Not Too Tired

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, we asked the writers of High Fidelity if they would consider restoring their song, "Too Tired," which had been cut from the show before it opened in New York.

I heard back from Tom Kitt, the composer, today. He and lyricist Amanda Green discussed it and ultimately decided they did not want to restore the song, at least right now, and they've asked us to keep the script and score as it was on Broadway. Obviously, we will honor their wishes. And we are extremely grateful to them for taking our request seriously and really thinking about it. They're both amazingly cool, talented people.

Tom gave us a couple reasons why he didn't want to make the change. First of all, they had written this song for a slightly earlier scene, at the funeral of Laura's dad, and they don't think it really fits right at the end of the show. Maybe that's just because they know the context they were writing for and a different context just doesn't feel right to them. Which I totally understand. Or maybe it's just because they're right...! After all, they did write the damn thing...

The other reason he gave was that the show received such a trouncing from the New York critics and they'd like to see how the show fares with audiences and critics outside of New York, to see if it really is the fault of the show or just the fault of the commercial Broadway mindset and senior citizen critics. (I think it's the latter.) And they feel that changing the show makes it more complicated to make that assessment of the material. Which I also totally understand.

Obviously, we hope the critical reception here is much better than in New York, but we're also approaching the show very differently. New York director Walter Bobbie treated it as a Broadway musical comedy, but we're treating it like the alternative, conceptual rock musical that I believe it is. Our production will be much more minimalist, much more dreamlike (since the whole story happens in Rob's head), and with more of a sense of perpetual motion, creating that sense of roller coaster that a lot of New Line shows have.

So anyway, Kimi won't be performing the world stage premiere of "Too Tired" after all, but we've still got a hell of a cool show and we're kicking some serious ass with it, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott