Pretty Woman : Broadway

Surely our resident monkey could just swing from the nearest lamp post while waiting!

Knowing Andy Karl's luck he will transfer over for Pretty Woman and get an Olivier nomination but only to lose to the actor in the Groundhog Day revival.

When did you go to the box office for your rush ticket? I'm planning to do the same next month, would love to end up in the front row

I was surprised actually, I got there about 08:40 and was second in line. On a Friday! It was wet mind so that may have had something to do with it. I’d say there was 25-30 people behind when the box office opened. Seems like they sold the whole central block of the front row first so you’d need to be the first 14 or so tickets!

View was good, at 6ft 1 tall it was just about eye level for me but a few people were using booster cushions around me (including my friend which brought her to my height!).

I think, Mark , that picture of you and Samantha Barks should be hidden in a spoiler. @theatremonkey is going to explode when he sees it. 

Oh, good to know. Since the first off-peak train won't get into Grand Central till 10.11 for me, which is certainly too late, it doesn't really matter, when exactly I go, but this gives me more wiggle room. And will look out for the booster seats  

Saw this last night. I didn’t love the score by Bryan Adams or the cheap two dimensional repetitive set. Wooden flat palm trees? That said, amazing performances and vocals by the cast and the British leading lady “Les Mis” star Samantha Barks a super singer, but sadly lacked any Julia Robert charm, humour or magic - a bit like the show itself. The film was MUCH better. Meh 6/10

this is fast becoming the big award loser of this year with no nominations at the Drama League and now Outer Critics Circle. I suspect it may pick up a couple at the Drama Desk as they nominate anything, but sadly it looks like Samantha and the show are fast losing any hope of a few Tony nominations.

Well that was a major disappointment. I didn't make it into the city on time to queue for rush seats (well, I couldn't be arsed to get up so early) so instead I queued for a half price ticket at TKTS later and that got me Row C central in the stalls for $89. Still, I wish I had only paid $42.

So, where do I start? I picked it from all the offerings on Broadway because I really like the cast recording, the original movie was enjoyable and then there's Andy Karl. However, what works on the album, doesn't really work on stage. While Beetlejuice, which we saw the evening before, had taken the movie and turned it into its own thing by having Beetlejuice appear right away and act as Narrator and putting Lydia centre stage, plus a stage set/direction fizzing with creativity and fun, Pretty Woman is one of these lame adaptations, where the movie is just chucked onto the stage 1:1, adding nothing new and fresh.

What's more, very few songs really ADD something and those are Edward's songs, that sound very much like typical Bryan Adams ballads, especially Freedom. While Edward is a fleshed-out character and we get him musing over his life and the impact Vivian has on him, we learn very little about Vivian throughout the show. As so often, the woman is only the foil for the man on his way to self-realization. She gets two cliche songs, "Anywhere but here" (yea, we know, life as a hooker ain't fun, babes) and later one, where she tells Edward her sob story (again, full of cliches). Then we get stuff that doesn't move the plot forward one inch, like some tedious tango number for Vivian and the Concierge (who grated on me anyway).

If at least the show was great to look up, but it looks typically Stage Entertainment cheap (they're European co-producers, so they can chuck this easily at all their European theatres, starting with Hamburg in autumn). I wanted to set those cheap two-dimensional palm trees on fire at some point and most of the rest of the stage was also just cheap card board cut-outs or single items of furniture.

The cast did what they could with the material and it's not their fault that the show barely comes alive. Maybe I had enjoyed it more, if Beetlejuice hadn't been so much better staged, creative and fun the evening before. But this Pretty Woman version feels like such a wasted opportunity that could have been so so much more, I left the theatre rather angry.

Me 3 with the palm trees! 😆 I felt the same about the show also!

I agree with some of the people who have said this show won't become a long runner, but I find it so weird that people are trying to say the show may be the next big show to close when its lowest gross was in March at just over $650,000 and since then it's been rising gradually to its current weeks gross of just over $950,000. It's never read to me, based on its grosses, as a show that is in any immediate danger of closing.

I don’t think it’s in any immediate danger of closing, but it’s 2019 grosses have been disappointing (especially when you compare how it did it’s first 6 months). And it won’t now get any big Tony boost either (other than the general boost that all shows get after the Tonys). I guess it all comes down to how expensive a production it is. Maybe they’ll try and star cast it after Samantha leaves, but I’m not sure how appealing the show will be to a star name!