Did ‘The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess’ Meets Its Goal?

NYTimes.com: The creative impetus behind “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” the adaptation of the classic 1935 opera that opened at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Thursday, was to make the work more accessible, fresh and realistic for today’s musical theater audiences. In a New York Times article last August, before the production was introduced at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., Audra McDonald, who portrays Bess, said “none of us wanted to do a ‘Porgy and Bess’ where the audience would sit back comfortably and just, ahhhhhhh, soak in the big gems from the Gershwin score.”