Thursday, December 15, 2005
Sweet Charity, Original Broadway Revival Cast (2005)
Cast: Christina Applegate (Charity Hope Valentine), Denis O'Hare (Oscar Lindquist)
For complete cast, see IBDb's Sweet Charity page.
I'm very happy I got to see this before it left Broadway. I've always liked Christina Applegate and I had never seen her perform live. I was also excited to see Denis O'Hare again (I've been a fan since we saw him in Take Me Out in 2003. Although I was disappointed when I learned that I'd gotten seats in the first row of the orchestra (Note: Never forget to check your tickets before leaving the TKTS window), the seats turned out to be okay for a show like Sweet Charity, since there weren't a lot of elaborate sets. For something like Wicked, it would have been murder on our necks.
Dad (who currently lives in downtown Manhattan) and I were both very impressed with the entire cast. I had never seen Sweet Charity; it's a very sweet musical (as most were in the 60's). Dad thought this revival did a good job, which is impressive, since he'd already seen the show and told me a few times before we saw this version that he just couldn't picture Christina Applegate in any roll other than her Married... with Children roll (Kelly). By the end of the show, he admitted that Christina Applegate was a great actress and belonged on Broadway. I had never heard Christina Applegate sing before and she really did a great job. Having not seen Victoria Clark in The Light in the Piazza, I can't say whether Christina Applegate deserved the Tony award or not, but she definitely deserved the nomination she got. After seeing her performance, I'm very happy that the theatre community seems to be taking her seriously. :-) Denis O'Hare was amazing! The rest of the supporting cast was really wonderful and will surely be brightening stages for years to come.
One thing I really liked about Sweet Charity is that it didn't have the typical fairy tale ending. I thought it was great in the end Charity had learned a lot, but didn't get the perfect life she thought she had to have in the beginning of the show. I was surprised by such a refreshing ending in a show that's almost 40 years old. It seems that most shows on the great white way have to go for the happy ending. I definitely recommend seeing Sweet Charity on tour or the next time they do a revival. It's a fun & light-hearted show.
Grade: BLabels: 2005, Broadway, Christina Applegate, comedy, dancing, Denis O'Hare, drama, musical, original, revival, romance