MAGIC/BIRD Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 3:46am

Today is Wednesday, April 11, marking the official opening night performance of Magic/Bird, Eric Simonson's highly theatrical drama about the college-to-Olympics rivalry and friendship of basketball heroes Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird, at the Longacre Theatre. Fresh faces Tug Coker and Kevin Daniels play household-names Bird and Johnson, respectively. Under the direction of Thomas Kail, preview performances began March 21.

Here's how the producers bill Magic/Bird: "At the heart of one of the fiercest rivalries in sports history, two of the greatest basketball players of all-time battled for three championships, bragging rights, and the future of their sport in the 1980s. Johnson and Bird electrified the nation on the court, reinvigorated the NBA, and turned their rivalry into one of the greatest and most famous friendships in professional sports."

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 7:11pm

amNY is negative (2 stars):

"The problem with "Magic/Bird," which is composed primarily of very short scenes, is that no conflict ever develops between the glitzy Johnson and the quiet Bird, who remain painfully polite and respectful to each other. The uneventful play ultimately resembles an audiovisual presentation of a Wikipedia article.

Bird is presented as utterly dull. Even if that's how he is in real life, it makes for a very strange and uninteresting character. The more lively and dynamic Johnson also lacks dimension despite some confessional moments."

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-magic-bird-2-stars-1.3655542

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 7:13pm

Backstage is negative:

"However, sports and theater present inherently different kinds of drama. Both are physical feats in front of an audience, but the comparison ends there. One succeeds on competitive energy, while the other finds its stride in intellectual craft. Though director Thomas Kail tries to re-create the adrenaline rush of a basketball game onstage, his trite devices, coupled with Eric Simonson’s flat script, can’t deliver the same energy as a Final Four playoff."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-broadway/ny-review-magic-bird-1006728352.story

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 7:34pm

Wasn't a fan of this show at all. It was a very long hour and forty minutes. I actually preferred LOMBARDI, if we're comparing sports shows. I imagine the rest of the reviews will follow in the footsteps of the two posted above, but I wish them luck.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 8:48pm

Matthew Murray is negative:

"Magic/Bird displays hardly any sense of motion. Simonson's writing skews heavily toward the history (which is, according to the hardcore basketball enthusiast who accompanied me, impressively accurate), sometimes macro and sometimes micro but invariably staid. A few key “flavor” scenes occur in a Boston pub, when a Celtics fan and a Massachusetts-born Lakers lover face off with overreaching drunken verve, but we learn next to nothing about the central men that would endear them to us. There are snippets suggesting Johnson's love of life (and, by extension, women), and Bird is presented a kind-hearted hick who values life's simple pleasures and a hard day's work (even if it promotes the back problems that would eventually force him out of basketball). But that's it, and it's not enough to make you care about whether they succeed or fail if you don't when you walk in."

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/MagicBird.html

Also, one other sentence that I 100% agree with: "Both men are routinely outshone by Deirdre O'Connell, who plays Bird's wife and mother (and is particularly funny when the latter practically swoons over Johnson's accomplishments)..."

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:12pm

The AP is mixed to positive:

"One of Simonson's neatest tricks is using a couple of barflies to help frame parts of the play. Some of Simonson's least successful are the attempts to make the story bigger than what it is. References to busing, racism and exploitation of athletes are picked up but then dribble away.

Also awkward is the transition from the raucous opening, in which each of the performers is introduced in sweats as if they were players before a big home game, and the first real scene in which Johnson is on the phone with Bird in a tense call to tell him he's got a deadly virus. But after that, the play progresses like a romantic comedy as we wait until these two rivals are brought together kicking and screaming."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120411/us-theater-review-magic-bird/

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:16pm

The Hollywood Reporter is mixed:

"I confess to being clueless about basketball, but I’m open to any sports drama that tells a compelling story. Hell, I was glued to five seasons of Friday Night Lights despite having scant understanding of the rules of American football, and felt a wrenching separation from those characters when the series ended. Magic/Bird piqued my interest in seeing a more illuminating documentary about their lives and careers, but it fails to weave those elements into anything more than a mildly engaging drama. (The two players’ history was notably covered in the HBO film, Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, while Johnson’s story was more recently chronicled in ESPN’s The Announcement.)

This is not really a play so much as a salute to two sports heroes of yesteryear. Their love of the game and honorable behavior toward each other despite their rivalry on the court now makes them stand apart from the contemporary stereotype of the arrogant, overpaid pro athlete, living large and chasing celebrity tail. For nostalgic fans, that might be enough to encourage them to overlook the dramatic shortcomings."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/magic-bird-theater-review-lakers-311084

Updated On: 4/12/12 at 09:16 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:18pm

The Philadelphia Inquirer is positive:

"It's a lovely scene about human nature, and the last place I expected to find it was a play about the career-long rivalries between basketball greats Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. But Simonson proved a few seasons back with his play about another sports legend, coach Vince Lombardi, that the theme of sports competition can cement the foundation for some very good theater.

In Magic/Bird, which opened Wednesday night on Broadway, he creates just that from the real story of two men at the same high level of their game, who respected each other for being so talented and hated each other for the same reason."

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/147007985.html

Updated On: 4/12/12 at 09:18 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:24pm

The Faster Times is negative:

"There is so much emotion in Larry Bird’s normally stoic face during the game that I nearly burst into tears.

But there is a catch. It is Larry Bird’s actual face up on a screen, one of many video snippets that are used in “Magic/Bird.”

Virtually nothing that the live performers do on the stage at the Longacre Theater has anywhere near the impact. And the videos are not enough to fill the gap in drama or excitement. While there are a few interesting scenes, “Magic/Bird” simply doesn’t hold together as a play."

http://www.thefastertimes.com/newyorktheater/2012/04/11/magicbird-review-basketball-without-the-basketball/

[perfectliar]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:28pm

Entertainment Weekly is mixed (C+):

"There's a terrifically low-key moment when Magic and Bird talk over the phone about his diagnosis. The scene opens the show and is reprised near the end, landing with the force of a gut punch. But after the curtain falls, you can't help feeling that these men were most compelling when they let their play on the court do the talking."

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20364394_20586132,00.html
Updated On: 4/11/12 at 09:28 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:30pm

Variety is mixed to positive:

"Thomas Kail can't turn a Broadway stage into a basketball court any more than he could conjure up a football field when he directed Simonson's previous sports bio-drama, "Lombardi." But the helmer shows far more ingenuity here in staging those unstageable scenes.

At the top of the show, the two stars and four backup thesps (troopers who play more than 20 roles among them) come running onto the stage "court" costumed (by Paul Tazewell) in full warm-up uniform and start playing up to the crowd. Thanks to the design team of David Korins (sets), Howell Binkley (lighting), and Nevin Steinberg (sound), the arena lights up, the organ kicks in, the crowd roars, and basketballs fly. But the technical astuteness of the production comes across most vividly in media designer Jeff Sugg's flashy use of classic NBA game footage, shrewdly edited and shown in mile-high projections."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947374

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 9:34pm

Entertainment Weekly is mixed to negative (C+):

"As vividly as the actors inhabit their parts, Eric Simonson's story is a bit too thin for Broadway. Anyone who caught HBO's first-rate documentary Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals understands the added power of seeing clips of these superstars squaring off in their primes (when the Lakers and the Celtics seemed to inevitably face each other in the NBA Finals just about every year during the '80s). Magic/Bird, though, is primarily concerned with dramatizing the inner lives of these men, which may have been the least exciting thing about them."

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20364394_20586132,00.html

[ACL2006]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 11:22pm

based on these reviews and how poorly it's grosses are, could we possibly see this closing by Sunday??

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 4/11/12 at 11:34pm

ACL, any show that opens between now and the end of the month is going to stick it out, at least until May 1 (just short of 3 weeks from today). If - like Wonderland - the show receives no (or very few) nominations, then it will likely close.

[willep]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 12:14am

bjh - i think you have your Hollywood Reporter and Philly Inquirer links backwards, just fyi

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 12:53am

NYTimes is negative
http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/theater/reviews/magic-bird-at-the-longacre-theater.html

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 7:05am

Fixed it! Thanks willep.

Also The Post is positive (3 out of 4 stars)c:

"The only time the 90-minute show’s pace falters is during the overlong scene when Bird’s mom, Georgia (Deirdre O’Connell, stellar in several supporting roles), invites Magic for lunch in her Indiana home.

Simonson and Kail should have turned off that folksy faucet and given us more b-ball action, especially since the show makes judicious use of archival footage — a marked improvement on “Lombardi,” which was all locker-room speeches and domestic scenes."

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/yes_and_it_counts_3JfoJtgsXdSlKTpl0GxMoL

I really disagree with Vincentelli here. The fact that she singles out that scene as the only one that DOESN'T work really says something. In my opinion (and apparently the opinion of almost every other critic already posted), it's the only scene that does work because it's the only scene in the play that brings any dramatic aspect to what otherwise is a documentary on stage. But hey, to each her own.

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 7:31am

^

I thought that scene was awful. The hokum of it was embarrassing.

But the whole play was lousy.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 7:33am

Oh I don't think it was GOOD. But it's certainly the only scene in the play that had any dramatic elements whatsoever.

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 7:38am

^

Well, one could say the even more embarrassing scene in the bar was equally "dramatic."

Why not just leave sports to the playing field?

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 8:12am

Why not just leave sports to the playing field?

Word.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 1:39pm

They should have taken this out of town first. I know they thought they'd get all the basketball fans in the seats, but I haven't seen any advertisements for this.

[jstarr2]

Posted: 4/12/12 at 2:21pm

It's strange that there's such a lack of drama in the script. There's so much potential for it with this story. I guess this is a product of it being NBA-produced and needed to be signed off on by Johnson and Bird.

Right now it's at 51 on Curtain Critic http://www.curtaincritic.com/Shows/MAGIC_BIRD_REVIEWS-135.html

[Pammylicious]

Posted: 4/13/12 at 11:11am

Well at Curtain Call Wicked got a 50, so there's no telling

[Theatrefan6]

Posted: 4/13/12 at 12:43pm

The Curtain Critic score for Wicked is just reflecting the negative reviews when it first opened. If the reviews were better, the score would be higher. Wicked definitely didn't rise to prominence on the strength of its opening reviews.