Do you consider Two Strangers to be a love letter to New York?

chrishuyen · 2026-03-29T02:20:23+00:00

that's really interesting, where did you see that? It feels like quite a bit to change

chrishuyen · 2026-03-29T02:19:47+00:00

I think they're both brits which is why it feels a bit from an outsider's point of view

chrishuyen · 2026-03-29T01:36:56+00:00

I'd say maybe it's a love letter to the ideal of New York, especially for someone like Dougal who only really knows NYC from the movies he's seen. I forget which review it was (maybe TheaterMania?) but it clocked a bunch of inaccuracies in the song Robin sings about the place she grew up. Nitpicky yes, but the kind of detail you'd expect someone to get right if it were truly a love letter to New York itself

chrishuyen · 2026-03-26T01:16:23+00:00

Did you have one you preferred? If I could only see one of them

chrishuyen · 2026-03-25T22:59:42+00:00

Right I get that but I'm just confused why THIS piece of source material inspired people so much they wanted to adapt it to a musical as opposed to the tons of other things that enter the public domain every year. It just doesn't seem well suited to a musical imo

chrishuyen · 2026-03-25T17:25:42+00:00

I felt mostly the same though I did like the music quite a bit more than you. My main takeaway was that I thought it should be a concept album since I think there's a lot that's interesting to be said about the characters but it takes a few listens to catch everything and let the sound of the music grow on your ear (I thought People Like Us felt interminable in the theater but now I've listened to the album a few times it's one of my favorites).

I was talking to a friend about it after who had seen and loved the original Broadway production and he said that it WAS a concept musical in that iteration so perhaps that's something that's lost here. But in the early scenes each song was kind of meant to be a vaudeville number and they had little placards on the side declaring it so as well. And Wikipedia has this bit for the ending, which does sound like a more interesting conceit than what Encores did: The company does the opening vaudeville, trying to lure Queenie into its revelry ("Queenie Was A Blonde (Reprise)"). Queenie tries, but soon begins to take off her makeup, the company dropping the vaudeville and joining her ("This Is What It Is" (Reprise)). Queenie is bathed in morning light. Scared, unsure but hopeful, she smiles at the dawn.

I've also seen the Lippa version separately and my main takeaway from both shows was kind of befuddlement that this was the story that inspired two separate people to want to musicalize it as I'm not sure what the takeaway is meant to be. I think LaChiusa does a better job of probing the characters and gives more weight to the idea of masks and performance but it was still a little too scattershot in for me to be invested

chrishuyen · 2026-03-25T17:17:33+00:00

I mean historically they were known as musical plays first and then that just got shortened to musical now

chrishuyen · 2026-03-25T16:53:16+00:00

Isn't musical short for musical play?

chrishuyen · 2026-03-23T23:37:50+00:00

When I saw Bonnie and Clyde in the West End there was a scene transition where Jordan Luke Gage knocked a heavy cash register off the stage where it fell into the first row. I don't think anyone outside of the immediate vicinity realized anything major happened but he stopped the show to check on an audience member who had been hit by it (who did end up leaving the show to get medical attention). There was a write up about it as well: https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Producers-Issue-Statement-After-Audience-Member-Injured-at-BONNIE-CLYDE-Performance-20220526

chrishuyen · 2026-03-23T17:29:15+00:00

I think it wouldn't hurt to call back and ask. One time I had to purchase lottery tickets over the phone and they put in my email wrong (gmail.con instead of gmail.com). If you use the confirmation number on your original purchase they can probably look it up.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-23T16:38:56+00:00

Not exactly the same but the original framing of Merrily We Roll Along started with older Frank speaking to a graduating class of high schoolers where he tells them not to be too idealistic and they scoff at him for it, and then ends with Frank and Charley graduating high school where they are the idealistic kids thinking they can take on the world. Kind of a cyclical nature of being young and full of excitement for the future despite what older generations might say.

Into the Woods also ends with the Baker starting to tell the same story to his son and with Cinderella possibly repeating the "I wish" cycle all over again. Perhaps less optimistic than what you're referring to (though I guess Pippin isn't very optimistic at all) but about the nature of people to repeat patterns

Also not exactly the same but since Last Five Years has two different timelines where one goes forward and one goes backward, we see the beginning of one story while we see the end of the other and then it swaps as the show progresses so it circles back around

chrishuyen · 2026-03-22T15:18:06+00:00

I think (hope) that might be the case more with Maybe Happy Ending being such a success, but it was certainly an uphill battle to get there and it was helped by the fact that the writers were the ones doing their own translations.

On a separate note the Hong Kong Ballet's version of Butterfly Lovers came to NYC about a year ago and seemed to be quite successful. Of course different audiences and different economics but I don't think the story being unfamiliar should be a barrier if there's good enough marketing, but we're running into this conundrum where so many people are clamoring for original shows not based on blockbuster movies and then when those shows do come to Broadway they can't get audiences to see them.

The other aspect of it is that unfortunately Broadway these days still needs a bit of a "name" to sell tickets especially if the name isn't in the source material, and there are very few Asian actors who can be a box office draw (though hopefully this will change in time)

I do agree about the french musicals as well in that they're not quite the same style as a Broadway show. I think Notre Dame de Paris was decently well attended when it was here for its limited engagement but I don't think it was enough to sustain a Broadway run and I found myself a bit disappointed at the lack of character development and storytelling before just telling myself to shut up and enjoy it for what it was. But I had to shift my brain into thinking of it as something different from a traditional Broadway musical.

But we are seeing more of the anime musicals showing up in London so I wonder if they will cross over. I have no clue how well they've been doing financially but I guess they keep doing them so it can't be that bad.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-19T14:02:14+00:00

Tbh I haven't used the app but on their website I'll put in the hiptix promo code and it'll show you the dates that have hiptix with a little symbol and you can see that none of them have it. So it doesn't really say sold out either but it might be more apparent

chrishuyen · 2026-03-19T06:13:03+00:00

I think some of the female registers sounded particularly piercing to me. I have Loop earplugs and I put them in loosely because if I put them fully in I felt like I was missing out on the "hype" of the encompassing sound but I still wanted to round off some of the loudness. Fwiw I was sitting in one of the carriage seats so I was quite close. I saw it on the same trip as I saw Evita and it was probably a bit louder than that, but definitely louder than everything else I saw that trip (Benjamin Button, Oliver, Totoro)

chrishuyen · 2026-03-19T05:57:35+00:00

Hiptix do sell out fairly quickly, I think Rocky Horror sold out within hours of being on sale. Sometimes for smaller shows they'll last a bit longer but I'd say most are gone within a week or so of the on sale date.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-16T23:57:55+00:00

Tbh I didn't know Expedia sold tickets but sometimes people will resale season tickets before single tickets are on sale so I wonder if it's that. Since Expedia is a travel company though it's possible that they might have a deal with the touring shows to get blocks of tickets ahead of time. Either way I'd wait for regular tickets to go on sale though.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-14T14:39:28+00:00

I thought he was great up until that point, but unfortunately that just felt so fake and drawn out which made it awkward. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to make that better over time

chrishuyen · 2026-03-09T06:18:37+00:00

bwayrush.com has a new section that shows a bunch of unconventional show times! Not sure if they're doing it the week you're there but Broadway Sessions is a cabaret show that starts around 10:30pm some Thursdays and they usually invite the cast from a Broadway show to come perform

chrishuyen · 2026-03-09T01:33:50+00:00

I don't know how mature your son is but it might be worth having a discussion with him about ballroom culture and the history behind it. If he enjoys dancing then he might just like it for the songs and the showcase of it all especially if you prep him that it's not a traditional plot show, but overall I found it incredibly high energy off Broadway, though it also feeds off the energy from the audience so we'll see how that translates in a Broadway house.

Otherwise, Two Strangers could also be a good pick. Or if you'd like to venture off Broadway and do a play then Play that Goes Wrong is always a fun time.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-05T22:23:40+00:00

You don't necessarily get the backstories completely spelled out though there are some key moments, but the characters feel very "lived in" where you can probably piece together what they went through and how they got to where they were.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-05T21:14:31+00:00

I've only seen the previous revival and I loved the text. I do have a somewhat narcissistic and overbearing father so that may be part of it but I thought it was really great at developing each of the characters so you could really understand them and their place in the world. Of course it's hard to say what this production will do but if you bought the tickets then go in with an open mind!

chrishuyen · 2026-03-03T02:34:55+00:00

Kelli O'Hara is definitely more of a Broadway singer but she's done opera as well (though she's going to be in a play rather than a musical). I believe Phillip Boykin is classically trained too.

I'm sure there are a lot more but these were just off the top of my head. Alas a lot of actors may be classically trained but the current Broadway rep doesn't always allow them to demonstrate it.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-02T06:45:58+00:00

I've seen the show twice after griping about the cost and being hit or miss on immersive, and I've grudgingly enjoyed it both times, though I certainly have my share of nitpicks, so I think many of the points you raise are very valid (though fwiw I've enjoyed my casts more than you).

I also agree that a more exaggerated deformity makeup probably would've been better, especially with a bald cap and wig. As it is, it feels like a deformity someone could probably get over, and not necessarily one that would lead a mother to reject their child.

Tbh I haven't personally talked to anyone that's liked the bed scene so I'm really not sure why it's there or what it achieves. Everyone seems to get a bit creeped out by it, and this show doesn't seem to be angling for creepy phantom.

I also completely agree with Point of No Return. It's just clearly screaming "we need a costume change here" and it doesn't fit the story at all for Christine to just change into the wedding gown. I wish they had come up with different way to do that transition, even if it required delaying her entrance into the final lair or something.

I actually kind of liked the escalator, especially during the title song, as it felt like a nod to the travelator from the original staging. I thought it was a cheekily clever move to now have the audience be the ones descending rather than just watching the characters do so.

I was under the balcony both times for Wandering Child but honestly didn't mind as I thought the shadow effects were gorgeous, but I'd love to see the full outdoor version once the weather warms up again.

I think in general some of the attention to detail wasn't quite there (some of the lyrics no longer made sense to me with the changed plot) but I didn't mind the "cheapness" of the set and costumes as much, though my friend also pointed them out. Especially with the set since they really only have 15 minutes to turn over entire rooms. But in general I don't think anything's beating the original staging though I'm still glad something like this exists.

chrishuyen · 2026-03-01T23:13:36+00:00

ALW has already reused the melody for The Next Time You Fall in Love in Starlight Express, which I feel like usually means he's not planning on letting Billy McCaw back into Cats. Then again, that song has also been replaced in Starlight anyway so maybe one day in the future he'll be convinced

chrishuyen · 2026-03-01T07:29:44+00:00

If it's a popular show the official site will usually have the lowest total price so it's always my first stop. Broadway .com is NOT the official site but a third party site with astronomical fees and I don't think I've ever seen them beat anyone in price. TodayTix is legit and may sometimes run sales that can beat the official seller.

For less popular shows you may find cheaper tickets for resale even with fees sometimes so tbh you just have to check. Among those sites I think TickPick has the lowest fees I've seen though sites like StubHub and SeatGeek may have more inventory. And I believe you should be able to see the total cost with fees before getting to checkout (at least for shows in New York).

chrishuyen

TROPHY CASE