Flying Over Sunset

[scenicdesign71]

https://www.lct.org/shows/flying-over-sunset/

I'd had an eye on this since some months before the pandemic (it was originally scheduled to begin previews on the day Broadway shut down), and now that it's coming back I'm getting intrigued again.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4AmIsikAB7HIESPKBDf95NqSUdzptiSK

[scenicdesign71]

Flying Over Sunset is getting a cast album, to be released digitally on January 28, and on CD March 11.
(Ed.: The release dates have been pushed back to February 18 and April 1, respectively).

I saw the third-to-last performance this past Saturday, and found it not-unpleasant but overlong and underwhelming, for most of the reasons the critics cited.

And a few they didn't: after seeing Beowulf Boritt's work on FOS, it surprised me not even slightly to learn that he's never tripped -- I haven't either, but if his set (with projections from 59 Productions) manages to evoke the experience sufficiently to satisfy the more-experienced Lapine (along with most of the critics), it would seem we haven't been missing out on much.  He plays with curved surfaces and large volumes of space and complex movement over the entire vast Beaumont stage, kept radically more open and "empty" than his Tony-winning triple-decker mega-revolve for Lapine's Act One in the same space eight years ago, but ironically requiring what must be far more complicated scenic automation this time out.  All I could see was how much it all must've cost... and how nervously determined someone was to keep things classy, with mixed results: the occasional tightly-controlled irruption of gaudy "trippiness" into the proceedings tends to stand out in ways more awkward than revelatory (or even especially impressive, for all the strenuous effort), while the non-trippy parts of the evening look and feel scarcely any more "real" or persuasive than those explicitly meant to suggest hallucination.

Not that he, or anyone, could necessarily have served the story (such as it is) any better.  It's a pity that the show feels at once so thin and so impermeable, because the premise, however challenging, had some potential; the extremely talented central trio (Carmen Cusack as Luce, Harry Hadden-Paton as Huxley and Tony Yazbeck as Grant, all well-cast and warmly engaging) do all they can to enliven the proceedings, along with Robert Sella as their "guide" Gerald Heard; and Michelle Dorrance's choreography is thoughtful and original.

Still, while Kitt and Korie's score didn't leave a deep impression on first hearing -- it has its longeurs, but also some beautiful passages, including the title song -- it'll be nice to have it recorded to listen to again.  As we all know by now, I'm not always a theatergoer who "gets" things the first time -- and I'm at a double disadvantage here: not only do I have zero experience with LSD, but I've never actually set foot in California.

[scenicdesign71]