The Times was very hard on her but I think she's great!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0MDvT1Qyxk
Her singing is no worse than Tyne's. But I believe most felt her acting was mediocre.
I love Linda Lavin, but the fact that her delivery of "I can make you now" (a line that should be terrifying) elicited mass laughter from the audience shows the complete miscalculation in the tone of her performance.
oh my god all that laughing is so distracting.
I saw the production with Linda Lavin and her performance was all over the place (and that's being kind). I could understand people why people laughed at that particular line because of the irony of it all.
I saw her about three weeks into her run and she was already walking through the role, looking uncomfortable and bored. She only came alive for "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Rose's Turn," and even then she had nowhere near the fierce determination that Tyne Daly had. It was a very strange evening, because the production remained a whirling hurricane but with Lavin in the lead it had no center. As Dottie pointed out, she was all over the place, and at times even incorporated an Irish accent into her interpretation. Very disappointing.
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
I felt Lavin was performing for television cameras and was creating a Rose that stayed on one side of the footlights. Her singing wasn't bad, but it wasn't powerful.
I was very disappointed in the performance.
I didn't see Lavin, so obviously cannot judge her entire performance, but based on that clip she sounds dreadful. It's as if she's reading off cue cards and that flat Midwestern accent she's using is all wrong. And she's always either too slow or too fast.
The night that I saw it at The St. James Theatre, Linda was out and her stand-by/understudy Jana Robbins did the role. She was very good.
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