Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Reviews- Page 4

[Matt_G]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 9:45am

The first thing I thought when I read that first mixed review was "That bastard isn't giving this a rave because he's saving it for SPAMALOT". I really hope that isn't the case. (Because we all know reviewers can't rave about more than one show every 2 years)

[jim coleman]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 9:53am

What kills me about critics is that they are not supportive of the theatre, which is the reason that they have their jobs in the first place. They kill more theatre than they support. Everytime they kill a show and it closes because of their vitriol, they are putting lots of people out of work, and losing producers money. I am not saying that all shows are going to be mega-hits, but come on, try to be positive, at least. The older critics were the best. They weren't bitchy queens, ( and I am not saying that they all are!) who tried to be performers, and didn't have the talent to make it so they now write about it. My favorite review was from a critic, Howard Taubman, who wrote about HALF A SIXPENCE: " This attractively mounted production was really not my cup of tea, but the audience loved it. Go an see it and make up your own mind." He gave his opinion, and the opinion of the audience. That is being Fair!! Okay, I will get off of my soap-box, now. Critics sometimes really piss me off!!!!!

Updated On: 3/4/05 at 09:53 AM

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 10:03am

My crystal ball is usually pretty cloudy, but I have a hunch Brantley will give a similarly mixed review to SPAMALOT.

He's saving his rave for SPELLING BEE.

[TheGaIsSilent]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 10:05am

I'd be OK with Spelling Bee raves, but I think DRS is an all around better "Broadway experience".

Funny, you could substitute the words Avenue Q and Wicked, and I'd agree with the same sentence from last year.

[AbzugFan]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 10:07am

I sure hope to god that Brantley doesn't give a rave to SPAMALOT. Two things are very clear about him:
1. He doesn't love musicals--he may love theatre, but he doesn't love musicals, and therefore he can only judge them intellectually, which is the wrong way to evaluate a form which is unabashedly emotional.
2. He seems rather depressed. I mean, does the guy have no joy in his life? Does he have the ability to experience and express joy? Get thee to a therapist, Ben Brantley!

As for him saving his rave for SPELLING BEE, that's unlikely. The Times usually has the initial reviewer of an Off Broadway show (in this case, Isherwood) review the Broadway production. So Brantley won't be getting his claws into SPELLING BEE.

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 12:07pm

I was worried that they might just get mixed - negative reviews, I felt that the reviews wouldn't be all good.
Don't know exactly why, probably because of the similarities between DRS The Producers. I didn't think that would work in their favour.
The reviews are better than I feared. And I loved DRS.

QM

[MissNY]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 12:33pm

I was hoping for better reviews for them, but at least there are a lot of positive comments. And word of mouth will help a lot. Almost everyone I know who has seen it, loves it. I think it will do really well

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 12:38pm

Ulgh, my local paper, the Rockland Journal News nearly trashed it..by Jacques Le Sourd:

Look at it this way. If you can't get tickets to "Monty Python's Spamalot," you can always go to "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."
It's this seaso's consolation prize.
The new Broadway musical, which has a wonderful cast headed by John Lithgow, Norbert Leo Butz, Sherie Rene Scott and Joanna Gleason, is a giddy high-octane show that encourages you to ignore its considerable flaws.
The show, which is an easy (if not particularly graceful) crowded pleaser in the mold of "The Producers" opened last night at the Imperial Theatre. ("Spamalot," which opens March 17 and has not yet been reviewed, is already a much tougher ticket to get.)
"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" is based on the 1988 movie with Steve Martin and Michael Caine, about a couple of con artists--one elegantly British, the other low-down American--let loose on the French Riviera.
Lithgow, an extremely agreeable actor who is back on Broadway in a big way, plays the sleek and more than slightly oily Lawrence Jameson, the English half of the team. His hair oddly marcelled for this occasion, Lithgow could easily step into either lead role in "La Cage Aux Folles."
(In the last three years, Lithgow has starred in "Sweet Smell of Success," which won him a best-actor Tony Award, the extraordinary "Retreat From Moscow," which Eileen ATkins and A. R. Gurney's estimable "Mrs. Farnsworth." Before his movie career and his three emmys for TV's "3rd Rock From the Sun," he had a 10-year career on Broadway.
His partner, and low-class nemesis, Freddy Benson, is played by Butz, who works hard to be amusing and succeeds much of the time. But he sure breaks into a sweat doing it.
Will this role finally make Butz a sstar? We've been waiting, having admired his work in the flop "Thou Shalt Not," the hit "Wicked" and a short-lived Off-Broadway work, "The Last Five Years."
An admirable subtelty was the signature of Butz's earlier work. Now he sings a plotzy number called "Great Bug Stuff," which advertises the crassness of Benson's wish list, and follows it up with an extended scene as Jameson's fictional nutty brother--invented to scare away a female suitor--whose schtick would be better done by Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey. The abundance of thoroughly forgettable tunes is contributed by composer-lyricist David Yazbek, one of Broadway's younger talents, who showed far more score-writing charm in "The Full Monty." This show is all clumping songs you'd rather forget.
Even the normally brilliant director Jack O'Brien seems to stumble a bit. The man who won two Tonys in one year(for "Hairspray and "Henry IV") and staged "The Full Monty" and "The Invention of Love" seems flummoxed by this show's messy meat.
The dumb-and-dumber nature of the material isn't O'Brien's fault, or even Yazbek's. The fault lies, we think, with Jeffrey Lane, a first-time book-writer. Lane, whose background is entriely in television(he wrote for "Mad About You" and "Ryan's Hope") studs the script with lame psuedo-jokes that don't even try to be funny. (They just sound as if they should be funny, which works on TV.)
When the two men are making a bet, Jameston tells Benson, "If you lose, you not only leave town graciously, you agree to work only in the following territories: China, Iceland, El Salvador and, just to show there are no hard feelings, I'll throw in White Plains."
Far more seriously, Lane is hopless at the architecture of a plot: The show keeps ending and not being over, as he tacks on one anticlimactic scene after another.
Sherie Rene Scott, another should-be star who didn't quite make it in "Aida" or even her co-starring role with Butz in "The Last Five Years," is delightfully pleasant here as a soap queen from Cincinatti who becomes a mark for the two con men, who both wind up falling in love with her. But, amazingly, she is not given a decent song to sing. (She has quite a few crummy ones, including one called "Love is My Legs."
The same goes for the luminous Joanna Gleason (who won a Tony in the original cast of "Into the Woods in 199, who plays an heiress who falls for Jameson and then is sidelines to a secondary affair with a French chief of police (Gregory Jbara of "Victor/Victoria," who now eerily resembles Mel Gibson). The costumes Gleason is forced to wear (designed by Gregg Barnes) are particularly hideous, though in truth all the costumes are notably ugly.
The sets, by David Rockwell, manage to make even the Cote d'Azur look cheap, despite an awesomely immodest Playbill biography that claims his sets "ingeniously advance the story through rich, compelling and unexpected visual languages."
What the scenery suggests is some tacky-looking jewelry, although these con men are nor principally jewel thieves.
It's the kind of shortcoming that would puzzle an audience if it were paying attention. As it is, the audience at the Imperial is just happy to welcome Lithgow, Butz, Scott and Gleason back on a stage, any stage, for a bit of mindless entertainment with an obligatory uplifting ending.


Oy. It certainly didn't deserve this pan. What is worse is most people like my mom and my aunt who love Broadway only read our local paper review and decide that it means all reviews agree with it. I'll try to show my Mom the post review, but I really don't like or understand this review.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 12:42pm

And the papers in my county trashed everything, then gave Brooklyn a rave. Shows what "upstate New York" knows. I wonder what my local papers will say.

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 12:54pm

Hey, okay slightly a tad off-topic, but I always have this fight with people--I don't consider either one of us to be upstate, if you look at a map of New York, we are much closer to down than up. Furthermore, at least I talk much more with a City accent than an upstate accent and I feel more apart of the City than upstate. Sorry, always have to make this fight for people who think anything that is not NYC is upstate.

But yes, our papers do suck, and it really does affect people here where this is the only paper. I actually remember Wicked getting panned and my Mom for a while didn't want to see it and we only saw it because all my friends raved about it. My aunt still hasn't seen it, but initially didn't because of the review. Stupid critics. Fortunatley, I don't think my paper raves about much when I think about it.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 1:29pm

To people in the city, we're usually "upstate." To people where I'm from "upstate" is anything North of us - so Albany all the way up to Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, etc. It's all a matter of perspective.

[TheGaIsSilent]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 1:41pm

Rule of thumb:

To us Manhattanites, anything outside of Manhattan is "too far upstae". Even the first stop in Queens.

Posted: 3/4/05 at 2:02pm

The subway goes to Queens now?

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 2:03pm

I think it's just a rumour, BroadwayAbridged. I'm still looking for it...

QM

Updated On: 3/4/05 at 02:03 PM

Posted: 3/4/05 at 2:15pm

Boy do I wish I could go back and change my username right now. It looks so stupid when people have to call me it.

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 2:17pm

Sign your posts with a name of your choice, people will use that name instead.

QM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 3:28pm

Dont know if this one's been posted but the POST is a rave (***1/2)

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 3:44pm

Abzugfan --

"1. He doesn't love musicals--he may love theatre, but he doesn't love musicals, and therefore he can only judge them intellectually, which is the wrong way to evaluate a form which is unabashedly emotional.
2. He seems rather depressed. I mean, does the guy have no joy in his life? Does he have the ability to experience and express joy? Get thee to a therapist, Ben Brantley!"

While I wholeheartedly concur with your second statement (the man is burnt out and needs to retire), in the sense of fairness I must disagree with your first statement. If you go to the Times site and look up his raves for The Producers, Hairspray, Movin Out, Wonderful Town, Avenue Q, The Lion King, Rent, Chicago (especially with Melanie Griffith), Bring In Da Noise, Gypsy with Bernadette Petters, Kiss Me Kate, and several others you'll see he doesn't hate ALL musicals -- just a lot of them.

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 3:46pm

I <3 the New York Post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 3:58pm

I really hope SPAMALOT doesn't get rave reviews - DRS is a much better show, and I didn't even enjoy SPAMALOT half as much as I enjoyed DRS.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 4:15pm

Brantley's review of "Spamalot" will probably be 6 paragraphs on how amazing Sara Ramirez and "oh yea, these other people were in the show..."

[joniray]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 4:16pm

And Side Show. He LOVED Side Show. That's gotta count for somethin'

[TheGaIsSilent]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 4:19pm

Sara Ramirez was awful like woah.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 4:28pm

I haven't seen it yet (week and a half), but I love Sara Ramirez.

[BwayStar]

Posted: 3/4/05 at 5:40pm

A lotta stars showed up looking sad!
Look! Updated On: 3/4/05 at 05:40 PM