Thank you readers for your input and thoughts as this blog develops. A2View Mostly Musical Theater has gone through a period of development. Recent personal attacks on an opinion I posted have caused me to re-evaluate the direction of the blog and reviews. Clearly people find it worthwhile, since I’m getting thousands of hits a day when I post new reviews, and hundreds of hits a day when things are kind of slow.
First, let me remind people that I pay for my own tickets for the shows I review: I do not get any freebies from theater companies. My opinions are my own and are not partial to one theater company or another.
Second, I have long posited that I am interested in appropriate shows in appropriate venues. For the most part, that means fully staged proscenium musicals, with full stage design, and full orchestras. I have strayed from this over the past year to give more leeway to some local theaters and studio musicals. I am no longer going to do that — it will save everyone grief.
Finally, as usual, I rarely review community theater. The rare exception to that is those theaters that present something unique or different (Such as Ann Arbor Civic Theater’s Grey Gardens last season) and those well-recognized near-professional theaters (such as Croswell Opera House) that exceed community expectations. That does not mean that I avoid all community theater — but in order to be reviewed, the show needs to be fully staged, of high quality (or expectation) and fully orchestrated.
When dates conflict, Equity shows will always take preference over non-Equity shows. In cases of touring musicals that are non-Equity, that status will be noted in the review.
There is a wealth of local musical theater. Some of it interests me, some of it does not. I am not a newspaper-funded reviewer. I review what I want to see. That does not obligate me to review anyone. There are plenty of media-funded reviewers available to cover those other events.
As a final note, I will never under any circumstances review another production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat or Guys and Dolls. Consider those shows fully-baked in SE Michigan. Put a fork in them, they are done.
Mostly Musical Theatre 