How About a Revival of CARNIVAL?- Page 2

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 7/6/11 at 10:52pm

I sit corrected, nobodyhome. It was Victoria Mallory and not Susan Watson. And no, it was not a good production, and Clive Barnes, just recently ensconced as the voice of theatre for the New York Times, really questioned the wisdom of its revival and the quality of the piece itself. He was right about the production, but not about the piece.

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 7/7/11 at 5:11am

So, Clive Barnes, new theatre critic for the New York Times, questioned the worth of the musical CARNIVAL. What a jerk he could be. I had a friend who worked for the NYTimes and he described the critics Frank Rich and Barnes. He told me that Rich would spend an entire day writing his review, carefully crafting it. In Barnes's case, he would often be said to have been slumped over his desk, hung over. Barnes's background was as a dance critic, not theatre related. The power of the NYTimes theatre critic is still mighty, but perhaps not as powerful as it was under Frank Rich's tenure.

[wonkit]

Posted: 7/7/11 at 7:04am

I have no problem with Lili's emotional ties with the puppets. I still cry every time I hear Kermit sing "Rainbow Connection" even though I know it is just a piece of felt. I always thought that part of the story was about the magic of theater to make you believe in something that you know is an illusion.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 7/7/11 at 2:55pm

If my memory is correct, one problem with the City Center Carnival was the physical production (or relative lack of one). While the Champion staging was, I think, more or less recreated, the original Will Steven Armstrong sets were not available to City Center (probably didn't exist anymore) and the production was very bare.

And it may not have helped that the Paul was in his mid-40s, while Mallory was under 20 (though I think some catty critic - perhaps Barnes - wrote that she looked older than Karen Morrow).

But it was a bit of a ground-breaking production in that the Paul, Leon Bibb, was black.