‘[title of show]’ Makes Everyone Feel [name of emotion]

Before we watched the opening-night Broadway performance of [title of show], we had a bunch of snappy questions ready about the musical’s inherent narcissism, but after witnessing the cast taking tearful bows to a packed and equally tearful audience last night, we only wanted to talk about feelings. “It’s like a bucking bronco!” screamed musical director Larry Pressgrove, while cast member Heidi Blickenstaff gushed over “my dad, who is this big stoic German guy, seeing me in a Broadway show for the first time tonight. You’re really realizing a dream coming true in real time, and I had a really hard time holding my shit together.”

She wasn’t the only one. Cats’s Betty Buckley wondered why she was referred to in the show as “A hot box of crazy,” but nevertheless told us she cried twice (“And oh, I wept!”), and Broadway vet Penny Fuller swore that she’s sobbed every time she’s seen [title of show] since workshops. “And I’m beyond that, I’ve done my crying over plays, but this gets me every time!” It sounds like a major cheese-fest, and it was: the most delicious, top-shelf, oozing cheese-fest, though star Susan Blackwell swore that they try to regulate it. “We have a sort of cheeseometer going all the time,” she said. —Amy Preiser

Related: The Meta-Meta-Meta-Musical [NYM]