Drowsy Chaperone Reviews- Page 5

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 12:59am

RentBoy86, notice last year's winners as examples:

Best Book: Spelling Bee

Best Score: Piazza

Best Musical: Spamalot

Updated On: 5/2/06 at 12:59 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:01am

Lots of Best Musical winners over the years have lost the Best Book category -- Spamalot (last year; best book went to Spelling Bee), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Urinetown won Book), Contact (James Joyce's The Dead), Fosse (Parade), Lion King (Ragtime), Crazy For You (Falsettos), The Will Rogers Follies (Secret Garden)......... and that's just since 1990 (there are plenty of other examples).

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:07am

John Simon (Bloomberg) is Mixed-to-Negative:

"Where exactly is the dividing line between ``cute' and ``cutesy'? The former, naively ingratiating, can be enjoyable. The latter, preciosity full of winking inside jokes, is not.

A musical like ``The Drowsy Chaperone,' which opened last night at the Marquis Theatre, is mostly cutesy. It trumpets its lovableness every airy-fairy step of the way, but massaging the audience is not the same as entertaining it.
________________________________________________________________
Shenanigans abound, with Man in Chair at times dorkily joining in the farcical proceedings. The dialogue and songs are arch, and are cheekily directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. The production values are impish, and the cast suitably sassy, with only Bob Martin annoyingly charmless. Outstanding is the Janet of Sutton Foster, who not only acts and sings endearingly, but can also, simultaneously, perform circus-worthy acrobatics. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=ahu5lxlb1_OU&refer=culture

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:17am

I agree with segments of Brantley's review, but mostly with, for one of the only times ever, Murray's talkin' Broadway review.

Very happy this show is getting nice reviews - it's good to see original work with talented people behind it getting recognition.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:19am

Whew. Well it's a good thing no one visits Bloomberg.com for their theater reviews! Keep a writin', John!

[inlovewithjerryherman]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:19am

Wow...this is going to be a GREAT Tony season. It's gonna be neck and neck in SO many categories.

I really think DROWSY has a MAJOR chance to win Best Musical. I think by taking into consideration the committee's snubbing of All Shook Up shows a reluctance for giving high praise to a jukebox musical. (Really, the last thing the American musical theatre needs is a jukebox musical to take top prize at the Tonys...as if producers need any more reason to not produce shows with original scores - not saying anything bad about Jersey Boys, which I think is a great show.) I think a lot of Tony voters will feel that way, and I think a lot of votes will go to Jersey Boys too. Plus, The Color Purple is bound to snag a few votes away from both of them (highly doubtful it will win, but it will get some votes, making the race even more unpredictable.)

it's wild. i love it. I'm rooting for Drowsy.

[frogs_fan85]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:28am

Barnes: "The hidden voice also suggests, on behalf of the audience, "I didn't pay a hundred bucks to have the fourth wall come crashing down around my ears." Then the lights go up, revealing someone called the Man in the Chair, who starts to talk to us directly to the sound of a fourth wall crashing."

Does he not understand irony?

[leefowler]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 1:41am

Newsday is a rave.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 2:02am

Yeah, Barnes is generally consistantly off. I don't understand him.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 2:26am

Clive Barnes - the critic who did NOT get COMPANY, did NOT get FOLLIES, after seeiing HAIR decided all new musicals should be plotless rock muscals. Even when he likes a show I am never certain why or if he even understands it.

I NEVER understood why he has remained a leading critic allowed to cover Broadway.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 2:50am

Who really gives a rat's ass about the Tonys? (Tony, Tony,Tony,Tony...) Do you remember how many brilliant shows DIDN'T win the Tony? How many SUPERB performances were passed over? And who gives a crap about John Simon and Clive Barnes? Talk about yesterday's news. I couldn't care if they hated the show or loved it or didn't even bother coming. Audiences adore it and it's time we remembered who we are trying to please. If you chase six guys with totally diverse taste instead of 1600 who have all paid enormous ammounts of money to see the show, all you'll end up with is a mess.

This show's measure has been taken and it's a hit. Let's celebrate and put on our favorite two-record set of the original cast production of.......

[TheHumanTorch]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 6:50am

Drowsy is a great show and i'm glad that it is getting the recognition it deserves...

regarding the Tony, no matter how much Jersey Boys deserves it, i feel like there will be far too much backlash to its genre of "jukebox musical" for it to possibly win. I'm assuming that the Tony voters don't want to see another Ring of Fire or All Shook Up, and that will be an albatross Jersey Boys has to wear.

[All_For_Laura]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 7:04am

Brantley loved Sutton! I am so happy! This show deserves it!

[TheEnchantedHunter]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 9:48am

"And the monkey's CYMBOLS were loud too and I loved them."

I'm sorry, honey, that still ain't it.




Ensign Lisa Minnelli
French Polynesia

[Katecab99]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 9:53am

How could anyone NOT love Sutton? She's fabulous, and although her role itself isn't overly "meaty", I think that her performance of what she's got to work with is.

The show overall is my favorite of the season. I'm SO happy that the reviews came back as positive as they did for the most part, and I can't wait to see how this all pans out at the Tony's! What a great season!

[fflagg]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 10:09am

Is this another show destined for overpraise like THE HISTORY BOYS, a very good not great play? I can imagine the 9,000 emails posted soon on how great Sutton is, blah blah blah.

She's vanilla and always will be.

Pardon me while I put on the OCR of Wonderful Town with Roz Russell, a real star.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 10:14am

Newsday is Positive:

http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-etsecw4724710may02,0,2526258.story?coll=ny-features-print

Bergen Record is a Rave:

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY5Mjg1MTQmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

New York Sun is a Rave:

http://www.nysun.com/article/31934

Newark Star-Ledger is a Rave:

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1146545158102330.xml&coll=1

American Theater Web is a Rave:

http://www.americantheaterweb.com/news/ind.asp?id=132926

Globe and Mail is Positive:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060502.DROWSY02/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Theatre/

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 10:21am

Keep the RAVES coming for this delightfull Show!

[best12bars]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 10:50am

I would say this is the best reviewed musical of the season.

I just went back to see how Jersey Boys faired on an earlier thread... and although it was good overall, it wasn't as good as these are here.

...Not that this means Tony voters will reflect the same sentiment, but it's nice to know just the same!

Yay, Drowsy! Bravo! ...and Brava!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 11:20am

Here's the Jersey Boys review thread, if you want to check for yourself:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=874373#1576581

[Princeton78]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 11:25am

Hmm...why do I remember JB as getting better reviews?

[uncageg]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 11:33am

I am looking forward to seeing this show. Seeing it on June 9th. My best friend is coming to New York with me on vacation and I chose this as our first show and his first Broadway show to see.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 11:49am

Seems to me this show got many "oh wow" reviews while "The Jersey Boys" (which personally I thought was competent but nothing new and inspired) mainly got a lot of "well. yeah. it was okay. maybe good" reviews. There was no sense of wonder in the JB reviews. And let's face it, the road to Broadway was basically a highway for JB while Drowsy deserves every praise it gets because it began in the narrowest of backwaters. Remember this show was a wedding present for Bob Martin, put on by his friends for one night only in a tiny theater behind a bar in Toronto. And many of the cast had never been in a musical in their lives. The show was written by people who had never written a musical and was good enough to attract a constantly enlarging calibre of producers until the producer of (the beloved, it seems, to many of you) "Wicked" decided to mount it on Broadway. THAT is an inspirational story far more than Jersey Boys. But of course, that is IMHO.

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 11:58am

I agree mostly with Brantley's review.

When I left the show, I felt it was extremely enjoyable, but not by any means the best show I have seen in recent years...

[ahimsa]

Posted: 5/2/06 at 12:01pm

Ben B's NYT review says "And the rest of the cast tap-dances up such a storm that you have no choice but to applaud." Can anyone tell me, just how much choreography is in the show? I want to take a "an old hoofer" to see the show. Will she be disappointed or ectatic?