Motza'i Shabbat I went to the HRDC production of Company (Stephen Sondheim and George Furth) in the Loeb Ex. It's a musical about a still-single 35-year-old guy and his friends (five married couples, three girlfriends), set in what was then contemporary 60s NYC.
The set was pretty involved for the Ex, with five little rooms along two sides of the space (the audience along the other two sides), and three rooms above. The band was tucked into the corner between the rooms, halfway up, and it worked.
While it might have been pushing social boundaries when it was first staged, it feels rather tame now. All the friends are hetero couples (though it turns out one is divorcing because the husband's bi or gay), none of the foibles shown are particularly strange (Third marriage! Smokes pot! Drinks! Eats! Etc.).
Pluses: fun music, an excellent lead, the spectacle of a big show (modulo local budgets, of course).
Minuses: cigarettes smoked (luckily not so much as to be truly annoying), occasional mic glitches (the songs were amplified, dialogue was not).
The set was pretty involved for the Ex, with five little rooms along two sides of the space (the audience along the other two sides), and three rooms above. The band was tucked into the corner between the rooms, halfway up, and it worked.
While it might have been pushing social boundaries when it was first staged, it feels rather tame now. All the friends are hetero couples (though it turns out one is divorcing because the husband's bi or gay), none of the foibles shown are particularly strange (Third marriage! Smokes pot! Drinks! Eats! Etc.).
Pluses: fun music, an excellent lead, the spectacle of a big show (modulo local budgets, of course).
Minuses: cigarettes smoked (luckily not so much as to be truly annoying), occasional mic glitches (the songs were amplified, dialogue was not).