The show was plenty enjoyable with memorable tunes, but for me it fell a bit short of the lavish praise it’s been receiving. While watching I found myself repeatedly thinking about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and missing that novel’s more interesting explorations of similar topics. The show also slows down through its second half and overexplains its ending.
The set design is Ring-esque both in terms of its playfulness and creativity and how it ultimately distracts and inserts itself as an unwanted character. It also results in the most punitive sightlines of any show I’ve seen. If you aren’t center orchestra or mezzanine, you will feel excluded from the show at times. The unnecessarily large proscenium frame and hard right angles of the rooms are the main culprits; I don’t understand why they didn’t cheat the angles outwards towards the wings.