#101
Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:36pm
Terry Teachout at The Wall Street Journal is mixed to positive, though he's obviously wrong about Young Frankenstein being Stroman's last Broadway outing:
"Ms. Stroman hasn't rung the bell on Broadway since "Young Frankenstein," but she remains peerless when it comes to comic choreography, and "Bullets" overflows with clever dances, including a feature for Ms. Yorke set to a 1927 double-entendre ditty called "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll" that's as naughty as you'd expect. Here and elsewhere, the gorgeously brassy Ms. Yorke steals the show from her better-known colleagues, but she has plenty of competition, above all from Ms. Mazzie, who has a marvelous time playing a decayed Prohibition-era grande dame whose tipple of choice is lighter fluid. Even Mr. Braff turns out to be a pretty decent song-and-dance man, though he lacks the frantic edge that John Cusack brought to the part on screen.
What about the score? Glen Kelly has written additional lyrics whose purpose is to integrate the musical sequences more smoothly into the plot, but the dramatic fit is never tight, and it doesn't help that so many of the songs, in particular "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You?" and "Up a Lazy River," are so very familiar in their own right. Because of this, the momentum falters whenever the actors start to sing, though Ms. Stroman usually manages to get things moving again in reasonably short order. As for the use of "Yes! We Have No Bananas" as a grand finale, it's blush-makingly lame—if not quite enough to sink the ship."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579492074059755520?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303603904579492074059755520.html
"Ms. Stroman hasn't rung the bell on Broadway since "Young Frankenstein," but she remains peerless when it comes to comic choreography, and "Bullets" overflows with clever dances, including a feature for Ms. Yorke set to a 1927 double-entendre ditty called "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll" that's as naughty as you'd expect. Here and elsewhere, the gorgeously brassy Ms. Yorke steals the show from her better-known colleagues, but she has plenty of competition, above all from Ms. Mazzie, who has a marvelous time playing a decayed Prohibition-era grande dame whose tipple of choice is lighter fluid. Even Mr. Braff turns out to be a pretty decent song-and-dance man, though he lacks the frantic edge that John Cusack brought to the part on screen.
What about the score? Glen Kelly has written additional lyrics whose purpose is to integrate the musical sequences more smoothly into the plot, but the dramatic fit is never tight, and it doesn't help that so many of the songs, in particular "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You?" and "Up a Lazy River," are so very familiar in their own right. Because of this, the momentum falters whenever the actors start to sing, though Ms. Stroman usually manages to get things moving again in reasonably short order. As for the use of "Yes! We Have No Bananas" as a grand finale, it's blush-makingly lame—if not quite enough to sink the ship."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579492074059755520?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303603904579492074059755520.html
