Woman in White Reviews...- Page 3

[Piazzaslight]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:20pm

Oh, dear...

Where is it? Can somebody just copy it and put it up here? Or at least a link?

[YayJudyYayJudy]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:22pm

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/theater/reviews/18woma.html

Updated On: 11/17/05 at 10:22 PM

[wickedfan]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:25pm

Overall: Rave for Maria Friedman, very positive for Michael Ball. Mixed-Negative for the show.

[Piazzaslight]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:33pm

At the end he compared The woman in White to Sweeney Todd. NEVER compare Webber to sondheim. Never never never never never never never never ever ever do that. EVER!!!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:39pm

FYI -- You CAN'T cut and paste entire reviews on this site for copyright reasons. Please remove that post (or else the board moderators will simply delete it).

Here's the link:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/theater/reviews/18woma.html

Updated On: 11/17/05 at 10:39 PM

[wickedfan]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:41pm

Webber has never had a good track record with the critics in New York. Especially the Times. Has he ever gotten a rave from them?

Updated On: 11/17/05 at 10:41 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:44pm

The AP is Mixed:

"Yet despite all the passion in story and song, this lavish production, directed by Trevor Nunn, only fitfully raises the theatrical temperature at Broadway's Marquis Theatre. Most of the heat is provided by Maria Friedman, playing the odd-woman-out in a love triangle that is one of the evening's many plot lines.
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Lloyd Webber's score is not as adventurous as his last theatrical outing -- "The Beautiful Game," an underappreciated musical set in strife-torn Northern Ireland, and still, unfortunately, not seen in New York. Still, there are some lovely moments, particularly the eerie opening railway sequence and some beautiful trios for that love triangle of Marian, Laura and their art tutor.
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Nunn's direction never stops, to say the least. That's because designer William Dudley's turntable setting is awash in video projections. They move quickly from that railway station to a baronial mansion to green fields to a graveyard to a grim London street and beyond. This astonishing marriage of film and stage provides some novel if sometimes head-spinning visuals.

Those ever-revolving projections are about the only special effects to be found in "The Woman in White." No crashing chandelier like in "The Phantom of the Opera" or performers on roller skates like in "Starlight Express."

This latest from Lloyd Webber is more refined and, consequently, a little dull around the edges.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-theater-woman-in-white,0,2582868.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:46pm

I don't think Brantley was comparing Lloyd Webber to Sondheim, he was comparing the productions, and I loved his analogy about "water and blood." I haven't seen this show but I think the set designer got lazy. I doubt this show will have the same future as Cats and Phantom, it sounds more like a Sunset Boulevard or Evita.

[wickedfan]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:49pm

I wouldn't use Sunset Boulevard and Evita as shows with the same types of runs/reputations on Broadway. I would say that this show is leaning more towards Evita compared to how the box office is doing, the critical response , and the Broadway debut of Maria Friedman.

Updated On: 11/17/05 at 10:49 PM

[EganFan2]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:53pm

I'd say it was a typical review. Audiences love ALW more than the critics do.

[NYadgal]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 10:56pm

I saw the show on Tuesday, and have to say I think the reviews are generally accurate.

Kudos to Maria Friedman and Michael Ball, but "pallid" is a fair description of the show.

[Piazzaslight]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:02pm

Margo: I kinda don't have a subscription to the NYtimes... I read the review when it was posted here anyway...

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:18pm

You don't need a subscription for the Times. It's FREE. Put in you name and email address and you automatically get access. It takes 30 seconds.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:21pm

Would you say Brantley was mixed?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:23pm

Theatremania is Negative:

"The world's first pre-Raphaelite musical has arrived on Broadway. (Not that anyone has been clamoring for one -- at least, not since the 1870s.) It's The Woman in White, and what it owes to the coterie of Victorian painters who gazed back at the Renaissance for lofty influences struck me last January when I first walked into the lobby of London's Palace Theater, where the Andrew Lloyd Webber-David Zippel-Charlotte Jones adaptation of Wilkie Collins's mesmerizing novel has been playing since August 2004. On display in the gaudy space, owned by Webber, were two pre-Raphaelite canvases -- one of them John William Waterhouse's "St. Cecilia," for which Lloyd Webber, an avid art collector, paid a record-setting $10 million at auction in 2000.

That piece of art is not on display at the Marquis Theater, where The Woman in White has landed on American shores; but set and costume designer William Dudley has acknowledged that he turned to the pre-Raphaelites for the decorative ideas he has brought to fruition on stage through extensive use of computer-animated images. Dudley wanted the look of lush natural backgrounds and ornate interiors against which scenes of plummy inspiration could be played. With the help of lighting designer Paul Pyant, he got it right in the motion-sickness-inducing projections that provide the background for the musical.
_____________________________________________________________

Left for audiences to grapple with is a tepid watering-down of the plot, and Lloyd Webber's music does little or nothing to elevate the proceedings. The composer almost seems to have tired of his own work; every so often, he unfurls a colorful banner of melody but doesn't sustain it. The same can be said of the usually nimble Zippel, whose best set of lyrics is contained in Count Fosco's naughty "You Can Get Away With Anything" (performed with a white mouse courtesy of William Berloni Theatrical Animals).
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7136

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:24pm

Eesh. :-/
Updated On: 11/17/05 at 11:24 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:30pm

I'd say that Brantley is pretty negative. He doesn't really have much positive to say about any aspect of the show other than Friedman (and he mostly praises her bravery and her voice, not her overall performance). He criticizes the music, the lyrics, the sets, the story, the staging. It barely qualifies as Mixed-to-Negative -- basically it's Negative.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:32pm

Wonder what Clive has to say.

These reviewers need to wake up. We've only gotten like 4 reviews and its 11:30.

[jonartdesigns]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:33pm

i'm glad i'm not the only one who thinks the set is bullsh*t. i'm all for projections behind actual set pieces (particularly to show exteriors through windows and the like) but not instead of them.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:38pm

Variety is Mixed-to-Negative:

At the start of "The Woman in White," designer William Dudley zooms in, within a projection of a roomful of Victorian clutter, on a zoetrope, a quaint relic that provides a rudimentary moving image long since superseded by more sophisticated forms of visual storytelling. Similar limitations apply to Andrew Lloyd Webber's first new musical to open on Broadway since "Sunset Boulevard" 11 years ago. The composer's customarily lush, faux-operatic 1980s musical idiom feels like a throwback, while the emotion, mystery and romance of the Wilkie Collins potboiler is consistently dwarfed by the mechanical artificiality of the design concept.
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For all its villainous men, imperiled women, palpitating hearts, murder and madness, however, the melodrama feels sadly hollow.
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It's a challenge to get immersed in any story when the actors are competing for attention with the underlit, low-definition images on Dudley's giant curved screen, its central panel occasionally separating and gliding forward. The flat cartoon realism of scenes in the stately mansion or its surrounding woods alongside gurgling waterfalls resembles "Shrek""Shrek" without the critters.
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Lloyd Webber's music, while it tempers the syrupy romanticism of his melodies by weaving more complex, discordant textures that echo the story's troubled moods, fires off almost its entire arsenal in the first act and then remains stuck in repetitive overdrive. Each character's theme melody resurfaces, strung together with musical wallpaper.

There are no standout numbers, and the ballads "I Believe My Heart" and "Evermore Without You" sound like corresponding songs in "Phantom of the Opera" or "Sunset Boulevard," with efficient but uninspired new lyrics by David Zippel. Lloyd Webber's style has been so thoroughly lampooned over the years -- most recently in "Spamalot" -- it's now hard to take these songs at face value.
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Nunn puts all of the actors through their paces, having them stride across Dudley's constantly spinning turntable. But in this solemn, lumbering show, they keep moving while getting nowhere.


http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117928892?categoryid=1265&cs=1

[NYadgal]

Posted: 11/17/05 at 11:43pm

The sets (projections) gave me vertigo!

Sadly, I think the reviews are fair.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 11/18/05 at 12:24am

"96% filled to capacity is not a success? "

No. During previews, 96% capacity is merely curiosity.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 11/18/05 at 12:30am

Clive Barnes liked it.

"It worked for me"

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/57689.htm

[SayitSomehow]

Posted: 11/18/05 at 1:26am

What'sup with the Woman in White symbol up by the Broadwayworld.com logo? Is that something they always do on a show's opening night?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/18/05 at 1:44am

Howard Kissel in the NY Daily News is very positive.

http://www.nydailynews.com/11-18-2005/entertainment/col/story/366840p-312113c.html Updated On: 11/18/05 at 01:44 AM