Posted: 7/11/26 at 11:03pm
UPDATE: Hannah is still the first cover Mary even while she covers Bianca’s absence.
Now for the new administration:
Barrett Foa, for my money, was by and far the runaway winner of the night. He is the jackpot Booth. Utterly charming, fully calibrated, and when he cracks - it is an absolute beauty to behold. Think of the best attributes of Michael Urie’s pre-crashout and Cheyenne Jackson’s post-crashout. He plays off Meg well (which can be a challenge since she’s a constant moving target), but also has crackling chemistry with Phillip when it comes to the big moment for them. A week in and he absolutely bodied this role.
Ryo Kamibyashi is a fine addition as Simon for it being a small role. It’s his first week, so he will find his groove in the madness. He seems to fall directly in the middle of Tony’s constant tension and Martin’s doe-eyed empty-headedness.
Meg…is definitely the embodiment of the principle that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. But right now, she lands about 50% of them. With her Mary, the hinges are COMPLETELY off. However, even in manic chaos, there still needs to be a certain level of control that is severely lacking. She is covering a broad range of accents, line reading speeds, facial expressions, mood changes, and personalities in an 80 minute period and it’s almost like watching her trying to sort out what works and what doesn’t in real time, The audience ate it up, but after a while, I found her to be a bit exhausting and some of the later surefire jokes didn’t land because she was racing and shouting through them. She did well with milking the right bits (the entrance, the desk), but she needs to wind herself down a bit because, by the end, her cabaret was clearly exhausted and you could tell her voice was shot. She also missed the baton catch, but played it off well with an invisible “baton” to finish out the number.
I have no doubt she will find her groove in the next few weeks, but she needs to dial it down because there is no way in hell she can sustain a Mary at that level for 11 more weeks.
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