly silent and seemingly quite uncomfortable during “Where Can You Take A Girl?” - a comic number complaining about the lack of convenient places you can go to screw your mistress.
• “She Likes Basketball” was just a big WTF moment. It was just plain weird and completely unflattering - which took some work given the hotness level of the male ensemble - not to mention it making absolutely no sense in the context of the song. I had the same reaction to the added dancers in “Wanting Things.” Seems like Ashford didn’t know what else to do with the songs so he threw in some dancers so we wouldn’t notice.
• “Turkey Lurkey Time” was a big let down. It’s my favorite number in the show and it just couldn’t live up the freakishly exciting original Bennett staging. 
• Sean Hayes has the weirdest vibrato, but strangely, I ended up liking his singing voice a lot. He also stayed (almost) clear of “Jack-ism’s” in his performance and was totally believable as a straight dude.
• Cheno looked beautiful if a bit gaunt, and although perhaps not the perfect match for the role, sounded fantastic. I’ll give her credit for showing an honest vulnerability in her act two downward spiral that frankly, I didn’t think she could pull off. Her and Hayes definitely have some great stage chemistry and she does a mean fake guitar strum.
• Katie Finneran was hilarious as the drunken slut, but now I want to go back to see her replacement, Molly Shannon do Marge MacDougall a la prepubescent Catholic-school reject Mary Katherine Gallagher.
• The added Bacharach songs, “Say A Little Prayer” and “House is Not a Home,” are fun to hear, but frankly seem shoe-horned in (which they basically are). It’s a total bummer to end the first act with a ballad rather than with Turkey Lurkey.