I LOVED it (no surprise) and have to go again soon!!!!

I guess there is a silver lining that she doesn't seem to want to branch out into a more varied diet.  Perhaps you can encourage her to eat only your oldest underwear.  

Someone just ate two more pairs of underwear. 

I'm glad you liked it, Kathy!  I ended up seeing it again a week or two after my first viewing, this time in IMAX but in with a similarly thinnish morning crowd, with a couple of friends who also enjoyed it.  And yes, those people you mentioned did appear in that scene you mentioned, one with a signature vocal styling that Mr. Schwartz wrote in especially for this movie cameo.  (Both cameo roles — and much of the music in that particular sequence — was new for the movie, expanding on a much shorter passage in the show).

I read the novel sometime in the late 90s and liked it, though not quite as much as I wanted to.  It's decidedly darker, weirder and less family-friendly than the musical — all of which I'd count as points in the book's favor, but it was still slow going at times.  Among the few of Maguire's other fairytale-revisions I subsequently read (Lost; Mirror, Mirror; the first half, maybe, of Son of a Witch), my favorite by far was Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, which I'd love to see adapted for stage or screen.  Just a few years after its publication, the 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Earring came out — itself based on another 1999 novel about a young woman's fictional(ized) role in a Western-cultural touchstone — and seemed to me, at the time, to scupper any likelihood of another Miramax-ish 17th-century Flemish costume drama with similar themes and story elements getting greenlit.  (Turns out, a year earlier Confessions had already been adapted into what looks like a pretty wretched Disney TV movie).

Juror #2 looked interesting and I had read a couple of strong reviews, so I watched it on Max this evening... and was sadly disappointed.

Skimming through the inexplicably almost-unanimous "fresh" Top Critics on Rotten Tomatoes, I came across this hatchet job, which captures my own reaction with uncomfortable accuracy.  I may not have found the film quite so entirely bereft of merit as this writer did, but very nearly.  Mostly I found the script bafflingly amateurish — which made me realize that legal drama may bear the distinction, among all other genres, of being least able to survive bad writing.

I saw it today and enjoyed it quite a bit, except for having the same problem with a large drink (I was trying to pace myself, but my bladder outpaced my consumption), but I was able to hold it until the end. There were maybe ten people in the theatre.

It is "a lot." It made me really want to reread the book, or the first half of the book. I was pretty much "meh" about the book when I read it, but I now feel re-inspired.

Oh do it! I think the last one I did was pre-covid too - I saw Waitress and Come From Away on the same day. I couldn't do it every day, but when it takes me hours to get to London these days it's worth doing two in a day. I did Barbenheimer too, so a double show day in a different way!

From Paste magazine, who thoughtfully put this in my inbox.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/stephen-sondheim/time-capsule-various-artists-company-original-broadway-cast

The Sondheim Hub (Substack):   Gen Z Takes On Sondheim
                                                                        11 essays by students at SUNY Fredonia


...for a course that kicked off with the Atlantic article that began this very thread.

Quote from: Leighton on Jan 03, 2025, 05:51 AMI have booked for the last few rows of the Stalls (and for the matinee of the Cabaret immersive revival that same day!) so I am very excited for a very theatrical day out!

That sounds like a fantastic day!

I keep thinking about visiting Cabaret here, but still haven't gotten around to doing so.

But now you're inspiring me — a two-show day might do me some good as the winter blahs loom.  It's been quite awhile since I did one, certainly since before the pandemic, and probably quite a few years before.  It would be too tiring for my mom, but I could take her to dinner after a matinée and then put her in an Uber home before heading to an 8pm show myself.