Has a reviewer ever dismissed a Pull quote?

[philly03]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 3:43pm

NY Post reviewer Elizabeth Vincentelli calls out the WONDERLAND marketing as "deceiving"...

"Despite what the ads for "Wonderland" claim, I did not say that the show is "a wondrous journey!" That pull quote is an egregious distortion of what I actually wrote in my review .

Here's the full line: "As in the original story, Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy's book sends Alice (Janet Dacal) on a wondrous journey." Now, this sentence clearly refers to the plot, not the show -- described in the previous sentence as ""this flat new Broadway musical." (The ad also put in the exclamation mark, because why the heck not?)"

Has this ever happened before? WONDERLAND pulled the quote from it's website already.
Wonderland is not a good show

[Wishing Only Wounds]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 3:56pm

"You're The One That I Want!" comes to mind from the last Grease revival... they quoted just about every article that mentioned the reality series, Grease: You're The One That I want!

Not necessarily a reviewer dismissing a pull quote, but it stirred up some commotion.

Updated On: 4/27/11 at 03:56 PM

[Smaxie]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 4:17pm

It happens quite frequently, but doesn't always go reported. Seeing this thread, I immediately thought of Marlowe, a disastrous rock musical from 30 years ago that played the long-departed Rialto Theatre. Frank Rich, The New York Times, wrote the following:

WHEN everything goes right in a musical, the audience feels a rush of exhilaration that is the quintessence of Broadway. And what happens when everything goes wrong? Well, when everything goes wrong, another kind of giddiness sets in - that same slaphappy feeling that comes when Laurel and Hardy send a grand piano crashing down a flight of stairs.

Such is the perverse pleasure offered by 'Marlowe,' a wholly ridiculous show that is much more fun to sit through than many merely mediocre musicals. Like such famous Broadway fiascos as 'Kelly,' 'Rachel Lily Rosenbloom' and 'Rockabye Hamlet,' this one has the courage to meet vulgarity far more than halfway. If 'Marlowe' isn't quite a classic of its kind, that's a matter of size, not content. Tacky-looking and sparsely populated, this show lacks the Titaniclike splendor and expenditure of Broadway's all-time fabulous wrecks.

Connoisseurs of theatrical disaster will still find much amusement in the self-described rock musical that opened last night at the Rialto. In attempting to give us a song-and-dance account of that madcap Elizabethan playwright, Christopher (Kit) Marlowe - the one who had 'the devil market cornered' - the co-authors, Leo Rost and Jimmy Horowitz, have left no folio undefaced. The insanity begins with the opening scene, in which Queen Elizabeth I (Margaret Warncke) dispatches a lover with the line, 'Don't forget your codpiece!'

The Marlowe advertising quoted Rich as saying "Giddiness sets in - that same slaphappy feeling that comes when Laurel and Hardy send a grand piano crashing down a flight of stairs," with none of the context that Rich had provided for that statement. When the show somehow lingered on for several weeks, Rich took the show to task with another column.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 4:30pm

Good for her, the karma is that now there is a second article stating that the show is doo-doo.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 4:46pm

For "Subways Are For Sleeping", David Merrick hired seven people with the same name as the chief theater critics, gave them tickets to the show and then published their positive comments. It was one of Merrick's great publicity stunts.

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 4:54pm

^

I actually mentioned that in my musical theatre class this morning!

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 10:47pm

The show's website is so sad. There are literally two pull quotes that alternate at the top of the page. I remember thinking it was weird that they pulled from the New York Post when I saw that on their site.

[philly03]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 11:06pm

They pulled two of them off of it... I forget the other one though. The UPI one is new, but can't seem to find the article itself!

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/27/11 at 11:10pm

The other one just said "Imaginative." I forgot where it came from though.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 4/28/11 at 12:03am

Some of the audience reviews on the website mention the bad reviews from the critics. I'm surprised they included those.

[backwoodsbarbie]

Posted: 4/28/11 at 12:10am

I took a class with Peter Marks of the Washington Post and he spoke of this often. He said that every once in a while he'll approach the producers if the pull quote is really outlandish, but that nothing is every really done about it. In our theatre criticism class he taught us to avoid making statements that could be used as possible pull quotes if our reviews were largely negative.

[lizliz]

Posted: 4/28/11 at 12:42am

Wasn't there a show that used pull quotes from readers who posted comments on the New York Times reviews online, and simply credited them to the New York Times (or maybe NYTimes.com?), as if they'd been written by the paper, not a random reader commenting?

[Weez]

Posted: 4/28/11 at 5:06am

My favourite recent pullquote is "I'm dying to see it!" for Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's like they weren't even trying.