Promises, Promises was a great show, mostly due to the fact that Sean Hayes carried it.  I am an avid Will & Grace fan, so I already knew that Sean Hayes was funny, but to see him work his magic live was an amazing experience.  He is a comedic genius, and every time he walked off the stage the audience waited in anticipation until he was on stage once more.  Sadly, we were unable to see Kristen Chenoweth perform, but we were lucky enough to see Molly Shannon, who had great chemistry with Sean Hayes on stage.  Although Megan Sikora who was the understudy for Kristen Chenoweth did a superb job acting I did not feel that she was a very strong singer.

The lead, Fran, was not a fully developed character.  She was meant to be a special girl, who was different than all of the rest of the girls who worked there, but she was forgotten as she blended in with the other girls.  In some scenes she became like all the rest of the girls, especially since her hair, make-up, and clothes were exactly the same as the rest of the girls.

I never really got what was so special about Sheldrake except for the fact that he had power and money.  Nor did I understand the reason why Fran, a young pretty girl, had to be with a man like Sheldrake.  I almost wanted the play to tell me why she had gotten together with this man in the first place, and why she couldn’t decide whether to leave him or not.  I also didn’t understand why this rich man would need to borrow a cheap apartment from one of his workers when he could have just gone to a nice hotel.

Yes, there was a lot of sexism in this play but it was to be expected since this is the time period where sexism happened.  In one song the four male actors sing, “Where Can You Take a Girl?”, which was demoralizing toward women and a bit creepy.

I thought that most of the music was very iconic of the time period, having catchy tunes and being pop and upbeat.  The dancing was great.  My favorite scene was in the beginning where the girls use the coat racks as props.  The props in the show were great, simple, yet unique never being too overbearing.

One of my favorite characters was Sheldrake’s secretary who was a strong female character. She tried to warn Fran about continuing to see Sheldrake, knowing that Fran was just the newest girl of the moment, knowing that there would be others.  She quit her job as a Christmas present to herself so she wouldn’t have to work there, which I thought was a bold move.  She even told his wife about what had been happening at the office, so his wife ended up divorcing him, which was exactly what he deserved.

The play made me question how far would I go… especially since in the play Baxter really doesn’t do anything wrong, but he’s still apart of it, he’s still involved.  Baxter’s character was tiptoeing on the line of right and wrong, thus being neither right nor wrong.  On one hand it wasn’t like he was cheating on his wife, but on the other he was allowing other people to cheat on their wife by giving the men his home for something in return.  In the end though, nothing good came of it and he realized that even though he was getting something in return he was essentially being used.  He was wrong and he quit his job, ending the cycle of abuse.

I certainly felt that I could relate with Sean Hayes’s character on many levels.