I moved to New York City for the culture, but have ignored the biggest 'cultural' draw, Broadway musicals. My musical upbringing was piano playing from Bach to Bernstein. We had songbooks of Gilbert & Sullivan and Rogers & Hammerstein, I heard Gershwins, Porter, and Sondheim.
When I read the NYT review, the brilliance of this staging concept made the production un-avoidable. The actors were also the musicians and stage hands on a thrust stage, the background was static and the props were symbolically representative. I recall the lighting was also exceptional, with minimal gels but achieving a consistently clear vignette of the dramatic focus.
This may be considered sacrilegious, but I also found the leads better than the originals, despite the hairline mics which I despise.
This is a terrble bootleg recording, but if you concentrate you can bask in the extreme wit of the 'graveyard humor'.