*Official* Sweet Charity review thread.

[Princeton78]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 3:14pm

Ok..so I know it's early, but as you've all guessed, I'm a big fan of this show and I'm very anxious about tonight's reviews.

When I saw it in Boston about 6 weeks ago for the first time, I knew only "Hey Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now." I knew nothing of the story or of the rest of the score. I fell in love with the show, the score and the performances of Ms. D'amboise and Ms. Applegate. Dennis O'Hare also amazed me each of the 3 times that I saw it.

So...let's use this thread to post reviews and discuss the future of this show.

PS...I'm not expecting raves...I know the critics are going to be harsh, but I'm hoping they will single out the good points about the show like our very own Margo did earlier in the week.

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:25pm

I want this show to get great reviews and win Best Revival! NOW!

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:28pm

Praying for good reviews of Applegate's performance. She deserves them. The girl's got spunk and heart!

[milliemarch]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:32pm

I'm seeing this show in June, and I'm so excited about it. I've been a fan of Christina since I saw Sweetest Thing. I hope this show does better than expected.

[JakeB]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:33pm

I can't *wait* for the reviews - I will be logging on first thing when I wake up.

[Flight0017]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:38pm

Princeton: It's so cute how you didn't know the show before you saw it! In my experience, knowing little or nothing about a show before seeing it and then being blown away is a very special experience that should be treasured for life

I wish nothing but the best for Christina and the cast of Sweet Charity!

Updated On: 5/4/05 at 04:38 PM

[timote316]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:39pm

Has it already been six weeks since it opened in Boston? Wow, time flies...

I hope the show does well. Go Christina!

[Steve2]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 4:54pm

I am dating myself but when I was a little boy (mid-60s), they had a TV commercial for Muriel cigars sung by Edie Adams:

The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A real big spender, good looking, so refined
I figured that you're the Muriel cigar smoking kind.
So let me get right to the point
You're right in style when you're in Muriel's company
Hey! Big Spender, spend a little dime with me.
Hey! Big Spender, spend a little dime with me.

It was many, many years later that I found out it was from Sweet Charity.

By the way, I saw Sweet Charity last week and enjoyed myself thoroughly!

Yea Christina and the rest of the cast!
Updated On: 5/4/05 at 04:54 PM

[Flight0017]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:13pm

Steve2: Your story (sort of) reminds me how I got to know about Sweet Charity. I was watching an episode of the sit-com "Caroline in the City" when Lea Thompson and cast suddenly started dancing and singing "If They Could See Me Now". I got hooked immediately, even though it did take a while before I found out that the song was from Charity.

[Princeton78]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:17pm

I knew *If they could see me now* from the Kathie Lee Carinval cruise commercials...guess I'm showing my age huh? (26)

[justme2]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:29pm

I'm ready for the onslaught to begin. Christina has a good chance to win her audience and critics over, but I am dreading all the negativity that will be slung at the creative team, especially Cilento. After all, let's remember the one thing the people critical of the show keep repeating, they DARED to revive this show without exhuming Fosse and Verdon.

My wishes for success go out to the cast, crew and creative team!

[gustof777]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:35pm

I can't wait for the reviews and i'm praying the critics love it as much as i did...i'm not saying it will get raves but am hoping for mixed to positive and praying that Christina gets her well deserved raves...go see the show she is very adorable and steals your heart with her spunk...i love her...Good luck Christina, Dennis and cast!!!!

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:37pm

I'm certainly not optomistic about the reviews either, though I sure am pulling for Miss Applegate! I'm seeing the show Saturday night.

[Princeton78]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 5:41pm

I'll be very interested in your opinion Mr. Bennett.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:12pm

so much good luck to the whole production and cast. and especially to ms. applegate who i hope succeeds immensely!

*BREAK A LEG!!!*

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:31pm

She'll definetly get the Tony if she breaks her leg too!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:33pm

Talkin Broadway is Mixed:

"If you're being taken along for a ride in a Broadway star vehicle, there'd better be at least one thing onstage that you can't take your eyes from. The revival of Sweet Charity certainly has that: The Foot.

The appendage that launched a thousand articles has finally made its debut at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where the revival of the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields-Neil Simon musical has finally opened after a tryout that can be charitably described as torturous. After all the breaking and healing, the departure of two co-stars, closings and re-openings, and the process of rehabilitation, The Foot's holding up just fine. Just try to find in any of the show's myriad dance numbers even one moment when it looks as if The Foot fell afoul of that now legendary lamppost during the pre-Broadway run in Chicago. The Foot moves well and looks as healthy as can be.

The production it's in, though, is another matter.

Sweet Charity, despite a bevy of classic Coleman-Leigh tunes (including the now-standard working girl's come-on, "Big Spender"), has never been a classic show. It's known primarily for being a star show to end all star shows, not just for its peerless original leading lady Gwen Verdon - who starred as Charity Hope Valentine, the dance hall hostess with a hopeful heart of gold - but also her husband, Bob Fosse, whose direction and choreography of the original 1966 production made equally earth-shattering (and convention-shattering) contributions.

Here, the direction is by Walter Bobbie, who's best known for his Tony-winning direction of the smash Chicago revival, and the choreography is by Wayne Cilento, who's best known for appearing in the original production of A Chorus Line. Both men are, perhaps, at the top of their game here: Bobbie provides fluid and generally attractive staging; Cilento's dances, unlike those he devised for Aida and Wicked, derive some energy from their surroundings and even provide a bit of their own.

Neither man, however, is a Fosse-level theatrical alchemist, so no seamless union of direction and dance is achieved. Cilento's "Big Spender," daring to ditch Fosse's bar-centered version, is unfocused and unexciting. And the bumps, grinds, and angular definition of Cilento's "Rich Man's Frug" don't define the witty, ritzy élan of a swanky nightclub's upper-crust patrons as much as they recall Fosse's much nimbler ability to do so. That "Rich Man's Frug" was preserved in the 1969 film, the 1986 Broadway revival, and the 1999 stage retrospective Fosse also doesn't help Cilento's work stand freshly apart.

But if Fosse's work is easily sampled, great star performances are more difficult to conjure. Despite determination that redefines the meaning of the word for today's absence-prone pseudo-divas, this production's Charity, Christina Applegate (owner of The Foot), isn't completely up to the task. Nor is she, it must be noted, entirely beneath the challenge - compared to other, bigger names who've landed on Broadway this season (Peter Krause and Denzel Washington come instantly to mind), she acquits herself more than admirably.

Her acting is rock-solid, just right for a girl so desperate to be loved, she'll fall into a relationship at the drop of a hat (or a dime at the Fandango Ballroom dance hall). Her singing is, if not Broadway big, firm and accurate. Her dancing, while not at the level of stage Charitys Verdon or Debbie Allen or film Charity Shirley MacLaine, is well-suited by Cilento's choreography. More importantly, Applegate also makes real sense of a roundabout dramatic arc that takes Charity from one terrible match-up with a mooching money-thief to an aborted one-night stand with Italian film star Vittorio Vidal (Paul Schoeffler) and eventually a potential long-term relationship with the perpetually nervous and romantically inexperienced Oscar Lindquist (Denis O'Hare).

But if Applegate has no problems carrying the show's material, she still has trouble carrying the show. What Sweet Charity needs above all is a luminescent talent who can glue the great Coleman-Fields songs and Simon's uneven, fragmented episodes of a book framework into a full show. Applegate never quite succeeds: Her hat-and-cane strutting of the jubilant "If My Friends Could See Me Now" in Vittorio's lavish hotel room stops the show in the most workmanlike way imaginable; her dance hall cohorts (played by Janine LaManna and Kyra Da Costa) kick up their heels in "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" with the effusive spirit of embracing the impossible dream more infectiously than she does; and she disappears into the wings during Charity's "I'm finally in love" second-act showpiece, "I'm a Brass Band," letting the dancing corps steal the spotlight no true star would ever relinquish......... But the best Charitys must reconcile all of the role's difficult and often contradictory requirements, and Applegate's not there yet. If she continues her training, though, she'll make a killer Charity in another decade or so."






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

Updated On: 5/4/05 at 06:33 PM

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:34pm

I hope Ken Mandelbaum does the review for Broadway.com/

[ljay889]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:37pm

This isn't right without Margo's own review thread.

The TB review was rather kind to Christina - noted the shows weakness - and overall was a quite fair review.

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:40pm

Nice review from TB..
Not bad...

Updated On: 5/4/05 at 06:40 PM

[robbiej]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:44pm

To be honest, I think this bodes well for Applegate. Mr. Murray is...how shall I say? Very particular. When he doesn't like something (which is a lot of the time), he can be beyond brutal. I'm actually shocked at his kind words.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:44pm

It was a very fair review.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:48pm

Mandelbaum (Broadway.com) is Mixed to Negative:

After all of the adversity this production has weathered, it would be nice to report that it has arrived in triumph. But the new Charity is a lackluster revival of a musical that was vastly better the first and second time around.

Although it boasted songs like "Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now," Sweet Charity's superbly jazzy score was underappreciated when the show was new. But two elements of that original production were fully acknowledged, and they made the show a hit: Fosse's choreography and the performance of
star Gwen Verdon.
_______________________________________________________________

Cilento's choreography may in spots quote Fosse's original, but it is otherwise new, and it lacks style and wit. As a result, the big numbers fail to ignite. "The Rich Man's Frug" is the most Fosse-esque routine, but it lacks the humor and comment with which Fosse was able to imbue it. And sequences like "The Rhythm of Life" and "I'm a Brass Band" similarly disappoint.

It's not entirely Cilento's fault: I don't envy any choreographer who has to come up with a new routine for "Big Spender." But numbers like "The Rich Man's Frug" and "The Rhythm of Life" are only lightly integrated into the plot and only feel justified if they're terrific, as they used to be. A better solution for the current production might have been to take the route of the recent Broadway Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof revivals, recreating the essential aspects of the original choreography, with additional musical staging by a new choreographer.

The staging by Walter Bobbie, who directed the blockbuster revival of a certain other Verdon-Fosse musical, is likewise lacking in a style that might unify Charity's elements. That may allow for questions to be raised about the quality of the book, a feathery if funny concoction with a somewhat problematic heroine. Even in '86, the character of Charity, the dance-hall hostess with a heart of gold who has rotten luck with men, came across as something of a doormat. In the new production, Charity winds up by finally standing up for herself. But the new ending feels abrupt and unmotivated, and Applegate and O'Hare have a hard time selling it.

Of course, Charity is nothing if not a vehicle, and a great deal depends on the star performance. Applegate's pluck and determination to make it to the stage are formidable, and the audience is rooting for her from the moment the curtain rises. Her Charity is in the Shirley MacLaine mode, which means it's more naturalistic than the stylized stage Charitys of the '60s. An adept actress, Applegate has abundant sweetness and vulnerability, and she's warmly appealing.

But Applegate's singing is unimpressive, particularly in "Where Am I Going?" Her dancing is game but limited, and the choreography she's been given is less challenging than that of past Charitys. And she's rather too youthful and fresh to be wholly believable as a character who, like Chicago's Roxie Hart, should look a little used.

Above all, Applegate lacks the effortlessness of top-notch musical-theatre performers. She knocks herself out to please, but comes off as blandly proficient and mechanical. Likable and a hard worker, Applegate is neither distinctive, versatile, nor fascinating enough to carry a Broadway revival of Charity.

_____________________________________________________________

Charity used to be a show about style, and the lack of it here is dispiriting. Without inventive staging and an electric star, it's hard to fall in love with Charity.



http://www.broadway.com/Gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=511645

Updated On: 5/4/05 at 06:48 PM

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:53pm

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/theater/reviews/05char.html?

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 5/4/05 at 6:53pm

not so good, but not so bad Updated On: 5/4/05 at 06:53 PM