You are ahead of me—never heard of this musical DEH, and now having read the plot have no interest in seeing it.
CFA really is a feel good play. We thought DEH was quite good but understand that others don’t. Have to disagree about The Band’s Visit. Both dh and I thought it was just OK. We did get to see it with Tony Shalhoub which was fun.
I didn’t have much desire to see DEH, but my D REALLY wanted to see it. We saw it on Mother’s Day, and while it’s not your typical happy-happy musical, it really touched me and I did like it a lot. Although the idea of paying a lot of money to see something that makes me cry isn’t my favorite thing… LOL. I do wish we’d seen it when Ben Platt was in the title role. We were at the final performance for the original Conor Murphy. I just couldn’t connect with Taylor Trensch; I found his portrayal of Evan somewhat annoying. I liked the music. D actually knows someone in the current cast, so it looks like we may be seeing the show again.
If disliking a popular Broadway play makes someone dead inside, I must be dead as a door nail myself. I absolutely hated-no, HATED-Les Miserables. Had to leave before it ended, something I’d never done before.
@Nrdsb4: Nooooo! Say it isn’t so! LOL
I’ve seen Les Mis in nearly every country where it was produced (by coincidence… I didn’t travel specifically to see it!), and I saw it a dozen times in its original Broadway form. I had to be dragged to the first performance, I had ABSOLUTELY no desire to see it, I expected I’d hate it like you did! But, I fell in love with the story and the show. Sounds corny, but it changed my life in a very real way.
However, I was someone who got up and left the theater before Act I of CATS ended… I REALLY, REALLY hated that show. I didn’t get it at all… and I’m a cat person! And yet SO many people loved it and still do… ah well… it’s all art. I guess. 
@CaMom13 I absolutely loved Come From Away
Like you, it made me cry - especially the end with the ‘firefighter’s mom’. @crknwk2000 Come From Away will resurrect your insides!
@missypie I also love The Great Comet! We saw it shortly before closing when Dave Malloy had returned and he was terrific. One of my favorite theatre experiences and I see a lot of theatre! 
@Nrdsb4 Les Mis is the type of show that is very dependent on the cast you see. I’ve seen it several times with different casts. Some I loved and others were just awful.
One of the secrets of enjoying a play, I’ve always believed, is seeing a play before all the buzz…many years ago,i was lucky enough to see Spring Awakening that way and i was so devastated at the end that I could scarcely leave my seat. I mean that as a compliment.
Before thanksgiving, I saw The Prom (which has since received a great review by the Times) and its been a long time since i’ve laughed that hard at anything…i’d highly recommend. It’s at the Longacre.
@alwaysamom - I don’t think that Les Miz is any more cast-dependent than any other show. In fact, to my mind, the most cast/concept/production-dependent shows, for me at least are performances of Shakespeare plays.
We’ve probably seen Les Miz performed live – and in concert versions – several dozen times on Broadway, in LA, with touring companies, in high school productions, in movies, as well as listening to recordings of the Original Broadway Cast and Original London productions (not to mention different-language versions (French, Spanish, even Hebrew!), the original Concept version, etc. Needless to say, it’s been a big part our family culture since D was 2 (when we got the 10th anniversary version of of the concert in VHS format – DVDs had not yet made it on the scene.
In fact, when I asked my D whom she wanted to bring in to entertain at her 5th Bday party, (the year before we had Winnie the Pooh), she requested Jean Valjean and Cosette; to my credit, I pulled it off! We had a Les Miz-Themed party in which members of a local HS cast – Valjean, Cosette, and the Thernardiers – came and performed; we played games like “Pin-the-nose-on-Cosette,” “Pass the Bagette,” etc… The other parents loved it – the other kids were pretty clueless.
Some performances are clearly better than others (I’m partial to Colm Wilkinson as Valjean and Philipp Quast as Javert (from 10th anniversary edition), Brian Stokes Mitchell will always have a special place as Javert in my heart; Russell Crowe, on the other hand, was the single most awful Javert I’ve seen (and that includes HS versions) – I couldn’t wait till he died!
Like any great musical, it holds its own – even with a less-than-optimal cast (unless we’re talking Russell Crowe and then I’d have to agree). I had seen Hamilton on Bwy with the original cast and was not disappointed in the least when I saw it with the touring cast.
Cats, on the other hand, has always – and will always – piss me off, and I was not at all a fan of Book of Mormon.
Whether or not I like DEH remains to be seen.
^^Le Miz is a family favorite of ours too but we’ve just seen it maybe 6 times. We have a 6 hour drive we take to see family several times a year and listening to the sound track was and still is a tradition that continues. Really didn’t get Cats, tbh.
Have noted The Great Comet and Prom and will keep an eye out for them. Thanks for the suggestions.
Just googled The Great comet and Prom and I see the Great Comet closed in 2017…maybe it’ll be resurrected and go on tour!
I have a friend who has tried to convince me that the reason I didn’t like Cats was because I didn’t see it in London on the special stage designed specially for Cats and that no other theater in the World is good enough. Okay then, I’ll have to take her word for it as I’m not going to London just to see a show I didn’t like the first time. And it probably doesn’t help that Letterman made fun of them for years. Here, kitty kitty.
I like Book of Mormon but once was enough.
I did really like Gentlemen’s Guide to Murder a few years ago, probably because I didn’t know anything about it. And because I got free tickets.
I didn’t enjoy the soundtrack from DEH, so I doubt I will see it.
I love Les Miz and often listen to the soundtrack. My other favorites are Aida, Grease and West Side Story. I can listen to those soundtracks over and over.
I would love to see CFA and The Band’s Visit but money is really tight right now, so I have to look for deals.
The one show I would have walked out of but my D refused was Avenue Q. I didn’t do my due diligence and took a then 14 year old to it. At least when we saw Spring Awakening, she was older. I liked SA, the play, but wasn’t a huge fan of the music. I have seen college productions at both my D’s and S17’s schools that I enjoyed more than the Bway production (and my kids were not in the college shows).
I loved A Gentleman’s Guide to Murder but would like to see it again on a smaller stage. At the moment I am trying to get tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong when it comes here but it doesn’t seem that there are many tickets available.
Have you Les Mis lovers ever seen the Key and Peele skit?
So I did see recently see DEH and found it fairly moving (nice to know I’m not totally dead inside!). That said, I didn’t think that it was earth-shatteringly good or that it will go down in history as a seminal or ground-breaking work of art.
It’s interesting how I think that there are many ways to interpret the piece and what viewers may (or may not) take away from it. I had gone to see it by myself and very much reacted to it as a mother; one of the biggest takeaways for me was how we try to do our best as parents to varying degrees of success. One of my friends saw it twice – once with her mom and once with her daughter. She reacted to it both as a daughter and as a mother. Another (childless – or “childfree” as she likes to think about it), friend saw it mostly as a commentary on the effect of social media as it relates to teens.
Oh, and, for the Les Miz lovers out there, Forbidden Broadway has done a lot of really clever spoofs of “Les Miserableh” over the years, some of which can be seen on Youtube. (e.g., Valjean’s “God, It’s High…The Song’s Too High,” Eponine’s “On My Phone,” the full Company’s “One More Tour”).
Forbidden Broadway’s creator, Gerard Alessandrini, also knocked it out of the park with his “Spamilton” (three guesses what that’s one’s a spoof of).
My musical theater friend did not like th eDEH portrayed mental health issue but liked the music. Everyone seems to have loved CFA. I am going to see the Bands Visit in a few weeks.
We went to see the Ferryman, which is a play, not musical. It was wonderful.
I am a very big Les Miz fan, saw it several times on Broadway and locally and even had one of my kids perform in it with a local theater company. Even liked the movies (some of the cast not so much).
The entire family went to Book of Mormon a few years ago and laughed our way through it.
I saw “Come From Away” today and I’m happy to report that I am not dead inside!!! Thanks to all who suggested seeing this. It was funny, touching, tender and hits you hard. It brought all the feelings I had that morning back in 2001, the helplessness, the disbelief, the anger and the over whelming sense of coming together. The people of Newfoundland and all those diverted people certainly came together in a way that I never knew about. 100% a WINNER!
Everyone has different taste. I remember our family going to a travelling Cirque du Soleil show. At half time my son thought it was over and was horrified to realize "it’s not over, there’s more?’ H was underwhelmed. It became a tradition for D and I to go away for a weekend to see it. Always politely asked the guys and they always declined.
@twoinanddone FWIW I saw Cats in London with the original cast on whatever stage they had constructed…and I absolutely hated the show.