Iceboy! The Musical — Page 2

BalconyClub said: In one moment, (last week) Vera Vimm had called “Music” to erupt from the pit. Her short “Music” command has been changed to “Scene change”.

The production has changed this again, Vera Vimm now barks "I'm closer."

On Wednesday evening, July 1, the upstairs audience was QUIET. Several lines landed with no response. Not sure what was in air.

Was it Mullally's eyeglasses? She usually has no eyeglasses.

Mullally sported thin, silver-frame eyeware for the entire Wednesday night performance.

Does anyone know who the commercial producer is? I assumed this production needed enhancement money.

If any locals want to see this (or at least a version of it) for free the Music Box has a screening this coming Monday. Tickets are available here:

https://musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-events/iceboy?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-enews&mc_cid=c8c15058bd&mc_eid=d83a143810

EvanstonDad said: "Will this production have any further life after August 9?



I saw this over the weekend and would say probably not. It becomes apparent very early on (even during the opening number) that this show is never going to rise above mildly pleasant. Nick Offerman is underutilized as the narrator/Eugene O'Neill, but he got the most laughs of the evening. Megan Mullaly is working her butt off, but somehow never dominated the show the way her character's diva persona is supposed to, or at least is supposed to at first. I thought the actors who played Iceboy and Mullaly's assistant gave standout performances in supporting roles.

The sets were a highlight, but they drew attention to how thinly populated this show is. You would have these flashy sets (and there are a lot of them) that just begged for a big ensemble number, but then four people singing and dancing in front of them.

I can't see this musical going anywhere after its run at the Goodman. It would be a fool's errand to bring something like this to Broadway in the current business climate."

this is 100% looking to transfer, this is absolutle a try-out hence the supporting cast being loaded with Broadway "names"

Fully agree, I don't see how this could be successful on Broadway how it is. Nowhere near warrants a transfer yet, maybe Off-Broadway to play around a bit more and give it more substance and better jokes. As it stands, this is mostly silly with a handful of decent jokes and a bunch of questionable songs that are just not good. Stiles and Henson are given the best material in their songs and to their credit they deliver it well. Offerman is severely underutilized, and while we didn't see Mullaly I can see how she'd slay that role (even if the role is grating af.

This seems to be in the vein of parody/comedy musicals like Titanique or Schmigadoon but it doesn't reach anywhere near the same heights as those, nor is it nearly as good...and I wasn't even a fan of Schmigadoon. Fun enough night at the theater but I wouldn't say it was good.

Maybe an Off-Broadway transfer?

DaveyG said: "Does anyone know who the commercial producer is? I assumed this production needed enhancement money."

I would’ve bet Scott Landis was putting up money for this, but Kathleen Marshall is not the director anymore.

I saw this tonight. Was hopeful coming in, but unfortunately, the show is a bit of a mess.

The tone of the show is trying to imply "this is a fun romp, don't take this too seriously", but there's so many plot threads (Vera being upstaged by Iceboy, her relationship with her boyfriend, the secondary romance with Iceboy and the maid, O'Neill being pulled out of his writer's block, a butler who is Frankenstein for most of the show, to name a few), that you can't help but take in the show critically, and it just comes off feeling overstuffed. It's no surprise that the show has been tinkered with and developed on and off for a quarter of a century.

Nick Offerman was the best actor. He does his usual schtick of dry-wit curmudgeon, but it works well for O'Neill, and he gets some of the best lines of the night (like when he tells everyone in the audience, including the children, to get liquored up at intermission). Megan Mullally is really funny, but she leans too far into her character voice (very similar to Elizabeth in Young Frankenstein, as others have pointed out), to the point where some of her lines were near-unintelligible.

The music was a big disappointment. There's no real musical identity, unlike Urinetown, which captures a Kurt Weill pastiche brilliantly. There's 30s jazz, modern pop, Grey Henson gets a Menken-esque ballad. Most of the songs have really clunky lyrics, with way too many syllables being crammed into way too little melody.

It's not impossible that this show gets to Broadway, but it'll need a substantial amount of work, primarily in stripping away a lot of the plot and just letting this show be the silly diversion that it wants to be.

I would avoid extreme sides for this show. The set creates terrible sight lines from the extreme sides. Everything is mostly staged front and center but I would try to select as closer to the center unless I was further back.

In the Tuesday, August 4 performance, Vera Vimm’s reaction to receiving a bad review had a few new lines … or maybe it was an ad lib.

Something along the lines of “the critics scoff at me for playing a teen-ager. I could play a four or a three-year-old!”

In a Chris Jones Chicago Tribune column today he reports Iceboy was the best-selling show in Goodman's history