The play's first two acts (before intermission) consist of the antics of this menagerie, presented with a sly, but conventional satire and with much of the cast paying fierce attention to their accents and eccentricities.
On Broadway, no one — other than the cast — pays much attention to the conductor...
Her mother-shaped casts pay tribute to the pain inside a woman's body, as well as the world beyond it. .
Here, too, Soderbergh's casting pays off two (arguably huge) risks.
But the counterintuitive casting pays off, and Mr. Selge invests the character with just the right amount of bitterness, self-deprecating humor and charisma to make the performance, and Mr. Houellebecq's intelligent and well-considered satire, work onstage.
But the casting pays off for the most part, and, in the pastiche numbers that form the overheated, Felliniesque peak of the second act, the contrast between the characters' lives and the musical forms that both mock them and give them expression is as clear as Sondheim could wish it to be.
The lush casting pays off handsomely, with all contributing incisive, effective performances, led by Mr. Knight's focused, uncompromising turn as Leo, opposite an equally fine Lara Pulver (the lone holdover from the London cast) as his devoted, strong-minded wife, Lucille, whose efforts to seek justice for her husband almost succeed in saving his life.
The Guardian's Michael Billington said the casting "pays off superbly".
His ingenious casting paid off and he is now a legally recognized working artist in the US.
