Curtains Reviews- Page 3

[madophelia]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:01pm

Isn't Brantley saying the opposite about many of the cast. Most have praised Monk and Ziemba, while panning Paice?

"Ms. Ziemba, like Ms. Monk, is an appealing and polished veteran who never makes a technical misstep. But the original, star-defining wit that both actresses have shown on previous occasions never manifests itself here.

...And Jill Paice, as the classically winsome ingénue who captures Cioffi’s heart, subtly and deliciously sends up classical winsomeness."

[D2]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:04pm

Brantley has a thing for young looking blondes.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:05pm

Just more proof that he isn't professional enough to see beyond a pretty blonde soprano ingenue.

It's pathetic that a show can close on his reviews.

ETA: I'd tell you to get out of my head, D2, but frankly, it's obvious to anyone who reads his reviews regularly.

Updated On: 3/22/07 at 11:05 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:21pm

USA Today gives it Two-and-a-half Stars:

"There are some endearing tunes (Holmes contributed additional lyrics) and likable performances from Pierce, sporting a droll Baah-stin accent, and Karen Ziemba, who plays Robbin' Hood's lyricist-turned-replacement star.

Debra Monk and Edward Hibbert have audience-pleasing turns as a sassy veteran producer and a smug, flamboyant director. The breathy-voiced Jill Paice makes less of an impression in a ditzy-ingénue role that Kristin Chenoweth could have triumphed in 10 years ago.

But in the end, the cast members, like the players they play, are confined by their material. Curtains may be a sweet swan song, but it will hardly be remembered as Kander and Ebb's finest hour."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2007-03-22-curtains_N.htm

[courtnyj]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:22pm

The reviews are good news so far! If I recall Drowsy's reviews were more mixed and I think Clive Barnes' was a pan...Curtains seems to actually be selling well. I overheard some people at the theatre tonight saying that they wanted to see it again, but they had trouble finding decent seats for any shows in the next few months.

ETA: I mean, many of the reviews are mixed but that doesn't spell doom....I was expecting worse honestly....I think the show will be successful. Updated On: 3/22/07 at 11:22 PM

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:33pm

Courtny- Were you there tonight?

[madophelia]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:40pm

Wire Image has pics from the red carpet
Wire Image gallery

[courtnyj]

Posted: 3/22/07 at 11:40pm

Yup. Up in the rafters with the poor folk (mezzanine row P). Very enthusiastic audience! Almost stopped the show with applause a few times!
Updated On: 3/22/07 at 11:40 PM

[PersonofInterest]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 12:10am

So, this board had given me the impression that there had been huge changes in the show since it was here in LA, but it sounds to e like Brantley saw the same show I saw months ago here.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 12:49am

What are you basing that on, person? I have been following this show on the board and was under the impression that not much had changed since the LA run. Do you mean the fact that people in New York seem to be liking it more than the LA audiences indicates a lot of changes?

I am surprised at the lukewarm reviews, too, considering how much praise this show has been getting. Hopefully it will be critic proof and will run a long time, but do these reviews improve the Tony chances for Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 1:11am

John Simon is Mixed-to-Positive:

" We have here a jolly, old-style musical despite some incidental innovations, such as the conductor, David Loud, facing the audience for a brief but lovable song turn.

The convoluted and utterly preposterous story, more suited to operetta, finds the producers and performers of ``Robbin' Hood' being picked off by a mysterious murderer. The book is largely a funny, but not quite funny enough, parody of a turbulent musical production, such as the revival of ``Annie Get Your Gun,' for which Stone updated the book. The score is middle-drawer Kander and Ebb, barely suggestive of the team that gave us ``Cabaret' and ``Chicago.'
_______________________________________________________________

And what a masterly humorist David Hyde Pierce is. As Cioffi, he doesn't merely sing and dance supermanfully, he is also a phenomenal comic actor who can contort his body and distort his face in intricate yet subtle ways and rattle off dialogue with effortless, dead-on aplomb.

Scarcely less funny is Debra Monk, as Carmen Bernstein, co- producer with her unfaithful and unprincipled husband, Sidney, of the show-within-the-show, and putting on quite a show herself. Monk can not only belt out a number Mermanfully, she can also squeeze out as much humor from a sung phrase as from a riotously tossed-off line.
________________________________________________________________

Other pleasures? Scott Ellis's savvy direction; Anna Louizos's decor, even if not quite up to her terrific best; William Ivey Long's costumes, storming the stage in breakneck profusion and dizzying variety; Peter Kaczorowski's dependably dazzling lighting. Also the fine orchestrations of William David Brohn and dance arrangements of David Chase, valiantly enhancing the score. You may even enjoy Edward Hibbert's outrageous camping as an arrogant, injudiciously imported British stage director.

All things considered, if you are looking for another Kander and Ebb classic, you won't find it here. If, on the other hand, you seek no more than some old-fashioned musical-comedy fun, formidably performed, look no further."



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a0yQCD7SrNgg&refer=muse

Updated On: 3/23/07 at 01:11 AM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 1:37am

Hyde Pierce
Amazing Reviews'
Totally agree.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 1:50am

Let's not forget about Danieley's positive notices across the boards in the reviews that mention his name and "I Miss the Music," though I agree with Murray's review that his role should be bigger (as Brantley said in his review, Danieley's has the most beautiful tenor on Broadway).
Still loving the David Hyde Pierce raves.

Updated On: 3/23/07 at 01:50 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 2:19am

NY Sun is Mixed-to-Positive:

"What this gang of merry miscreants did is breathe a faint but nonetheless refreshing blast of air into a format that has been hurting for oxygen of late — the good old-fashioned musical comedy. They may not have gotten away with it entirely, but John Kander, Fred Ebb, and a passel of other pros led by the sure-footed director Scott Ellis have added a harmless new entry into a sadly underrepresented subgenre: the murder-mystery musical.
________________________________________________________________

As is often the case with longgestating projects, the number of fingerprints on the "Curtains" script gives several of the gags a musty, humor-by-committee feel..........

The score (music by Mr. Kander, who joined Mr. Holmes in supplementing Ebb's hard-boiled lyrics) largely draws from the brassy, gutbucket sound of "Chicago," with a clever "Cabaret" in-joke tossed in. And while the score upon first hearing is unlikely to supplant those two Kander-Ebb shows in the public consciousness, two ballads — "Thinking of Him" and "I Miss the Music" — showcase the blithe, confident efforts of old pros at work. In fact, it's hard not to view the latter song, with one or two swapped pronouns, as a tribute by Mr. Kander (who wrote the lyrics as well as the music) to his professional partner of 42 years.
_______________________________________________________________

Even during its drearier passages, that passion suffuses every minute of "Curtains." Whether it's Anna Louizos's clever, theatrespanning sets or a "Eureka!" moment as the show-loving sleuth fixes yet another scene in "Robbin' Hood," or even a pivotal clue that references 17th-century theater history, the show's deep-rooted affection for the (literally) wicked stage could bring the lieutenant Frank Cioffi out of any but the most grumbly theatregoer."



http://www.nysun.com/article/51056

Updated On: 3/23/07 at 02:19 AM

[shesamarshmallow]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 2:49am

Yeah, "mixed-to-positive" sums up my opinion of the show pretty nicely.

[mallardo]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 2:50am

I think Brantley's review is absolutely on the money. When he says he wishes he could give it more that "two stars" I believe him. It seems he and most of the critics - even John Simon! - were trying hard to like it.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 4:03am

Clive Barnes gives it Two out of Four Stars:

"Indeed, it's not so much a whodunit as a whydoit.

But the real mystery is what "Curtains" might have been like had the curtain risen on the musical Kander, Ebb and Peter Stone began writing. But Stone died, and so, too, did Ebb (with whom Kander wrote the megahits "Cabaret" and "Chicago"). Rupert Holmes ("The Mystery of Edwin Drood") was brought aboard to provide a new book and devise additional lyrics.

It must have seemed a good idea at the time.

You can't dump all the blame on Holmes - although, for a showbiz show in which a producer (the unsinkable Debra Monk) declaims, "I put on 'The Iceman Cometh,' and no one cameth," it's hard to be kind.

And, for that matter, Kander's music doesn't find him at his best - at times, he isn't searching very hard.

One crushing difficulty is that the musical within the musical - a cowboy extravaganza called "Robbin' Hood!" - is meant to be awe-

inspiringly bad, so bad that we'll find it campily hilarious.

I just found it awe-inspiringly bad. Unfortunately, it was difficult to discern just where the joke musical ended and the actual one began.

Part of the trouble was director Scott Ellis' failure to italicize sufficiently the inside comedy, but there probably wasn't much he could do.

The choreography by Rob Ashford was unnoticeable, the scenery by Anna Louizos uninterestingly ugly, while William Ivey Long unwisely saved his best and funniest costumes for the curtain calls."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03232007/entertainment/theater/curtains_not_a_draw_theater_clive_barnes.htm

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 4:29am

Jacques LeSourd (Journal News) is Negative:

"Here's the bad news: The show has substandard songs. It has stars ready to deliver material that they don't get from the authors. It has a book that twists on itself so it winds up in a hopeless gnarl.

By the time you find out whodunit, you really don't care.

What's fatal is the show doesn't have enough of a sense of humor, though it starts on a promising note, with a song about critics.

Called "What Kind of Man," it asks, "Everyone's enemy/Critics are hated/And so excoriated/Tell me what kind of man/Would want a job like that?"

Excellent question."

________________________________________________________________

In the sad absence of Ebb, and of the late Peter Stone, who is credited with the original book and concept, we have some additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes. They're not good enough.

In the end, I'm afraid we have to blame the writers and the director (the real one) for the disappointing turn in such a promising show. I hear all three of them tuning up to sing "What Kind of Man?" right now.

And yet, I'll conclude with a "but."

There are a lot of Broadway fans who would pay to see Monk and Hibbert - and maybe Hyde Pierce, too - read the telephone directory or your tax forms. Especially if they did this wearing the always beautiful costumes of William Ivey Long, who did the costumes for "Curtains."

For them, this show is probably still worth seeing. Particularly if they don't go with high expectations."

http://www.nynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070323/ENTERTAINMENT/703230330

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 4:49am

The Daily News is Mostly A Rave:

"It's no wonder "Curtains" is set in 1959. The era recalls the Golden Age of Broadway musicals, when many a show had hummable tunes, laugh-out-loud-able lines and adorable characters (even when they were horrible).

"Curtains" is that kind of show. Opening last night at the Al Hirschfeld, it brings a gust of giddy good fun to Broadway.
________________________________________________________________

"Curtains" is the first new show by John Kander and Fred Ebb to get to Broadway since Ebb's death in 2004. The score is lighter than "Chicago" and "Cabaret," but the legendary team has penned a show's worth of good tunes.

While the "Robbin' Hood" songs are frothy stuff, the other numbers focus on showbiz, celebrating and skewering actors, producers, even critics. Some of the sentiments have been expressed before, but director Scott Ellis stages the production with highly polished pizzazz.

William Ivey Long's delightful costumes are a mix of dressy '50s fashions and "Robbin' Hood's" Old West duds. Anna Louizos' clever sets for the show within the show add greatly to the appeal.

Choreographer Rob Ashford also deserves big credit. The dancing is athletic and intricate and will knock your socks off. (No, seriously, check your shoes.)"



http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/culture/2007/03/23/2007-03-23_curtains_draws_on_golden_age.html

[Lt. Cioffi]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 6:30am

I don't care what anybody says--I loved it and I'll keep going back. The bottom line is $$$$, as long as Curtains makes money, it will stay right where it is. Look at Wicked (if you must) I believe it opened to mixed reviews and it's flying high. I always look at reviews as one man or woman's opinion. Last night I didn't hear anyone grumbling, I saw a lot of happy, satisfied people.

BTW--The Journal News is way off base IMO.

[Princeton78]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 7:46am

And the Tony goes to......Spring Awakening?

[D2]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 8:14am

You can't go by reviews when it comes to the Tony Awards. Look at Thoroughly Modern Millie, Evita, The Sound of Music, among many others. They all received mixed to negative reviews and still won the top prize. I'm not saying CURTAINS will win or even should win, but it's chances are as good as any. And for my money, it's still a better show than GREY GARDENS.

*ducks and runs*

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 8:17am

Word of mouth is good, and it obviously has a healthy advance, as it's not an easy ticket to get for months ahead (weekends, at least).

As has been mentioned here, there are scads of pull quotes, and Boneau-Bryan Brown has been doing a tremendous job so far, I have no doubt that they'll take it to the next level now.

[Mamie]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 8:18am

Supermanfully?
Mermanfully?

Does Simon always write like that?

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/23/07 at 8:18am

I dont think curtains will win the tony but i have a sneaky feeling Legally blonde will(you can shout all you want but the fact is the show is bloody good and the reviews are strong out of town ,far better than curtains).

I dont think LB will win best book etc (that seems to be the real award) i think Grey Grdens or spring awakening will

good luck to them all though i say including curtains(its been a strong year for musicals)