What I liked
Both Cameron and Adolfo are great as Sid and Andy respectively, but Cameron in particular is phenomenal as the emotional core of the play. He can be callous, charming, full of warmth, dry-witted, energetic, and deeply broken all within the space of a few moments. Emily did a wonderful job as Andy’s mother, Kate, and really made me feel that motherly love.
There are so many lovely moments here, like when Sid opens up to Kate. Or when Sid does basically anything, now that I think about it.
And it’s just so darn wholesome and that’s what I love about it. It does delve a bit into Sid’s abusive father and Andy’s absent one and does so very tastefully, but the parts I enjoyed the most were the ones that made me go “awww.” And there are a lot of those moments.
God, I’m such a sappy romantic at heart.
What I didn't like
It was always going to be a challenge to adapt a piece like this. What works on text and in a serialized format doesn’t always translate so well to a ninety-minute stage production. The scene changes were frequent enough to hurt the pace. Just when things would build at a good clip, a scene would change and the energy would dissipate.
It’s tough. The structure is episodic and tied together via the main relationship, but it often felt to me as if the momentum built during each episode of Andy and Sid’s relationship, then dropped when going to the next one – sort of the macro to the micro of the scene changes. There were several times I thought the show was about to end, then kept going.
My overall impression
This story is really adorable and I mean that in the best way. The production got me interested in reading the original fanfiction it was adapted from – actually, just before writing this review, I downloaded the pdf off Ao3 for later reading. That’s pretty freaking cool. However, I think the material needed to be more heavily adapted to better suit a ninety-minute theatre piece.
