Well I admire her for being such a TV actress and wanting to do something different.
I'm a professional. Whenever something goes wrong on stage, I know how to handle it so no one ever remembers. I flash my %#$&.
"Jayne just sat there while Gina flailed around the stage like an idiot."
I agree that not only is she not a name but really none of them are. I think producers dropped the ball a few years ago not bringing the london production with ewan mcgregor and jane krokowski over.
<------ Me and my friends with patti Lupone at my friends afterparty for her concert with audra mcdonald during the summer of 2007.
"I am sorry but it is an unjust world and virtue is only triumphant in theatricle performances" The Mikado
Imagine having dinner in a fabulous restaurant with two couples. One pair is delightfully witty and has sizzling chemistry; the other two seem so awkward that it's almost painful to be with them. That's something akin to the uneven, frustrating experience offered by the new revival of Guys and Dolls (* * ½ out of four) that opened Sunday at the Nederlander Theatre.
I admit I am a bit of a Lauren Graham fangirl and although the she was still finding her way when I saw the show a few weeks ago, she was by far not the worst thing about this production. The role isn't really suited to her, I don't think, but she was by no means horrible.
"Why do you care what people might say? Why try to fit into their design?" (Side Show)
Oh gosh. Just saw the NY1 clip. And... Oliver Platt is...yucky. It's like he seemed too exhausted to DO or EXPRESS anything in every second of footage. Titus Burgess' Sit Down sounds awesome, though. If there's a cast recording, that'll be the one song I know I'll download.
In my pants, she has burst like the music of angels, the light of the sun! --Marius Pantsmercy
His idea of energy is Dustin O’Neill’s ugly video backdrops, which render this Guys and Dolls’s New York both unduly busy and one-dimensional when they’re not inspiring motion sickness. What he needed to do instead was inspire his cast to kinetic greatness, to help them unlock the frantic hearts that pursue profit and the opposite sex with equal abandon. That’s the only way to do true justice to Swerling, Burrows, Loesser, and - yes - Runyon himself.
They're not being as hard on Lauren Graham as I was expecting.
I am glad Mary Testa is getting positive notices for her small role.
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
Looks like Des is taking the Bad Blame. It's a thin line between directing and re-invisioning a classic Musical and pasting together Beatlemania, I mean JERSEY BOYS. Everyone has their Ups and Downs in this business. Updated On: 3/1/09 at 09:35 PM
"Did someone forget to baptize Guys and Dolls? Seems unlikely — but how else to explain why a nigh-perfect musical entertainment has been plunged into limbo, suspended between cartoon and noir in director Des McAnuff's appalling revival. Of course, there are worse places than limbo — but we go there too. Perhaps McAnuff thought he was directing The Divine Comedy?"
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
"NEW YORK— Broadway has always been a floating crap game. But as this show-killing recession deepens, beleaguered producers are clearly feeling like every new opening is like attempting a Hail Mary pass against Big Jule’s crooked dice. The first Broadway revival of the musical “Guys and Dolls” since Nathan Lane and Faith Prince cracked up the Rialto with their follies nearly two decades ago offers a sense of what it must have felt like to been one of the victims during the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. You’re on the wrong end of a whole lot of intense, desperate scatter-shot. Des McAnuff’s strangely cast, uncharacteristically insecure and weirdly unfunny revival—which features Oliver Platt as the perennial bachelor Nathan Detroit and “Gilmore Girl” Lauren Graham as Miss Adelaide—seems to have about six different concepts for this show, tries to do them all at once, and manages to make none of them land."
It's so sad that McAnuff basically wasted a revival of GUYS & DOLLS. We could have had the great West End production transfer--and I wouldn't have minded waiting till Krakowski became available to be part of it, or we could have waited for a great director or great cast to assemble for the show. It's not like anyone was jonesing for a production of the show starring Lauren Graham and Olvier Platt that just needed to happen now. It seems like every single review has mentioned Mary Testa. Good for her.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
""Guys and Dolls" is a nearly perfect musical, which it has to be to survive the frequent mistreatment it receives in the new revival staged by Des McAnuff. Filled with lavish directorial touches that add little to the proceedings and featuring several surprisingly pallid performances, the show still manages to provide a good time thanks to the brilliance of Frank Loesser's score and the hilarity of Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' book. But those with strong memories of the superb 1992 revival starring Nathan Lane, Faith Prince and Peter Gallagher will find much to quibble about here."
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
"As America endures what might be called "The Great Recession," it's fascinating that in the revival of the classic musical Guys and Dolls, now at the Nederlander Theatre, director Des McAnuff has shifted the action of the musical to "The Great Depression." McAnuff serves up a simultaneously razzmatazz and tawdry affair, which, despite Frank Loesser's dazzling score and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' top-drawer zingers, never fully transports audiences to a mythic New York,where a kind of perpetual sense of hopefulness exists, even when things are at their worst."
Wow! These reviews are consistently poor. I would like to hear opinions as to how many weeks/months this GUYS & DOLLS will be playing at the Nederlander? Casting choices seem to be the most contentious issue that all of the reviewers seem to agree on. Too bad. I wonder why the preview period didn't provide the clues for the director and producers that serious miscasting of certain actors in certain roles could sink this revival? Is there any hope this may still play for five or six months? Serious estimates, PLEASE!