So, yesterday I saw a dress rehearsal of WOLVES IN THE WALLS, and the very first preview. It's got some amazing stuff going on -- the cast are fantastic, the musical arrangements are wonderful, the technical wizardry is wizardy. The kids laughed, held their breath, (and, in the case of one small girl in the seats behind us, announced "I'll have nightmares, I know I shall" proudly and loudly to all of her friends during a scary bit).
It's not quite there yet -- which is why shows get previewed, and worked on, and why you have to do it in front of an audience to figure it out. If this was a novel we would be in the editing period, where you chop out bits that didn't work as part of the novel (no matter how well they work on their own) and stick in bits that glue it together as a whole. I gave lots of notes to Vicky and Julian, the directors, and to most of them they replied with "Yes, we know," or "That's being built right now but it hadn't arrived yet" or "it's already being taken care of". Nick Powell and I wrote a song last night for near the end, for a place where a song had been taken out because it didn't work but nothing had been put in to replace it and that didn't work, and I think (or I hope) that the new one will do the job.