ON A CLEAR DAY... Reviews — Page 2

Joey; I'm guessing Mayer, who's hands are all over this.
Or the creepy Slater who's just, well creepy.
After these reviews, we will probably never know.

I'm bummed! I was hoping we might get a cast recording out of this, but who would record it now?

Updated On: 12/11/11 at 11:20 PM

When he was in "The Pajama Game", the recording came out as "Harry on Broadway Act 1", so maybe this will be act 2?

Here are some pull-quotes from the NY Times:

"The approximate fun quotient of a day in an M.R.I. machine." -BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Never mind trying to figure out the logic of all this. Reincarnation, I’m sure, has its own transcendent laws." --BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES


"Mr. Turner, an actor of wit and charm...is here required to be witless and charmless."--BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Ms. Mueller, who has a fetching affinity for swing-era song stylings, comes off better....But in reshaping Melinda as a concept, someone forgot to make her a character as well." --BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Connick...has the look of a man just out of grueling dental surgery, who is both in pain and still semi-anesthetized. And he makes even an up number like the title song sound like an exquisitely sung dirge." --BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"An exquisitely sung dirge!" --BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"I couldn’t help feeling that members of the talented supporting cast — who include Kerry O’Malley...Sarah Stiles...and Drew Gehling wished they were somewhere else, in more attractive costumes, doing less spasmodic dances. --BEN BRANTLEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Ya gotta love how Benny is able to praise his girl Cheno,
even if she's not in this production.
He takes Gay/Diva worship to a whole new level, N Y Times style.

The reviews for Bonnie and Clyde were much more harmful.

This has Connick to sell it, a song everyone knows to sell it while Bonnie and Clyde needed the reviews because it has no star.

Bonnie and Clyde was robbed.

Much worse musicals than Bonnie and Clyde lived on: Sister Act, Legally Blonde, Titanic to name a few.

I agree with you wholeheartedly Boris.
It is a shame about this one. Great score. Great performances.
Well conceived all the way around

Unfortunately, the show costs 400,000 per week to break even. It has only pulled that in one week out of four.

The critics wouldn't give Wildhorn a break. No matter what.
Sad. It sucks being the man they love to hate.

Curiously, Connick's label - Columbia - had decided NOT to record this one.

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Harry is a major part of the problem.
HIs acting is misquided.
Mark Kudish was really good in the role in the reading.

Hmmmmm, errrrr, okay.

So how else might the Lerner estate allow his works to be made more commercial and less confusing?

They've missed the opportunity to give Carmelina a contemporary Europop score and retitle it Mamma Mia. So perhaps they could...

relocate Camelot to Hyannis Port...

...or maybe a necrophiliac take on Lolita My Love?

Any others?

Updated On: 12/12/11 at 07:13 AM

"relocate Camelot to Hyannis Port... "

There's nothing confusing about Camelot. It has also made money set exactly where it is.

Updated On: 12/12/11 at 08:01 AM

IT WAS the best of mistakes, it was the worst of Gambles, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Revision, it was the season of Darkness, it was the fall of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had Evita before us, we had no Funny Girl before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, on the S.S. Bernard Cohn, we were all going direct the other way, on a boat leaving soon - or not - but after all, yes, indeed! - for New York; in short, the revival was flawed so very much and so very unlike the original, that some of its noisiest authorities, yours truly, insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a Dr. with a Sinatra croon and a queen with a plain face, in the 1970s; there were a Dr. with a Sinatra croon and a princess with a fair face, in the 1940s. In both times it was clearer than Clyde across the River Jordan to the lords of the State preserves of Bonnie loaves and fishes, that things in Other Desert Cities were settled for ever.

It was the years of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventy-four. and one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, and two thousand and eleven. Critical revelations were conceded to Chicago at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Mueller had recently attained her Broadway debut, of whom a prophetic tour in the U.S.O. had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of her airplane. Even the ghost of Burton Lane had been laid only a round fifteen years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this theatrical less than golden age (supernaturally deficient unlike the original) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come from Mr. Sondheim in a letter to the Times, from a congress of Webberites in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the starstruck throng than any communications yet received through any ill-begotten expose of Mr. Jackman's theatrical sexuality.

Updated On: 12/12/11 at 10:46 AM