Theatermania is positive:
Anyone in need of comfort food should head directly to Paper Mill Playhouse, where it’s being served up by the slice in Mystic Pizza. Set to a catalogue of 1980s pop classics, Sandy Rustin’s delicious adaptation of the beloved rom-com dances right off the stage and into your heart, touching your emotions as the familiar music embeds itself in your ears.
The company boasts voices for days, and the musical arrangements by Carmel Dean seamlessly adapt the well-known songs to a more traditional Broadway style. Anderson projects Kat’s quiet demeanor in book scenes, which makes for an appropriate jolt when she lets loose in her songs, projecting her character’s rich inner life beneath a placid exterior. Alabado demonstrates Daisy’s fierce countenance in a rousing rendition of Melissa Etheridge’s “I’m the Only One,” and she and the irresistibly charming Michael smolder with chemistry in a charged account of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Giulietti and Haynie make for cute comic relief throughout, and the big-voiced Fouché earned well-deserved whoops and cheers nearly every time she opened her mouth. John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” made for well-calibrated refrain throughout the show, giving voice to the Mystic residents’ pride in their seaside community.
Mystic Pizza Comes with Lots of Tasty Toppings at Paper Mill Playhouse
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
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