If, however, you want to see some wonderful performers pour their souls in to the pleasant pop melodies of Frank Wildhorn, you've spent your money wisely. The performers are the real strength of this odd pastiche of song cycle, history recital and rock concert. The sets and staging are minimal, the costumes only serviceable, and the lights atmospheric and occasionally blinding, but when the cast starts to sing, they hold the audience in rapt attention. The authors responded to their critics by re-imagining the work with a new creative team that cut the cast almost in half and did away with battle scenes, scenery and even character names. What remains is an open stage with the seven-piece band at the center.
Atmosphere is provided by a set of crumbling columns and a brick wall.
A series of scrims provide projection areas for slides of countryside or battlegrounds, as well as battle names, dates and casualty reports. This lack of specificity seems designed to make us feel that each performer is Everyman or Everywoman, and that each incident is equally important to the flow of history. What it does is rob the audience of the momentum so important to both theatrical power and the understanding of history. Though the projections offer dates as the war progresses, the audience is left without any real awareness of the passing months and years and the wear of a long and bitter struggle. Each number is a self-contained unit that lives or dies on the strength of the performers and Wildhorn's famed emotionalism.