Broadway has A Musical Breakdown- Or Is It Suicide?

The Associated Press:

'Pedro Almodovar's 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' gets lost on
Broadway'
by Mark Kennedy

The gazpacho isn't completely ready yet.
A musical based on Pedro Almodovar's gorgeous film "Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown" opened Thursday at the Belasco Theatre with all the
elements to make that classic Spanish soup, but still in need of seasoning.

It's not the thin gruel some had feared, but it's also not a spicy knock
out - at least not yet. Mostly, it's just a bloated dish, with too much
repetition and too much thrown up on stage, as if the chefs were trying to
dazzle with as many ingredients as possible.

Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Sherie Rene Scott star in this
stuffed tale of obsessive love and female empowerment that hews closely to
Almodovar's 1988 movie both in narrative and bold, visual style.

All the movie's characters and characteristics are here - even the iconic
gazpacho, a recipe for which the audience finds projected onto a scrim as
they settle into their seats. Among the list of ingredients - tomatoes,
cucumber, vinegar and so on - comes this tidbit on their best assembly: "The
secret is to mix well." Indeed.

Things get off to a rough start with the first song, "Madrid," which tries
to set the scene of a vibrant, exciting capital city in 1987 as a whirlwind
of activity but has lyrics as horrendous as, "Madrid is my mama/Give me the
nipple/Everyday I'm gonna taste it."

It gets better as the show continues, with the focus on Pepa (Scott), who
has been dumped by her lover Ivan (Mitchell), a cad who is being stalked by
his former wife Lucia (LuPone). Into the mix is Pepa's ditzy friend Candela
(Laura Benanti), who may or may not be having an affair with a terrorist;
Lucia's feminist lawyer (de'Adre Aziza); and Ivan's son (Justin Guarini),
who has a passionless relationship with his fiancee, Marisa (Nikka Graff
Lanzarone).

To evoke Almodovar's manic, cool energy, director Bartlett Sher and members
of the creative team - Christopher Gattelli's crisp choreography, Michael
Yeargan's bold sets, Brian MacDevitt's complicated lighting and Sven Ortel's
often surreal projections - have gone into overdrive.

Scrims and projections fly in and out like crazed, brightly colored
swallows; a taxi and a motorcycle whiz across the stage on conveyor belts;
furniture slides this way and that; video screens pop up; telephones are
demolished; roller-skaters roll by; a bed is set on fire - real flames, no
kidding - and by intermission, all four leading women are hanging in mid-air
on straps like circus performers. While all this activity is supposed to
match the wackiness of Madrid and the film's plot, it gets quickly
distracting.

Maybe something is lost in translation.
Almodovar's movie - a Spanish-language masterpiece that was in part a homage
to the screwball American comedies of the 1930s and 1940s - has now been
adapted for the American stage with non-Spanish actors using Spanish
accents. That's a lot of filtering - even with the filmmaker's blessing and
advice. It seems as though the cast is working from a faded copy of
Almodovar's singular vision, like a photocopy of a photocopy that has lost
its crispness.

That's not to say there aren't some pretty songs by David Yazbek ("The Full
Monty," 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"), among them Scott's salty-sweet
"Lovesick," LuPone's mournful ode "Invisible" and Mitchell's velvety-smooth
"Microphone." LuPone and Mitchell have admirably subsumed themselves into
the ensemble, but the show suffers with them on the sidelines.

One standout performance is by Benanti, who plays a model with a
bubble-headed zaniness that recalls Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde."
Benanti literally hops about in high heels and a teeny-weeny skirt, barely
stays in her Catherine Zuber-designed costume and has a wonderful manic
song, "Model Behavior."

Part of the show's teething troubles may be attributed to the fact that it
is opening cold on Broadway, without benefit of having an out-of-town
production to work out the kinks. Deciding to go this route is at least
consistent with the recipe for gazpacho the audience gets at the beginning:
"It is important to serve it very cold."

Good for soup, bad for Broadway.



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The Chicago Tribune:

'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' topples off the edge
by Chris Jones

Harbingers that a show will go catastrophically wrong can be tough for a
creative team to spot, especially when a new musical opens cold on Broadway.
But one tell-tale sign for the gifted director Bartlett Sher and other
members of the talented group behind the new stage version of "Women on the
Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" could have been when they blinked back at
their on-stage world - all zoom-zoom sexy in their heads - with Patti
LuPone, halfway up the proscenium arch, perched indelicately on a bungee
cord.

That is one of many head-scratching moments - neither stylishly coherent nor
remotely funny - that plague this deeply disappointing new Broadway
adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's justly adored 1988 Spanish-language movie of
the same title. With a book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David
Yazbek and contributions from Almodovar himself, "Women on the Verge" on
Broadway is a frenetic caper about various glamorous Madrid women, all with
a connection to the same suave, middle-aged philanderer (Brian Stokes
Mitchell) and all with love lives dangling over the precipice of disaster.
The musical, sadly, falls off.

The reasons for this embarrassing tumble aren't that unusual in the
less-than-distinguished recent history of screen-to-stage adaptations. Like,
say, its recent Broadway predecessor "9 to 5," the show gets hopelessly
trapped in the succession of very short scenes - in this case, set
everywhere from taxi cabs to Telefono boxes - that make up farcical films.
By midway through the second act, the audience can no longer track the
multicharacter action through chaos suited only for film, and palpably
checks out of the entire proceedings.

Sher, who found such an extraordinary metaphor of wind and psychological
disarray for his masterful "Light in the Piazza," has not made a similarly
artful return to the Med., failing to find the necessary theatrical metaphor
to explain why this show is on a Broadway stage.

One possibility could have been the cab driver, played by the very game
Danny Burstein, whose song "Madrid" was wisely moved during previews to
become the opening number of the show. He could have been our guide through
all the madness, rather like Lin-Manuel Miranda in "In the Heights." As the
show stands, he comes and goes and has no particular ownership of the story.
Even more troubling, Mitchell's character, the guy who upsets so many of
these women, is also chronically underwritten, making it tough to believe
that his various women are on the verge of interest, let alone nervous
breakdowns.

Love, which is the subject under review here, needs some smoothness and
softness, even when it goes wrong. Instead, Sher and choreographer
Christopher Gattelli preside over a cold, choppy, abrasive, video-dominated
aesthetic world that looks and feels a lot like one is watching the opening
credits to the movie - a cheeky montage - played over and over and over
again. Time and again, the performers trapped in this disaster, including
poor Sherie Rene Scott, are forced to compete with noise and clatter all
around their singing.

In one especially egregious moment, Scott's Pepa sings a plaintive ballad
after setting fire to her empty bed, once filled with a lover. As Scott
sings, the hungry flames shoot higher and higher - rather disturbingly so,
actually - ensuring that by the musical climax, absolutely no one is
watching the human being emoting off to the side. They're too busy wondering
if the Belasco Theatre will still be standing by the final curtain.

Throughout the show, the tone is disastrously ambivalent. No one can quite
decide whether the show is a snarky farce (along the lines of "Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels") or something more layered, emotional and driven by likable
characters. The result is an attempt to have it both ways that feels
desperate. LuPone, who plays the matriarch, is mostly given shtick to do
(wig shtick, for goodness' sake). But then the show wants us to care when
she sings of her wounded feelings. No cigar, sadly.

Scott, who humanizes where she can, escapes with her dignity. What laughs
there are come mostly from Laura Benanti's zany Candela, who has the one
truly successful comic song in the show. Entitled "Model Behavior," the song
involves Candela leaving dozens of desperate voice messages. And Yazbek's
Latin-fused score is much better than its surroundings.

But "Women on the Verge" is not on the verge of anything much at all, beyond
becoming a cautionary tale about the utility of the out-of-town tryout.



********************************************************************************

The Wall Street Journal:

'Reasons to Be Nervous'
by Terry Teachout

Recipe for a commodity musical: (1) Take an ultrafamiliar piece of source
material, preferably a hit movie; (2) adapt it for the stage in the most
literal and obvious way imaginable, adding only extra jokes; (3) stir in a
dozen or so innocuous songs that won't divert the audience's attention from
how closely the stage version resembles its source. If you're lucky, you get
"The Addams Family"; if not, "9 to 5." Either way, you get the kind of
been-there-seen-that musical that has been blighting Broadway for the past
decade and more.

So what does this formula have to do with "Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown," Lincoln Center Theater's big-budget musical version of Pedro
Almodóvar's 1988 screen comedy about three women whom love has driven to the
brink of madness? The answer is that Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek, last
seen on the Great White Way as the creators of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,"
have now sought to commoditize not an off-the-rack Hollywood comedy but one
of the most individual and significant Spanish-language films of the postwar
era. It's as if they'd tried to turn "Shoot the Piano Player" or "Wings of
Desire" into a Big Mac musical-and the results, not at all surprisingly, are
a flavorless mess.

Anyone who's seen the film will recall the exhilarating zaniness with which
Mr. Almodóvar told the story of Pepa (played here by Sherie Rene Scott), a
TV actress-of-a-certain-age whose affair with Iván (Brian Stokes Mitchell),
an older married man, blows up in her face when he dumps her for a younger
woman (de'Adre Aziza), much to the disgust of his estranged wife (Patti
LuPone). I've crammed all these details into a single sentence in order to
suggest something of the film's hectic charm (Mr. Almodóvar has said that he
was trying to create the cinematic equivalent of a door-slamming stage
farce). That said, I haven't even gotten around to the concurrent dilemma of
Candela (Laura Benanti), Pepa's best friend, who is having a fling with a
Shiite terrorist but would rather be playing house with Carlos (Justin
Guarini), Iván's shy son, even though he's engaged to a chilly young woman
(Nikka Graff Lanzarone) who won't sleep with him.

For all its seeming lunacy, "Women on the Verge" is in fact a wholly serious
comedy about a macho culture that encourages men to be faithless to the
women who love them. The fact that Mr. Almodóvar is gay made it easier for
him to portray that culture with a sharp-eyed detachment that did nothing to
diminish his sympathy for his female characters. That's part of what makes
"Women on the Verge" more than a dizzy sex comedy: You always know whose
side it's on.

To turn so fully realized a work of cinematic art into an equally successful
musical demands that it be subjected to a complete and thoroughgoing
imaginative transformation. Otherwise, the new version will seem
superfluous-which is what's wrong with the stage version of "Women on the
Verge." Instead of breaking new creative ground, Mr. Lane's book tracks Mr.
Almodóvar's setting and plot slavishly, salting his script with unfunny one-
and two-liners that serve only to dilute the crisp, elliptical dialogue of
the screenplay. As for Mr. Yazbek's songs, they're as forgettable as Muzak
in a noisy restaurant, with dull music and even duller lyrics ("Tell me when
did the wires get crossed / Tell me where the connection was lost").

Given a high-powered cast like this one, everything might have come up roses
anyway, but Ms. Scott, who is about as Spanish as I am, turns in a chirpy,
lightweight performance that conveys nothing of Pepa's sensuality. (Carmen
Maura, who played the same character in the film, was the very embodiment of
that savory quality.) Ms. Benanti, by contrast, makes a bold and energetic
impression as Candela, galloping away with the best-in-show ribbon. Mr.
Mitchell's part, however, borders on outright invisibility, while Ms.
LuPone's spectacular gifts are wasted in a supporting role that allows her
to do little but sing two forgettable songs and run around tearing her hair.

Bartlett Sher, Lincoln Center Theater's resident director, has done his best
to make interesting things happen onstage, but the results are scatty and
unfocused from start to finish. Michael Yeargan's sets and Catherine Zuber's
costumes do little more than mirror the candy-colored Madrid of the film,
and Sven Ortel's digital projections, which are evidently intended to evoke
urban hubbub, merely add to the overall air of clutter. Except during Ms.
LuPone's big second-act number, nothing ever stops moving long enough for
you to figure out which way to look.

I admired the original screen version of "Women on the Verge" so much that I
feared I might be unfair in reviewing the musical, so I made a point of
bringing along a friend who'd never seen the movie. Not only did she find
the show dramatically pointless and musically tedious, but she said
something that stayed with me long after I left the theater: "I don't get
it-why should I care about any of these crazy people?" When you're watching
the film, you never think of asking such a question. Mr. Almodóvar's women
are creatures of flesh and blood who effortlessly engage your emotions,
whereas the women of the Lane-Yazbek version of "Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown" are stick figures set up onstage for the sole purpose of
selling tickets. That's how commodity musicals work-and why this one
doesn't.

Updated On: 11/5/10 at 07:20 AM

The New York Times:

'Here's Your Valium, What's Your Hurry?'
by Ben Brantley

They're giving out the wrong drug at the Belasco Theater, where "Women on
the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" opened on Thursday night. As in the 1988
Pedro Almodóvar movie that inspired this star-jammed musical, Valium is
consumed in large quantities by many characters. That is so pharmaceutically
irresponsible. What this production needs - immediately and intravenously -
is Ritalin.

Yes, attention-deficit disorder, the plague of American schoolchildren, has
now claimed one of Broadway's own. Packed with talent and creativity, and a
cast and crew bristling with Tony Awards, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown" is nonetheless a sad casualty of its own wandering mind.

Directed by Bartlett Sher (who did so beautifully by "South Pacific"), with
a book by Jeffrey Lane and songs by David Yazbek, this tale of mad love in
swinging 1980s Madrid feels hopelessly distracted from beginning to end. It
keeps changing directions the way a teenage girl changes clothes before a
first date. No sooner does this Lincoln Center Theater production start to
develop a character or land a joke or sell a song than it switches gears and
races on to another person or plot point or number that is, in turn, left
incomplete. It's coitus interruptus, ad infinitum.

"Women" doesn't even pause long enough to allow the audience to give a hand
to the first solo sung by Patti LuPone, the biggest name on the marquee
here. (And woe unto ye who deprive La LuPone of applause.) As a consequence,
this overdesigned show - which also stars Sherie Rene Scott, Brian Stokes
Mitchell and Laura Benanti - blurs into one pretty, jittery haze. Your
instinct is to call out, as you would in an old-fashioned movie house when
the projectionist has fallen asleep, "Focus!"

Now you could argue (if you were feeling generous) that "Women" is only
reflecting the temperament of its restless, dissatisfied characters, who
keep looking for love in all the wrong places. Or that all those quick cuts
between scenes and songs are meant to recreate the farcical style of Mr.
Almodóvar's film, which remains a priceless portrait of romantic anarchy.

But "Women" the movie had momentum and suspense beneath its giddiness.
Contrasting deliberately artificial visuals (in the style of 1950s
Technicolor Hollywood melodramas) with dead earnest emotions, Mr. Almodóvar's
film exuded, hilariously but hauntingly, the heightened passions we
associate with opera. Its characters' distractedness was the distractedness
of obsession. The distractedness of "Women" the musical mostly feels born of
indecision and even boredom, as if it kept getting tired of whatever it was
doing.

The plot here follows that of the film closely. Pepa (Ms. Scott, in the role
immortalized on screen by Carmen Maura), is a movie voice dubber, who has
just been left by her longtime lover (and fellow dubber), Ivan (Mr.
Mitchell). This guy has a history of walking out on women, including his
wife, Lucia (Ms. LuPone), newly released from a mental institution and bent
on revenge.

Also lost careering down the bumpy road of love (and sharing slipping
Spanish accents) are Carlos (Justin Guarini), Ivan and Lucia's
mother-smothered grown son; his girlfriend, Marisa (Nikka Graff Lanzarone);
and Candela (Ms. Benanti), Pepa's best friend, who has discovered to her
dismay that she is having an affair with a terrorist (Luis Salgado). And, oh
yes, de'Adre Aziza and Mary Beth Peil show up in a couple of other roles. I
forget what. Acting as a sort of Castilian chorus is the chipper Taxi Driver
(a disengaged-seeming Danny Burstein), who keeps singing about how lively
and complicated Madrid is.

(Wait a minute. What is that ladybug doing on my ceiling? I'm just going to
do a quick Google search on ladybugs.... Oops, are you still there? You see,
the spirit of this production is truly infectious. If the performers can't
seem to keep their minds on the show, why should we?)

"Women" - which features sets by Michael Yeargan and costumes by Catherine
Zuber - is chockablock with visual novelties. (The Playbill lists credits
not only for projections, by Sven Ortel, but also for "aerial design," by
the Sky Box, and special effects, by Gregory Meeh.) When Mr. Burstein's Taxi
Driver races around the city, his progress is chronicled by projections that
bring to mind a racecar video game. Objects that figure into the plot
(telephones, answering machines, microphones) are forever being shown in
giant multiple images. An entire beauty shop set is slid onstage to set up a
single, quickly forgotten joke.

Pepa is first glimpsed in bed, reflected on a sloped mirrored ceiling
(which, as far as I can recall, is never used again). As in the film, her
bed will later catch fire, when she drops a match on it. And you should pity
the actress who has to sing as she stands beside a burning bed that is
giving off a distinctly toxic smell. Ms. Scott, talented as she is, doesn't
stand a chance. And what's with those high-flying rope swings that the
leading actresses are forced to mount for the first act curtain?

The cast is repeatedly upstaged by such gimmicks. So are the songs, which
despite being propelled by various catchy Latin rhythms, feel oddly
listless. But it's hard to judge them here, since they are usually cut off
midtune. Ms. LuPone's second-act number, an elegy to lost time called
"Invisible" (which she is kindly allowed to complete), has a soulful
wistfulness to which she gives her all, and I can imagine the song fitting
easily into her cabaret act.

For the record, Mr. Guarini, the first runner-up of the first season of
"American Idol," is just fine as the stammering Carlos. But only Ms.
Benanti - as the hyperkinetic Candela, a fashion model short on brains -
holds our attention, in an overcharged comic performance that might seem
vulgar in another context but here benefits from contrast to the
lifelessness around her.

Ms. Scott, Ms. LuPone and Mr. Mitchell, marvelous though they have all been
elsewhere, here seem to be preoccupied with other matters, like where they'll
be having dinner after the show. In that sense, I identified with them
completely.

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The Hollywood Reporter:

'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'
by David Rooney

Take a delectable screen property, add a masterful director, gifted
designers and a formidable assembly of stage talent, and what do you get?
Sadly, a flavorless gazpacho.

Francisco Franco had been dead more than 10 years and his oppressive regime
long since replaced by democracy when Pedro Almodovar made Women on the
Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. But the giddy screwball comedy, with its
eye-popping visuals and idiosyncratic characters, was like a belated
coming-out party for a newly liberated Spain. That would seem to make it
ideal grist for the musical mill, or so composer David Yazbek and book
writer Jeffrey Lane clearly thought.

The film's high-agita narrative was offset by its celebration of the Spanish
capital. That aspect is recaptured in "Madrid," the opening number of
Lincoln Center Theater's splashy production, sung by the ebullient Danny
Burstein as a bleach-blond taxi driver lifted directly from the film. But it
quickly becomes apparent that slavish adherence to the source material was a
mistake.

A story that might have worked as a door-slamming stage farce ends up having
no reason to sing. Musicals generally require sweeping sentiments, and while
Almodovar's Women on the Verge has charm to burn, it lacks the emotional
depth of the director's later, richer movies, or even the molten melodrama
of earlier works like Law of Desire.

As a musical, it has no buoyancy, with comedic plot lines deflating in
translation and underdeveloped characters scurrying about -- often on
conveyer belts -- without engendering much affection. If the intent was to
explore the characters' inner lives through song, then Yazbek (Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels), whose work is stronger on pop than poignancy, might be the
wrong composer-lyricist.

Strains of tango, mambo and bossa nova weave sinuously through the tuneful
score. But the intimate songs rarely deepen our knowledge of the characters,
and the ensemble numbers are chaotic. They neither drive the action nor flow
organically from it.

Sherie Rene Scott has a tough assignment trying to make us care about Pepa,
the actress played by Carmen Maura in the film. The plot chronicles her
48-hour quest to contact Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell), the lover dumping her
for another woman. But there's no song to shed light on who Pepa is, so
despite Scott's natural appeal, there's no investment in this
one-dimensional character's calvary of missed calls and thwarted encounters.

The performer who fares best is Laura Benanti. Playing Pepa's friend
Candela, a ditz unwittingly entangled with a Shiite terrorist, she gets a
zesty comic showcase in "Model Behavior."

As Ivan's unhinged wife, Benanti's former Gypsy castmate Patti LuPone also
has her moments, both funny and melancholy. The theme of women giving their
hearts too freely to undeserving men has more traction via these secondary
characters than through Pepa.

Among the cast's other names, Mitchell is in lustrous voice but stuck in a
generic Don Juan role, and American Idol Season 1 runner-up Justin Guarini
makes a promising Broadway debut in an equally thankless part.

Dramatic integrity has been director Bartlett Sher's strong point, notably
in the recent South Pacific revival. But he labors here to whip up manic
energy, and he's at sea trying to find a heart or even a steady comic rhythm
in Lane's feeble book.

The production feels effortful, down to the busy design work of Sher's
regular collaborators, suggesting that pop art might not be their natural
idiom. And stylish as they are in channeling the retro-chic graphics and
Mondrian-like color grids of Almodovar's films, Sven Ortel's projections are
too literal.

The show closes with a pretty song about connection, "Talk to Me," that's
little more than a fragment, begun by the underused Mary Beth Peil as Pepa's
concierge before being taken up by Scott. It's a wispy throwaway ending, but
it has a welcome delicacy. If only there were more moments in which the
writers reinterpret rather than regurgitate the movie.

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The New York Post:

'Women' under ditsy, musical influence'
by Elizabeth Vincentelli

*** (out of four)

There's a giant pileup at the Belasco Theatre, where "Women on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown" opened last night. The show is flashy, breathless,
busy. It's a mess, but it's a big, fun Technicolor mess.

Flinging itself forward with desperate energy, this new musical never
coagulates into a coherent whole. Luckily, many of its parts are vastly
entertaining.

That's the least we could have expected from the reunion of those two Tony
winners from "Gypsy," Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti, and from David Yazbek,
whose scores for "The Full Monty" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" are gems.

We put up with a lot when there's talent like this around.

The show faithfully adapts Pedro Almodovar's 1988 comedy, down to the garish
'80s costumes and Madrid setting (leading to haphazard Spanish accents).

But the movie is built on a series of scenes unevenly strung together, and
book writer Jeffrey Lane followed it closely. The result is like standing by
an intersection: Traffic whizzes by, pausing only for the occasional red
light/song.

At the center of this whirlwind is Pepa (a strangely ineffectual Sherie Rene
Scott), who spends the whole show chasing Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell), the
aging Lothario who just dumped her via answering machine. There's little
point in trying to sum up the rest of the frantic action, which consists
mostly of the kooky shenanigans of colorful characters that include Ivan's
stalker ex, Lucia (LuPone, good but underused), and his geeky, stuttering
son, Carlos ("American Idol" runner-up Justin Guarini).

The action hurtles along more or less smoothly, though the staging by
Bartlett Sher ("South Pacific") is surprisingly clunky at times. A trick
literally backfires when an acrid stink follows an onstage blaze -- not the
best ad for a high-profile Lincoln Center Theater production.

Admittedly, the film hasn't aged well, and Lane should have followed its
stylish, oddball spirit rather than its letter. As it is, the biggest change
is Ivan's increased presence, which is a terrible decision. This thing is
called "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" for good reason.

Luckily, the show also has serious assets. Chief among them is Benanti, who
brings the slightly dim, skimpily dressed Candela to outrageous, hilarious
life. Benanti milks the lamest lines to the max, whips up laughs out of thin
air and slays with a song, "Model Behavior," that consists of a series of
frantic phone messages delivered at lightning speed.

Though it lacks a proper closing number, Yazbek's score is full of
wonderful, witty little nuggets, often assigned in a counterintuitive
manner. You wouldn't expect LuPone to be a good fit for a '60s Brill
Building pastiche like "Time Stood Still," but she sounds terrific. She also
puts just enough belt into the deceptively slow-burning "Invisible" to give
it a jolt.

"Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is far from perfect. But there's
enough going on to see this particular glass of gazpacho as half-full.

Updated On: 11/5/10 at 07:23 AM

The Washington Post:

'Broadway's 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' lacks an edge'
by Peter Marks

Maybe a whole evening of funny freak-outs is too much to ask of the new
musical version of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," the
resistible confection that's been coaxed out of Pedro Almodóvar's screwball
Spanish film comedy. But as it happens, there's only one great manic
explosion in the sporadically tickling affair that opened Thursday night at
Broadway's Belasco Theatre.

That giddy-making neurotic fuss is kicked up endearingly by Laura Benanti,
as a dim fashion model who suddenly comes to the realization that the guy
she's bedded, the one with the Uzi, just may be a terrorist. In the
rapid-fire patter of the song "Model Behavior," Benanti scampers across the
stage like a scandalized squirrel, dashing from phone to phone and
contemplating the magnitude of her carnal folly.

It's the one interlude in which the musical, featuring such other solid
Broadway citizens as Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Sherie Rene
Scott, fully lives up to its namesake, the breakout 1988 film extolling
womanhood in extremis that put Almodóvar's cinematic flair on display. Much
of the rest of the time, the show -- directed by Broadway whiz Bartlett Sher
("South Pacific") -- resorts to flashy projections and blatantly stagy
gimmicks to shore up the weaknesses in character development and musical
numbers.

The creative team trots out a blazing bed that spouts real flames and a
tricked-out Madrid taxi that does 360s. The production's flimsiest gambit
comes during the Act 1 finale, when LuPone, Scott and Benanti are suspended
on ropes above the stage: It has something to do, apparently, with emotional
lives hanging by a thread. "Welcome to the verge, to the cusp, to the edge,
to the end of the line," they sing, even though scant evidence is supplied
of what, beside some run-of-the-mill man trouble, has these characters so
strung out. As it turns out, they're not the only ones this musical leaves
dangling.

The production's other skilled practitioners include book writer Jeffrey
Lane and composer-lyricist David Yazbek, who previously collaborated on the
musical adaptation of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." That was firmer footing for
them. Neither demonstrates much of a feel for Almodóvar's Madrid, which is
mostly conjured by endless repetition of the word "gazpacho." (And can
someone tell me why Spanish characters would talk to one another in bad
Spanish accents?) They also evince little synchronicity here with the film
director's operatic women, who are supposed to come across as buoyant
creations, even when they're in pain.

The plot mechanics, meanwhile, feel like underpopulated farce. (Although an
Act 2 song is called "Tangled," there's not all that much here to untangle.)
Scott's Pepa, an actress, has been dumped by Mitchell's Ivan, a skeevy rake
whose ex-wife Lucia (LuPone) still wants him back. Their sexually naive son
Carlos ("American Idol's" Justin Guarini, in an extremely likable Broadway
debut) is tethered to the snooty Marisa (Nikka Graff Lanzarone), and it will
merely take some of Pepa's spiked gazpacho to loosen their grasp on one
another. Benanti's Candela is on hand to prompt the intervention of the
police.

Scott and Mitchell are ill-used in blandly conceived roles, and Danny
Burstein seems overmatched in the role of the embodiment of the city's
spirit, a cabby who escorts Pepa on her quest for Ivan. Benanti and LuPone
are much more successful, the latter as an Iberian drama queen nursing her
grudges as if they were energy drinks. Her musical soliloquy, "Invisible,"
provides one of the show's few polished emotional statements.

Sven Ortel's projections and Michael Yeargan's sets offer up the evening's
most dynamic elements, conjuring Almodóvar's vivacious cosmopolitanism. Your
eye will never get weary in a visit to "Women on the Verge," but you're
still likely to come out of the experience feeling shortchanged.

********************************************************************************

The Los Angeles Times:

'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'
by Charles McNulty

Musicals sprung from movies are usually a recipe for freeze-dried nostalgia
served over songs. But when I heard that "Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown," Pedro Almodóvar's sparkling international breakthrough film from
1988 about romantic resiliency, was getting a Broadway makeover, my heart
fluttered with hope that this might be one of those rare instances when the
screen catapults the stage to giddy new heights.

Silly boy.

This new musical adaptation of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,"
which opened Thursday in a Lincoln Center Theater production at the Belasco
Theatre, has many things in its favor. Chief among them is a glittering
constellation of theatrical divas, featuring the one and only Patti LuPone
as a kind of deranged den mother. But the show is hampered by a faltering
score by David Yazbek ("The Full Monty," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") and a
crucial bit of miscasting. Pepa, the protagonist thrown into a tailspin
after her man cuts her loose, is played here by Sherie Rene Scott, a
charming musical theater star but one with about as much Mediterranean
earthiness as Barbara Bush or Paris Hilton.
What could have been a tangy European "Hairspray" - an offbeat film
commercialized into a Broadway attraction while retaining just enough of the
original sensibility to make it seem hip and daring - turns out to be a
missed opportunity. Yet it's a missed opportunity that I'm nonetheless glad
I didn't miss. I was aware all along of watching something that wasn't
working, but there were so many lively distractions, at least until the
draggy second act, that I found sufficient delight to keep me from muttering
expletives of disappointment.

The opening number, "Madrid," sets the scene and the musical's tentative
tone. Danny Burstein plays the friendly dyed-blond taxi driver who magically
appears whenever Pepa desperately needs a lift, and he's the one charged
with introducing us to the world of this Spanish capital, circa 1987.

But Burstein's performance is so wan at the outset that had I not seen his
fearlessly comic Luther Billis in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of
"South Pacific," I might have blamed the singer rather than the song. But
with lyrics like these - "Madrid is my mama/Give me the nipple, Every day I'm
gonna taste it./The tears and the drama/Ten tons of mama-milk and not a drop
is wasted" - even a talent as overpowering as Zero Mostel's might have
shriveled up onstage.

Bartlett Sher's colorful kaleidoscopic direction breathlessly tries to
compensate for the deficiencies of the musical. And the visual wit of his
staging is perhaps the closest thing on hand to Almodóvar's singular whimsy.
But all the frenetic activity - with Sven Ortel's projections lending
Michael Yeargan's fast-moving sets the hyperactive feeling of a fashion
video - can't conceal the gaping flaws of the show any more than decorative
icing can improve a cake made without enough baking soda or eggs.

The screenplay's steady farcical drive would seem to be ideally suited to
the theater. (The movie has a stagey quality all its own, with Pepa's modest
penthouse serving as the locus for much of the action.) Book writer Jeffrey
Lane gets a lot of mileage out of the dizzying situation of passionate women
converging in brokenhearted turmoil, but the economy of the film is lost,
and a tale that can happily sustain interest for 90 minutes is swollen into
a 2½-hour slog.

Carmen Maura's Pepa is the soul of the movie, a middle-aged woman with
sexual spark, who's aging gracefully in the way that only seems to happen in
foreign films. Laid low by a deserting lover, the character prepares a
Valium-stuffed batch of gazpacho, but her life force is too great to allow
any real harm to come from her brew. Maura's ability to be both grounded and
flighty, to coexist in the realms of realism and farce, embodies the essence
of Almodóvar's vision.

Unfortunately, this can't be said of Scott, who seems lost and deflated by
the production's feverish swirl. This isn't the same confident performer who
was like a glorious moonbeam in "Everyday Rapture," her
semi-autobiographical musical about a girl from the religious heartland who
gets the sacrilegious showbiz itch. The overriding impression here is of an
actress who has been repeatedly told what not to do and who has subsequently
become too timid to try anything.

Even Scott's versatile singing languishes. But chalk that problem up to
Yazbek, whose busy, complicated music drowns out its female voice. It takes
the booming baritone of Brian Stokes Mitchell, who plays Pepa's philandering
narcissist, Ivan, to break through the hubbub.

Not that LuPone, marching around in an outré getup that's like Harry Potter
couture, doesn't have her moments in her two big numbers. But she's so
pungent in her comic delivery as Lucia, Ivan's crazy ex-wife out for
revenge, and so miraculously melodious in her vocal interpretation that it's
hard not to wish that "Time Stood Still" and "Invisible" were better songs.

Laura Benanti, LuPone's costar in the last Broadway revival of "Gypsy,"
almost steals the show as Candela, the model who has fallen into bed with a
terrorist and has interrupted Pepa's crisis with one of her own. Watching
her try to explain her troubles as she simultaneously creates new ones by
flirting with Carlos (a captivating Justin Guarini), Lucia's sweet-natured
son, is one of the most uplifting bits of clowning I've seen since Katie
Finneran hijacked "Promises, Promises" in her inebriated barroom scene.

Generally speaking, the rest of the supporting cast is better than the
material. de'Adre Aziza isn't required to do much more than appear tough as
Paulina, Lucia's feminist lawyer who becomes subjected to Ivan's amorous
ambush. At least Mary Beth Peil is given a meaty musical moment to redeem
her one-joke routine as Pepa's pious concierge. But all the women deserve
better.

The tempo slackens in the second half, just when it should be accelerating
to maximum velocity. And not even Sher, who has been on a Lincoln Center
Theater hot streak in recent years with "South Pacific," "Joe Turner's Come
and Gone," "Awake and Sing!" and "The Light in the Piazza," can rescue this
derailed musical with his reliable legerdemain.

The joy of Almodóvar's film is the profound simplicity of its whirligig
emotional truth. Sadly, that quality has been lost in the Broadway shuffle.

**********************************************************************************

amNewYork:

'Women on the Vetge of a Nervous Breakdown'
by Matt Windman

Considering the extremely high caliber of its cast, creative team and source
material, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" was supposed to be the
hit musical of the fall. Instead, it has turned out to be a hot mess of the
highest pedigree.

Based on Pedro Almodóvar's celebrated 1988 Spanish film, the screwball
comedy follows middle-aged actress Pepa (Sherie Rene Scott) as she
desperately tries to track down her former lover Ivan (Brian Stokes
Mitchell) throughout the colorful landscape of 1980s Madrid.

Meanwhile, Ivan's insane ex-wife, Lucia (Patti LuPone), is also trying to
track him down, and Pepa's friend Candela (Laura Benanti) is in hysterics
because she unknowingly aided terrorists. Luckily, a mambo-loving taxi
driver (Danny Burstein) is always there to transport Pepa around town.

Director Bartlett Sher ("South Pacific") awkwardly copies the film's
complicated plot rather than reinvent it for the stage.

Scott looks lost in the lead role and overwhelmed by her surroundings.

LuPone has some fine comedic moments, but suffers from poor material.
Benanti comes off funniest, especially in a marvelous comedic solo in which
she leaves Pepa numerous phone messages.

Mitchell, returning to Broadway after a long absence, receives the worst
songs. Nevertheless, his golden voice and matinee idol presence remain
intact.

Updated On: 11/5/10 at 07:25 AM

I've read so many negative reviews of shows over the years that I've then gone to see and loved them, thinking I've seen a totally different show to the critic (and conversely read raves of shows I've thought were dreadful lol). So I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the show. Next to the Scottsboro Boys, this is still the show I'm most looking forward to seeing on my trip to New York the week after next.

---

oh dear- this is disappointing!

I saw the film for the first time recently and thought it hilarious. Mama - is that what life is like over there?

Although i enjoyed the film, I couldn't imagine it as a musical. And why is Brian Stokes Mitchell playing what, in the film, is a relatively small role?

I do like gazpacho though.

WAIT! Theres more....


USA Today:

'Broadway's 'Women on the Verge' is all over the place'
by Elysa Gardner

No one, or nothing, seems to stay put in Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown (* * ½ out of four), the new musical adaptation of Pedro
Almodovar's 1988 film.

Women pace the stage restlessly in short skirts and heels, looking by turns
determined, agitated and frantic. Lush, colorful images flash and reel via
Sven Ortel's gorgeous projections, inspired by the same surrealist and pop
art influences that informed the movie.

It's a bustling, mesmerizing package, this Lincoln Center Theater
production, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Belasco Theatre. And it's
chock-full of talent, from director Bartlett Sher (splendid revivals of
South Pacific and Joe Turner's Come and Gone) to a cast that includes some
of musical theater's best.

Sadly, David Yazbek's score and Jeffrey Lane's book don't accommodate the
vibrant gifts of this group or Almodovar. The composer/lyricist and
librettist previously joined forces for 2005's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,
another screen-to-stage project that brought the question: Why turn that
into a musical?

Here the answer might seem more obvious. The heightened emotions and lyrical
expression in the original Women on the Verge could, in theory, lend
themselves to song and dance and the broad comedy that often accompanies
them.

Certainly, there are funny moments in the show, though most can be credited
more to the players than to the material. Former Gypsy co-stars Patti LuPone
and Laura Benanti steal scenes as, respectively, Lucia, the vengeful wife of
an unfaithful man, and Candela, a ditzy model whose latest lover may be a
terrorist.

There are winning male performances as well. Brian Stokes Mitchell, as
Lucia's womanizing spouse, Ivan, has a grand time sending up the robust
machismo and smooth charm that have served him in numerous leading-man
roles. American Idol alum Justin Guarini is surprisingly charming as his
timid son, and Danny Burstein is predictably droll as a cabdriver whose joie
de vivre contrasts with the others' assorted neuroses.

But as the show's central neurotic, Sherie Rene Scott inspires neither
laughter nor empathy. Scott plays Ivan's mistress, Pepa, whose search for
him after he ends their affair propels the plot; her dry manner only
emphasizes the hollowness of the character as defined here.

No one is helped by Yazbek's songs, which sound like Latin-flavored Muzak.
LuPone's Invisible follows a monologue that becomes, in her hands, the
show's dramatic high point. You half-expect her to launch into one of her
showstopping arias, but all she gets is a loungey trifle.

The actress, like many on Women on the Verge's illustrious team, deserves
better. So do audiences.


***********************************************************************************

The New York Magazine:

'Women on the Verge Not on the Verge of Much'
by Scott Brown

The most startling thing about Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown -
the ambitious, addled, oddly enervated new musical from composer-lyricist
David Yazbek (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and director Bartlett Sher (South
Pacific) - is how tantalizingly close it comes to being a perfectly solid
show. Certainly, it benefits from source-material that's practically a
musical already: filmmaker/collagist Pedro Almodóvar's gaudy romp through
liberated Madrid and the delicious, stinging thrills of modern heartbreak
("modern" being 1987, where Sher and librettist Jeffrey Lane have wisely
chosen to fix the story's time period).

Borrowing swatches from Almodóvar, the design scheme takes primary colors to
the razor's edge of migraine, yet leaves a warm afterimage. Yazbek's
endlessly reticulating rhymes and mamboid musical textures occasionally
coalesce into not-awful songs - songs that are often vaguely reminiscent of
other, better songs, but never unpleasantly so. Finally, Women brings
together some of the most engaging theatrical talents of our time: Sherie
Rene Scott as the jilted actress Pepa, Laura Benanti as her ditzy model pal,
Candela, and Patti Lupone as archetypal first wife Lucia, the lovelorn,
leopard-print Fury who backs up her nostalgia with hot lead.

So why, then, do we feel this superbly pedigreed show flapping so hard just
to keep itself a few inches aloft? "Tell me, when did the wires get
crossed," croons Iván (Brian Stokes Mitchell, preening on cue), the male
siren at the root of all this female trouble. "Tell me where the connection
was lost. / Tell me how I got tumbled and tossed / and tangled up." Gracias,
Stokes, you may have hit on it: Despite double helpings of hysteria and a
plot that purees melodrama, telenovela, and Hitchcock, there really are no
tangles in Women, no serious challenges to its medium-tempo savoir faire.
It's an exercise in keeping itself together, as if its whole
right-hand-red-left-hand-blue balancing act would collapse at the smallest
eruption of unscheduled id.

First off, there seems to be some internal disagreement on the relative
earthiness of this show. We open with "Madrid," an ode to the sun-kissed
backsplash of our tale. Our cab-driving narrator (David Burstein) gets right
to the yoni of the matter, equating the city with Almodóvar's patron
goddess. "Madrid, my mama, my creator / She might make me crazy but I'm not
gonna fight her / I love her madly even when I hate her." And then, the coup
de grace: "Push me out, I'll just crawl back up inside her." Okay now!
Yazbek's been rightly praised for his high-wire rhyme runs, but that line
feels like it took a gallon of Pitocin to pop out. Such sweaty anatomical
ardor feels a little unearned so early in the evening, and the affable,
normally game Burstein looks visibly uncomfortable singing it. But Yazbeck's
not finished: "'Cause maybe life is hard and maybe love is fickle / It's all
a steady trickle from her umbilical." Golly. There are internal rhymes, and
then there are internal rhymes. We've only just finished the opening number,
and already, we're silently praying for somebody to cut the cord.

But just as we hunker down for a pungent night, Sher seems to scent chaos on
the wind: Soon, a kind of crackdown is in effect. This show has a lot of
moving parts, human and mechanical (a taxicab is practically its own
character), and, perhaps to compensate, Sher's directorial grip feels a tad
more pre-Franco than post. Every transition, scene change, and stage picture
is a perfect Mondrian, so ruthlessly rectilinear, it's almost Tron-drian.
Michael Yeargan's sets are gorgeous, and licked to a candy sheen by Brian
MacDevitt's Hayden Planetarium of a lighting design, but the Tetris-like
maneuvering it takes to lock them into position can be dizzying. Just
keeping this machine clicking along seems to be absorbing most of Sher's
attention: He buries a lot of big moments, from entrances to song cues to
jokes. There's just no time for a breakdown, in the midst of all this
clockwork - and a show about liberation and the lovely, bloody messes it
makes becomes a study in repression.

The actors feel it, too, and curl into themselves accordingly. Scott's Pepa
is rapturously heartbroken and sells Yazbek's swelling torch song "Lie to
Me" with eyes and soul abrim. Scott's voice contains real ache, actual
breath - my seatmate said, "You can always hear the effort," and meant it as
a compliment. But overall, there's more steely-eyed resolve to Pepa than
Valium-enabled acting out. Even her sudden rages feel considered. Dumped by
Iván and harried by his ex, she certainly deserves our sympathy; she just
doesn't seem to need it much. Speaking of that ex: Lupone ought to be the
feathered centerpiece in the middle of this diva smorgasbord. But her
simmering Lucia is so contained, so dangerously bottled and theatrically
muted, she barely registers - neither the peril nor the comedy of her
blood-vendetta against her former spouse and his many lovers manages to
bleed through. Early American Idol pinup-tenor Justin Guarini feels a bit
too safe to play the restless nebbish Carlos (the nerd-hunk role originated
onscreen by Antonio Banderas), but he executes adequately and sings well.
Mostly, everyone seems to be focusing on their rather unfortunate
my-name-is-Inigo-Montoya accents, with particular emphasis on the delightful
Andalusian lisp: As far as Sher and, apparently, Broadway audiences are
concerned, the cast's pronunciation of "gathpacho" is the joke that keeps on
giving.

The show has a wild card, though, and it's Laura Benanti as Candela, Pepa's
bubbleheaded, man-eating pal. While Pepa tries to unravel Iván's web of
deceit and contemplate life beyond him, Candela has a more immediate
problem: Her latest fling is a terrorist who's planning an attack that very
day. Benanti, cantering around in short-shorts and eight-inch heels,
converts a great clown role into nothing less than the life blood of the
production. Her yammering showstopper - where she leaves a breathless
flotilla of messages on Pepa's answering machine - is Women's high point,
and one of the only points where the show gets out of its own way and allows
its substantial inner energies to come to the fore.

Soon enough, the pieces shift again, and we're on to the next stringent
staging sequence, the next roaring run of rhymes, the next raster of sets
and projections: Tab A into Slot B. Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown isn't entirely hopeless or joyless. It's simply suffering from too
much therapy. Every step it takes is as deliberate and serious as a
recovering drunk's. That leaves us in rather forced territory and far from
the verge of anything. The secret to great gathpacho, Pepa tells us, is in
how you mix it. Here, we can see the promise of madness, ecstasy, and plain
old fun floating around in the blender. It's just all settled to the bottom.

********************************************************************************


The New York Daily News:

'Highly anticipated musical adaptation falls short as it's too faithful'
by Joe Dziemianowicz

** (out of five)

In the Spanish movie "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," trouble
springs from a cad's infidelity.

The highly anticipated musical version, which opened last night, suffers
from the exact opposite problem: It stays too faithful, in this case to its
source material.

The jittery adaptation by Jeffrey Lane (book) and David Yazbek (score) hews
so close to Pedro Almodovar's 1988 film comedy - from plot and costumes to
gags and props - that it's more like a rerun than a reinvention.

Worse still, the show's a repeat with an overindulgent set and an underused
leading lady. That's a shame, since Sherie Rene Scott is one of Broadway's
bright talents.

"Women's" imperfections wouldn't be so distracting if songs by Yazbek ("The
Full Monty," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") offered more to latch on to. Except
for a couple of gems, his 15 songs are agreeable, not memorable. Only the
scene-change music stands out; it has a snappy Latin rhythm more authentic
than the cast's half-hearted Spanish accents.

How director Bartlett Sher engineered this Lincoln Center musical is a
mystery. The sensibilities that served him well on glorious productions of
"The Light in the Piazza," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" and "South Pacific"
have abandoned him.

Desertion figures prominently in the musical's story, too. Pepa (Scott) is
left by her lover, Ivan (the sonorous Brian Stokes Mitchell), a serial
heartbreaker, who quit his wife, Lucia (Patti LuPone), years earlier. The
trio are on a collision course, as others get pulled into their tumult.

De'Adre Aziza, a terrific Justin Guarini, of "American Idol" fame, and Nikka
Graff Lanzarone play Lucia's lawyer, sonand almost daughter-in-law.

Scott's character should drive the action, but comes off as limp and
peripheral. It's not her fault; a Madrid cabbie (Danny Burstein) gets better
songs.

LuPone, in her outlandish wigs and hats, is a walking punch line. She has a
great number, "Invisible," in which Lucia recalls a former life that's
slipped away.

The show-stealing performance comes from a laugh-out-loud Laura Benanti, as
Candela, a model who's accidentally hooked up with Madrid's most-wanted
terrorist. She turns "Model Behavor," a song made up of ever more desperate
phone calls to Pepa, into a delirious jolt of joy.

At that moment, the show's antic energy makes sense, but otherwise the
production just seems frantic, like a kid on the subway who won't sit down.
Gimmicks whiz by one after another: a motorized taxi, a flash fire, moving
walkways and, like a title sequence from a vintage romantic comedy,
illustrations scrolling on a huge scrim.

But despite the constant motion, "Women on the Verge" doesn't go anywhere.

New Jersey, may we have your votes please......



The New Jersey Newsroom

'Sexy 'Women' throw a festive Broadway party'
by Michael Sommers

The clever makers of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," writer Jeffrey Lane and
composer-lyricist David Yazbek, now serve Broadway audiences a saucy,
splashy and mighty tasty musical comedy distilled from Pedro Almodovar's
movie "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

True enough, seekers of higher forms of musical theater may not be thrilled
by the silly doings going down at the splendidly-restored Belasco Theatre,
where the same-named show opened Thursday.

But customers who want their musicals merely to be gorgeous and tuneful will
be thoroughly entertained by "Women," especially as embodied by such
bona-fide Broadway divas as Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti and Sherie Rene
Scott, all gracing the show in excellent voice and comical form.

Set in 1980s Madrid, the screwball story spins around three women mad (in
one way or another) about a caddish gentleman, suavely incarnated by Brian
Stokes Mitchell. The crazy complications and assorted other characters that
follow are many and will not be described here except to note that Lane's
swift script and Yazbek's propulsive score deal with them all breezily - if
not deeply or entirely coherently.

Who cares? Fun's fun and as festively staged by director Bartlett Sher,
"Women" is a giddy, glamorous musical party not to be missed.

Stunning moving visuals of Madrid richly drenched in color, sexy costumes
and sinuous choreography constantly seduce the eye. Yazbek's supple and
exuberant Latin score - sambas, mambos, tangos, bossa novas - offers
frequently intoxicating music, glisteningly orchestrated and featuring
several melodies that linger long on the ear.

The agitated title number - caroled by the leading women as they literally
dangle from the end of their ropes as the first act closes - a feverish
"Lovesick" and a passing romantic fancy titled "My Crazy Heart" sound
especially winning on a single hearing, but Yazbek's music and lyrics gleam
with many fetching graces even as they drive the story.

Memorable performances guarantee a terrific time. A blond bundle of friendly
energy as a cheery cab driver, Danny Burstein endears himself to the
audience with a bouncy welcome to his city. Batty in outré outfits as a
discarded wife, LuPone wittily waxes ultra-dramatic as a woman scorned who
rather enjoys her woes. Whether mixing up a questionable batch of gazpacho
or setting a bed on fire in her misery, Scott infuses her truly wounded yet
resilient character with plaintive loveliness. Mitchell coolly exploits his
burnished baritone voice and lady killer aura to comic or romantic effect.

All wide-eyed and lovely idiocy as a clueless fashion model panicked by a
new boyfriend she discovers to be a terrorist, Benanti is blessed with some
of the funniest material and often skitters off with the show hilariously,
chalking up another Broadway triumph for the Tony-winning native of
Kinnelon, New Jersey.

A yummy confection of silly romantic comedy, seductive Latin music, alluring
visuals and high-powered performances, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown" is a musical comedy certain to amuse anyone craving frivolous,
tuneful entertainment on Broadway.

*********************************************************************************

New Jersey Record:

'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'
by Robert Feldberg

The actors glide onto the stage, via a conveyor walkway, in one direction;
the scenery sails into view heading the opposite way; the rear projections
go back and forth. The only thing in "Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown" that doesn't move is the story.

To be totally fair, it does sort of creep forward in fits and starts; it's
just hard to notice.

The musical, which opened Thursday night at the Belasco Theatre, is an
ambitious but flat-lining attempt to adapt Pedro Almodovar's 1988 film of
the same name for the stage.

The show has been put together and is performed by as accomplished a group
as you'll find in musical theater.

Book writer Jeffrey Lane and composer-lyricist David Yazbek previously
collaborated on '"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," director Bartlett Sher staged
"South Pacific" and the cast includes such luminaries as Patti LuPone, Brian
Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott and Laura Benanti.

What's missing is the essential ingredient: Almodovar's spirit, the antic
imagination through which we perceive the characters.

In celebrating the passion and abiding endurance of women, the
writer-director created a distinctive portrait of Madrid in the 1980s.
Singular characters with extreme emotions tumbled together in a magical
comedy that, in some ways, resembled a Spanish "Midsummer Night's Dream."

On stage, the city's energy is represented, very weakly, by chorus people
sashaying around in wild and crazy outfits. (The evening's bright-colored,
revealing costumes, designed by Catherine Zuber, make the show's most
consistent statement, although I'm not sure what that is.)

Lane's story adaptation, which sticks close to the film plot, comes across
as strained, hectic farce.

Pepa (Scott), an actress who makes TV commercials, has been dumped by her
lover, Ivan (Mitchell), in a voice-mail message.

As she attempts, over several days, to find him, she encounters a swirling
mix of people with their own issues.

Her penthouse apartment is invaded, in no particular order, by Ivan's angry
ex-wife, Lucia (LuPone), who's been in a mental hospital for 19 years (she
reveals she faked sanity in order to get out); Ivan's meek son, Carlos
(Justin Guarini); Carlos' chilly fiancée, Marisa (Nikka Graff Lanzarone);
Candela (Benanti), a ditsy model who freaks out after realizing the Arab
she's been sleeping with is a terrorist; two cops and a telephone repairman.

Meanwhile, the gazpacho from Pepa's kitchen has been spiked with Valium,
which causes a mass sleep-in.

Peripheral figures include a cabdriver (Danny Burstein) whose well-stocked
taxi is a convenience store on wheels, and a sultry lawyer (de'Adre Aziza)
with divided loyalties.

Under Sher's direction, the film characters' specialness has largely been
lost; what remains, while occasionally funny, is too often simply loud and
obvious behavior, interrupted by disappointing musical numbers.

In "Scoundrels" and "The Full Monty," Yazbek's songs were total originals:
amusing, breezy and with a sardonic edge. For "Women," he's composed a score
of undistinguished Spanish-sounding music, with lyrics that range from
unpleasantly coarse to uninteresting.

The actors cope. They don't, though, get us to care for the characters in
the slightest.

Scott makes a brisk, very American-seeming Pepa, who doesn't appear all that
devastated by Ivan's departure. (She also speaks without an accent, which I
guess is optional in this production. Some actors do, some don't.)

LuPone and Mitchell have modest-sized supporting roles, with just two songs
each.

She struts around in a succession of wigs and odd hats; he gives the
impression of dropping by on his way to dinner.

Benanti gives the zestiest, funniest performance, as the addled model. But
she, too, is shortchanged musically, with only one solo.

For all its woes, "Women" does stand out in one way. It's that rare show
that manages to be absolutely frantic and utterly static at the same time.

Correct Scripps!
Maybe they should have left this one to the Uk, after all, Almodovar had a big hit at the Old Vic last year!

Billy Elliot worked!