BRIGHT STAR coming to Broadway

Bright Star, a musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, aims for Broadway after stop in DC: http://nyti.ms/1J1OHQu

I had a chance to see this at the Old Globe. I thought the entire premise would have been better served as a play. There are lot of beautiful songs but the songs don't move the book forward. The score basically repeats what happens in a book scene but in a singing form. Tedious and overwrought is how I would describe Bright Star. It has flickers of charm but mostly you want it to wrap up more quickly. It reminded me of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. Good music but not something you want to listen to more than once.

Mystic I watched the "sizzle" reel of the Globe production and thought, "Oh, it's Ghost Brothers of Darkland County without murder, mayhem and ghosts!"

Also, I know it's racist to notice there are no black people in the ginormous cast of white people, so I won't mention it.

I don't remember the time period, but it's set in North Carolina. As if black people didn't live in North Carolina.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81541379/

Eta:

Charles McNulty of the LA Times:

"Martin and Brickell's inexperience in writing a musical reveals itself most conspicuously in what they choose to dramatize. The old rule of thumb that showing is preferable to telling doesn't apply in cases of extreme melodrama, and in several instances, it would have been less embarrassing to simply report on what happened, leaving it to our imagination to somehow make the events seem credible and focusing our attention on the emotional fallout of these astonishing developments.

OK, as I have stressed, this is a musical that takes place just after the Second World War, but it might as well have been written at the conclusion of the Civil War. One assumes that this was deliberate, but some of the more farfetched features of the tale could be toned down without the loss of narrative magic."

Updated On: 6/16/15 at 01:41 PM