Broadway

Back to the Future: The Musical

August 16, 2023

"Back to the Future: The Musical," the time travel adventure, joins a long line of problematic screen to stage musicalizations which do not improve on the originals in any way. Joining the list that includes in recent memory "Pretty Woman," "King Kong," "Tootsie," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Almost Famous," Back to the Future, using one of the original movie’s co-writers (Bob Gale without Robert Zemeckis), attempts to transplant the film in toto to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre without adding anything new to the mix other than having the characters sing and dance. If theater is meant to surprise us, then like the stage version of "Almost Famous," "Back to the Future" slavishly follows its source material so that we feel like we have seen it all before – and better. [more]

Here Lies Love

August 2, 2023

"Here Lies Love" unreels like an MTV music video with the emotional content lost in the technique. The real issue of this musical is that it’s impossible to feel anything for the lead characters, with the possible exception of Estrella. They are moved about the extraordinarily gimmicky set like chess pieces with Imelda checkmating everybody. Jacobs evinces the boldness of Imelda, the script limiting her ability to show any tenderness or vulnerability. Llana's Ferdinand is written pretty much as a stolid symbol, hardly human at all. [more]

Once Upon a One More Time

July 3, 2023

The only problem with Hartmere’s plot is that it remains undeveloped. None of the princesses get to read Friedan's book (there is initially only one copy) and they take it on faith that it offers them alternatives. The plot goes off on a series of tangents (Prince Charming’s assistant Prince Erudite the Celibate reveals that he is gay when he meets Snow White’s assistant Clumsy, the Cinderella’s Stepmother attempts to get the Narrator to choose one of her daughters for Prince Charming after Cinderella’s defection) but these narratives turn out as you would expect with no surprises. As staged by director/choreographer team Keene & Mari Madrid, whose credits up until now are mainly in film and music video, (creative consultant: British director: David Leveaux), the many production numbers look like aerobics for a rock video which may please Spears fans but look incongruous in a Broadway musical based on 18th and 19th century stories. Spears’ fans will be pleased that the show includes eight of her top ten hits: “Oops!... I Did It Again,” “Baby One More Time,” “Gimme More,” “Toxic,” “Circus,” “Lucky,” “Work Bitch,” and “Stronger,” almost all with lyrics tweaked by Hartmere to fit a story of princes and princesses. [more]

New York, New York

May 16, 2023

"New York, New York" is a big, jazzy show in the style of golden age musicals we have not seen for a while. While it removes the abusive relationship between Jimmy and Francine from the film, in doing so it waters down the story to a rather old-fashioned “newcomers make good in the big city” tale we have seen before. The theme of racism is handled rather simplistically, borrowing parts of the Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge stories. Characters seem to come and go and are often gone for too long a time. The new collaborations by Kander and Miranda are fun to hear but they do not come up to the standard of the Kander and Ebb songs that we know. The show becomes a showcase for the much loved songs “But the World Goes ‘Round” and “New York, New York” which are given pride of place. [more]

Camelot

April 20, 2023

Unfortunately, though Sorkin may have made this "Camelot" more politically correct, scientifically accurate and less supernatural, it is much less entertaining and magical than earlier productions and certainly much darker as well as less funny. Whereas the original 1960 Broadway production billed itself as “the most beautiful show in the world,” Bartlett Sher’s revival has an almost empty grey stage most of the time (designed by Michael Yeargan) and drab costumes from Jennifer Moeller. Although the cast has 25 performers, the court scenes always look underpopulated as though not enough courtiers have shown up and there is almost no pageantry which one expects for a royal court of the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages. [more]

Shucked

April 17, 2023

In addition to a surfeit of approximate rhymes, the score for Shucked includes a paean to corn and a reprise of the following ready-for-Hallmark advice: "maybe love is like a seed/a little sun is all you need." Meanwhile, Horn blithely salts the earth with acerbic observations about how "marriage is simply two people coming together to solve problems they didn't have before." Foregoing any accountability for this philosophical inconsistency, director Jack O'Brien instead attempts to cover for it with turbo-charged pacing that not only sacrifices thought for an admittedly infectious energy but also, as a part of this devil's bargain, undermines the comic timing necessary for a lot of Horn's jokes to land properly. But the amiable cast never falters, even when the laughs do or the score becomes more saccharine than corn syrup. The cast is adept, too, at executing Sarah O'Gleby's inventive choreography on scenic designer Scott Pask's ramshackle barn of a set. Particularly enchanting is a rolling barrel dance that Durand daringly pulls off with impressive grace. It's just too bad that this delightful surprise isn't accompanied by many others. [more]

Bob Fosse’s Dancin’

April 6, 2023

Perhaps it’s the difficulty of finding dancers who can perform the intricate, body isolation moves so emblematic of Fosse’s very individual style, but to those who know and experienced his brilliance when he was hands on, this cast is a bit too clean cut and even-tempered. (The late Ann Reinking, a Fosse muse, was more successful staging her revival of "Chicago" still setting records on Broadway after moving from its New York City Center Encores! birthplace.) Nevertheless, Cilento is using a great deal of the original vignettes, excluding a few (most particularly Fosse’s perfectly ludicrous sexualizing of a ballet class) and adding more spoken lines, including an intermittent narration given by the charming, solid Manuel Herrera who also shows off his great dancing chops. [more]

Bad Cinderella

March 29, 2023

The book of "Bad Cinderella" plays like a series of unfunny "Saturday Night Live" sketches. Laurence Connor (who also directed the earlier London production) has given the show no particular style and each scene seems to be in another genre. The show can’t decide if it is taking place now - with its references to rock band Guns N’ Roses (parodied in the song “Buns ‘n’ Roses”),its use of both diversity and inclusion, a female Vicar, its erotic baker, reference to a “spare” prince, and its shirtless muscle hunks seen in the palace gym – or the Middle Ages. [more]

Parade

March 27, 2023

While Brown's tunefully varied score strives to historically situate the bigoted nightmare we're witnessing within the cultural context of the South's fabricated sense of nobility and victimhood, an offensive postbellum myth known as The Lost Cause, Alfred Uhry's reductive book ham-fistedly narrows our attention, transitioning from a corrupt law-and-order procedural in the first act to a preposterously scripted search for the truth after the intermission. Although Dane Laffrey's unremarkably fungible from-courthouse-to-prison-to-gallows set overbrims with historical figures, most of them exist on a character believability spectrum somewhere between "My Cousin Vinny" and "Driving Miss Daisy" (also written by Uhry). If not for Sven Ortel's rear-wall historical projections of these real people, an audience might suspect at least a few of them were invented out of whole cloth. [more]

A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical

January 21, 2023

When the older Diamond reaches an existential breaking point, he finally stands up, stage center and takes command of his memories, experiences and his life with an intensely concentrated rendition of “I Am...I Said.” As sung by Mark Jacoby, it is the most poignant moment of the show, particularly when he confronts his younger self face-to-face. Will Swenson, the charismatic star of 'A Beautiful Noise," is hampered by the full-steam-ahead pacing of the show, leaving little time for introspection. He is a powerhouse, molding his voice to sound like the actual Neil Diamond as best he can, often missing the mark. But that’s okay because the majority of the audience came to feast on the songbook of a favorite performer and they are rewarded handily. [more]

Some Like It Hot

December 19, 2022

Matthew López & Amber Ruffin (book) and Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman (music and lyrics) have transformed the written-for-laughs film into a joyous musical, keeping much of the sharp wit of the original. Most importantly, they added heart and even a surprisingly contemporary spin or two, buoyed by the brilliance of Casey Nicholaw’s direction and choreography (although all those knee slides made me worry for the talented dancers’ health!) [more]

KPOP

December 5, 2022

Adopting the hokey framing device of a concert documentary, Kim turns the impending U.S. debut of a South Korean entertainment company's three hottest acts into a triptych of rigorously gendered plots. While attempting to capture all the glitz, glamor, and artistry, the American documentarian (Aubie Merrylees) also relentlessly stirs the pot to heighten any behind-the-scenes discord for the cameras, which doesn't make much sense since his paycheck is signed by Ruby (Jully Lee), the record label's iron-fisted founder and driving force, who obviously wants a glorified promotional video, not an investigative report. But to ascribe dramaturgical logic to the situation is to entirely miss the point. Aided by Peter Nigrini's voyeuristic projections of backstage squabbling, the objective is not truth but, rather, to establish the type of assiduously rendered false intimacy fans perceive as truth. [more]

& Juliet

November 30, 2022

The cast is a combination of New York stage favorites (Stark Sands, "Kinky Boots," and Betsy Wolfe, "Waitress," "Falsettos" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"), new faces (Lorna Courtney, Ben Jackson Walker, Justin David Sullivan) and older veterans (opera baritone Paolo Szot and London stage star Melanie La Barrie making her Broadway debut.) The clever book is by writer David West Read previously seen in New York with "The Performers" and "The Dream of the Burning Boy" as well as the long running television series Schitt’s Creek. The show seems to have been influenced by "Something Rotten"(parody of Elizabethan times), "Six "(its updated 16th century costumes by Paloma Young), "Head Over Heels" (reboot of a classic tale wedded to a pop-rock score) and "Moulin Rouge" (the over-the-top staging by director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber) – but is actually more fun than all of those shows. At times it resembles "Saturday Night Live" skits but knows enough to keep them short and not let any of them go on too long before introducing the next complication. [more]

Kimberly Akimbo

November 23, 2022

"Kimberly Akimbo," David Lindsay-Abaire’s oddball take on the title character’s dishearteningly sad disease, began life as a play back in 2001, reaching New York via the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2003. In 2021 Lindsay-Abaire (libretto and lyrics) combined resources with the eloquent composer, Jeanine Tesori, to restyle the play as an award-winning musical produced at the Atlantic Theater Company in November 2021. This is the production that has moved to the Booth Theatre where it now resides featuring the glowing performance of Victoria Clark as the troubled title character. Jessica Stone repeats her directorial duties, managing the move to a larger venue with skill and subtlety. [more]

Almost Famous

November 15, 2022

What Crowe has done in writing his own book for the new show is recreate almost exactly every scene in the movie starting from the time when 15-year-old hero William Miller meets rock critic Lester Bangs, including the bus and plane sequences. The best lines in the stage version are recognizable from the film and nothing of equal stature has been added to the version now on stage at the Bernard J. Jacobs Theatre. The new songs credited to composer Tom Kitt with lyrics by Crowe and Kitt add little to the work as they do not forward the story. A good many of the iconic songs from the film make their appearance but as staged by director Jeremy Herrin and choreographer Sarah O’Gleby they are the least effective numbers in the show. [more]

1776

October 18, 2022

Directed by Jeffrey L. Page (who also did the simplistic choreography) and Diane Paulus, this production’s well-meaning gimmick is to have all the historic characters played by a “cast that includes multiple representations of race, ethnicity and gender [who] identify as female, transgender and nonbinary,” to quote the exacting language of the production’s press release. This casting coup works most notably as a political statement, hopefully forcing the audience take a fresh look at the original all-male contingent, however brilliant they may have been, and their flaws. The word “woman” never appears in the Declaration of Independence (nor the Constitution) and the millions of Black slaves were quite purposely and expediently left out of the Declaration. This multi-racial cast is a not-so-subtle slap in their faces. [more]

Into the Woods

July 20, 2022

Patina Miller as The Witch in a scene from the New York City Center Encores! Production of “Into [more]

Paradise Square

May 11, 2022

Based on historical facts, the new and exciting musical "Paradise Square" tells a story of fictional characters caught up in real events which lead up to the Draft Riots that occurred in Manhattan in July 1863. Set in the notorious neighborhood known as Five Points, renowned as the most dangerous place to live in the United States, it takes place mainly in the fictional Paradise Square Saloon in the real Paradise Square. Aside from the sensational dancing by choreographer Bill T. Jones and a rousing score by composer Jason Howland who also conducts, the show stars Joaquina Kalukango giving a show-stopping performance in the leading role. However, she is also surrounded by a great many leading characters played by actors at the top of their game. Like an epic adventure, Paradise Square will keep you engrossed until the very last moment. [more]

Mr. Saturday Night

May 6, 2022

Anyone else may find this decent show to be a tired affair which just about sustains its two-and-half-hour running time. The memory-piece book by Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel is based on their screenplay which ranges from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. It intends to be a loving tribute to a bygone show business era and fitfully succeeds at that. The schmaltz-laden dramatic writing never really rises above the rudimentary, rendering the events and conflicts with patness and clichés. Still, it offers choice roles that are marvelously performed by the other cast members. [more]

A Strange Loop

May 5, 2022

Deliriously and explicitly profane, Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize winning musical, "A Strange Loop" has—unbelievably—made it to Broadway, produced by Playwrights Horizons, Page 73 and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Jackson’s explicit portrait of a lost soul’s salty journey is alternately stunning and amusing, appealing and appalling, told at a breakneck pace through his book, lyrics and music. It’s a rare, if dispiriting, portrait of a gay man who isn’t a paragon, a man who isn’t conventionally handsome, successful or rich. [more]

Funny Girl

April 29, 2022

Beanie Feldstein’s clunky rendition of “I'm the Greatest Star” crystalizes the absurdist dimension of this off-kilter first Broadway revival of the 1964 musical, "Funny Girl." With her nasal, often muffled singing, oddly emphatic line readings and smug mugging, in no way does she suggest a great star, yet this nearly three-hour show is centered around her. It instantly deflates with her wan introductory “Hello, gorgeous.” She does exhibit idiosyncratic pluck and stamina throughout. [more]

The Music Man

February 22, 2022

Because of changing social mores, some Broadway musicals are assumed to make audiences uncomfortable today. Take for example Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Carousel" whose protagonist is a wife-beater. The recent revival did everything in its power to mitigate this problem but did not succeed. Now we have the long awaited revival of Meredith Willson’s "The Music Man" starring film megastar Hugh Jackman as Professor Harold Hill and two-time Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster as Marian Paroo, the librarian and music teacher. The problem the director and producers had with this classic piece of Americana, set in 1912, is that the hero Professor Hill is a con-artist and a serial seducer with whom we are supposed to be sympathetic. However, in 2022 this is an obstacle in an era when lovable rogues are not acceptable as heroes. As a solution, Jackman has been directed by Jerry Zaks to play Harold Hill as low-key and muted as he possibly can. What this does is straitjackets Jackman’s personal charm and charisma which he normally has in spades. The result is an undercooked Music Man even though it has been given a big, expensive production – six Tony Award winners on stage and six in the production team - maybe the starriest cast in New York right now. [more]

MJ

February 10, 2022

Wheeldon and Pulitzer Award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage make every effort to hide the fact that MJ is a jukebox musical, despite the fact that the first notes of every song elicited loud shouts and applause (part of the reason the show runs two and a half hours). Nottage has invented a plodding framework for the show. It is 1992 in Los Angeles. TV reporter, Rachel (a down-to-earth Whitney Bashor who acts as the play’s Greek chorus) and her hyperactive assistant, Alejandro (a charming Gabriel Ruiz) corral a reluctant Jackson to have his rehearsals for his huge upcoming 'Dangerous" tour documented. [more]

Flying Over Sunset

December 20, 2021

"Flying Over Sunset," Pulitzer Prize-winning bookwriter/director James Lapine’s new original show, is a “What If?” musical: using historical facts that are known about writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley, politician and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce, and actor and film star Cary Grant, he has created a fictitious story about their experimenting with LSD together in the late 1950’s together. The problem seems to be that he doesn’t appear to know much about them so that the results are extremely thin though the musical still manages to run a little under three hours. The songs by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Michael Korie don’t add a great deal and the production design which ought to be psychedelic is subdued and unadventurous. Stars Harry Hadden-Paton as Huxley, Carmen Cusack as Luce and Tony Yazbeck as Grant try valiantly but they can’t breathe life into generic cardboard cutouts. [more]

Company

December 18, 2021

This theatrical genius, responsible for the Tony Award winning plays "War Horse," "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and the most recent revival of "Angels in America," knew that this 1970 musical comedy about a man about to turn 35 and having all his coupled friends trying to marry him off would seem dated in 2018 when she conceived of this version in London, in which the gender of the characters are reversed. With the help of another genius, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim who rejiggered his wise and witty lyrics, Elliott has made this old show by bookwriter George Furth seem spanking new as if we had never seen it before even though this is the fourth New York revival. [more]

Diana, The Musical

November 22, 2021

If you are a Princess Diana completist, "Diana: The Musical" will satisfy your needs along with the deeper Spencer and The Queen and all the innumerable documentaries about this ill-fated fairy princess. Those interested in delving deeper into the Princess Diana mystique will be disappointed with this superficial, but somehow entertaining, musical. [more]

Caroline, or Change

November 9, 2021

"Caroline, or Change" is an important musical, more now than in 2004. It should be seen. The Roundabout production, though somewhat flawed, still communicates the complicated relationship between Blacks and Jews, clearly an issue in today’s New York City. It is an excellently constructed show, its message surviving mostly intact. [more]

Six: The Musical

October 10, 2021

More concert than musical, the 80-minute show's libretto adds little to its cast album, with the lyrics of each queen's autobiographical song also pruning their individual histories to a point even a Wikipedia writer might consider reductive. The English nursery rhyme "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived," which the women recite at the beginning of the sing-off, pretty much sums up writers Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow's level of interest in the lives of Catherine of Aragon (Adrianna Hicks), Anne Boleyn (Andrea Macasaet), Jane Seymour (Abby Mueller), Anna of Cleves (Brittney Mack), Katherine Howard (understudy Courtney Mack in the performance I saw), and Catherine Parr (Anna Uzele). In between the songs, the women disparage one another's suffering, all in an attempt to snipe their way to the grand prize: leader of the group and, with it, the audience's adulation. [more]

Girl from the North Country (Broadway)

March 19, 2020

Set in a dark time, "Girl from the North Country" creates a community on stage as do the best plays and musicals. Its tale of lost souls attempting to keep their heads above water is universal in both its message and its approach. Conor McPherson has never written so accessible a play before for Americans, and Bob Dylan’s songs have never sounded so poignant. Girl from the North Country is both unforgettable and not to be missed. [more]

West Side Story

March 16, 2020

Van Hove's energetic cast is too often lost among the video images which is sad because they are a wonderfully scrappy group of actor/dancer/singers who give their all. (I’m told that this is less of an issue in the higher reaches of the theatre due to the difference in perspective.) To be sure, there are wonderful moments where the groups move about in cityscapes that constantly change around them, but these are countered by long scenes during which the actors appear to be lilliputian figures whose singing and emoting get lost in the confusion of giant faces. [more]

Jagged Little Pill

December 15, 2019

Given the personal nature of Morissette's artistic output, it might be surprising to learn that the Broadway version of Jagged Little Pill doesn't take the easy biographical route for its book, mimicking, say, the mega-popular "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," whose subtitle pretty much says it all. Instead, Morissette's album (Glen Ballard co-wrote the music) and a few of her other songs support an entirely original story from theater-novice Diablo Cody, whose Oscar-winning screenplay for "Juno" was funny, affecting, and decidedly superficial. This same descriptive mixed bag also holds true for Jagged Little Pill, which rises above typical jukebox musical fare, but not as much as it could have, largely because Cody is interested in hot-button issues, not characters. [more]

Tina – The Tina Turner Musical

November 24, 2019

Do we really need another Jukebox Musical on Broadway—another hum-along, sing-along, déjà vu, vaguely autobiographical songfest? When the subject is as charged up as Tina Turner, the answer is yes—a conditional yes, but….yes, especially when the title character is embodied by the sensational Adrienne Warren who gained accolades for her rendition of Tina in the original London production and is one of the main reasons Tina gained the momentum to make the jump to Broadway. [more]

The Lightning Thief – The Percy Jackson Musical on Broadway

November 2, 2019

"The Lightning Thief - The Percy Jackson Musical" settles down a bit more in the second act and becomes more engrossing but the damage has been done. The actors in the first act all seem to be racing for a train and the sound levels continue to damage many of the songs throughout the show. The show remains an excellent introduction to Greek mythology made relevant for our own time. Faithful to the source material, it may please both teens who have read the book and those who have not. The five of the seven-member cast playing 28 roles demonstrates their versatility as they change from one colorful three-dimensional character to another. If only the director and the production had trusted the original show and did not feel it necessary to make it bigger and better for Broadway, a common complaint when shows make the move from their smaller Off Broadway venues. [more]

1 2 3 … 5 »