My overall impression
This musical play has an interesting concept: put six people in a group therapy situation with a facilitator, only make it music therapy. The six will sing of their lives, thus enabling them to reveal their hitherto hidden traumas which brought them to the group in the first place.
This production had some arresting characterizations and tuneful songs, but the the entire evening is marred by the actors seeming inability to project their voices, both speaking and singing. A lot of the dialogue and lyrics get lost in sloppy diction and inadequate projection. It may be that a part of the problem was that the actors had performed the show originally in a different venue with different acoustical qualities and simply were not coached to make themselves heard in the new venue. It may be the odd placement of the proscenium arch and a very large, mostly empty stage in the Stella Adler Theatre made it difficult for the actors to effectively project without the aid of mics. I would like to see/hear it again in a more intimate setting.
