Broadway.com's BKLYN Review — Page 3

Here's New York Magazine's archive of his reviews going back to 1998 (his real classics are from before that, unfortunately):
New York Magazine Archive

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Congrats Robbie! No actor/writer/director of any merit can claim to have truly made it in New York until they have been Simonized.

From his review of "Ragtime" (Simon deserves his own thread):

"Stephen Flaherty has composed two or three very catchy ragtime numbers, but they get reprised irritatingly often: An entire song cannot act as a leitmotiv. In between, there are ballads and anthems that lack distinction and, even more, wit. Nor does his regular collaborator, Lynn Ahrens, do any better with the lyrics: They are serviceable but pedestrian, with a sprinkling of the bizarre that barely masks the commonplace."

If he hated Ragtime, just imagine what he's going to do to Brooklyn.

"Brian Stokes Mitchell would be a first-rate Coalhouse were he not too dapper and too pale. Unlike Doctorow’s older, heavier, and darker-skinned man, this Coalhouse could have driven past the racist firemen without being taken for a black. As the brittle and girlish Sarah, Audra McDonald, a barreling powerhouse of a woman and singer, is all wrong, especially when she tries to act girlish with mincing steps that look like some kind of hopscotch."

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Did he say Stokes was too WHITE???

God I f*cking LOVE that!

At least you know what you're getting from him...know what I mean??

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Ugh. Just out of curiosity, does he criticize guys for being overweight, too, or is he a total mysogynist?

Very misogynist and racist and homophobic.

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One of my favorite John Simon remarks.

When told of the Glenn Close TV movie of "South Pacific," Simon commented, "Who is she playing ... Lieutenant Cable?"

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From Minnelli on Minnelli:

"She is a performer whose chief diet is audience adulation, and what is partly a tribute to Dad's movies is also partly Daughter's comeback from alcoholism, overweight, and an overlong absence from regular performing.

Undeniably, someone or something fills up the Palace stage. It is not so much the now chubby Betty Boop face, the tubby torso that Bob Mackie's artful, and sometimes even tasteful, costumes toil to disguise. Nor is it the voice, although it can still, despite some frayed edges, belt out a song punchily, even if dentures (?) put an extra h after the s's and an extra y after the t's. It is certainly not the dancing, done mostly by a clutch of agile chorus boys who sometimes, in one of showbiz's oldest tricks, wheel Liza about on a chair with casters, which here takes on symbolic dimensions.

What is patently, pleadingly, hungrily on view at the Palace is a giant Need that handily earns a capital N. This Need cries "LOVE ME!" from all its wide-open pores, sneaks an entwined sob and laugh into every spoken word, is a huge vacuum cleaner sucking up every sliver of adoration the audience lets drop. It is an epic, an epochal Need that lets this petite waif out-orphan all Annies, out-hunger all Oliver Twists. It is too big even for a Vincente Minnelli movie, and clamors for D. W. Griffith. It has inherited all the wrong things: Vincente's looks and voice, Judy's judgment and self-control; yet, quavering but undaunted, it can swallow an entire vast auditorium and still remain unglutted, needy."

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Does he LIKE anything? What shows has he raved about in the past? Evil by the name of John Simon. Interesting. I'm definitely gonna go read some of his reviews now.

I hope I never become that cynical, or start mistaking creativity in insults for wit.

I remember he HATED Angels in America. And he used his review of the 1994 Carousel revival to rail against non-traditional casting. He couldn't stomach the notion of Audra MacDonald as Carrie Snow because there wouldn't been any black people in such a New England town around the turn of the century -- I suppose he forgot that it was a musical and not a documentary (the fact that people were bursting out into song and dance didn't seem to bother his notions of versimilitude).

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Updated On: 10/22/04 at 02:55 PM

I tend to avoid those -- Nursie wasn't around with Miss Margo's blood pressure medication.

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Well it all started after I said I'd like to see the Queen as Mama Rose one day and than "Certain People" made it quite clear that was NOT a good idea.

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