Ring of Fire Reviews- Page 2

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:02pm

kidmanboy: Were you old enough to see the original production of AIN'T MISBEHAVIN'? I'm not, but I'm curious to see if you're judging a regional/community/HS production of this show against RING OF FIRE, instead of Maltby's original production.

My criticism didn't go far enough? What? The mission that Maltby has stated over and over and over again is no where to be found in this show. He claims there is a story, and that it's about the american experience. Well, it's about neither. I mean, it's just so bad that you can't even criticize the direction - just pity him.

[GYPSY1527]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:05pm

Thats so weird Wickedrocks becuase I left Rabbit Hole after the discussion with Cynthia Nixon and people were waiting by the Barrymore stage door not looking disappointed at all. I guess we saw two different crowds.

[kidmanboy]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:14pm

a) when I saw it, the audience repsonse was generally positive.
b) I saw a national tour of ain't misbehavin' in the early mid to late 90s.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:42pm

I saw the original AIN'T MISBEHAVIN (and own a copy of the video of OBC) and it's certainly one of the liveliest, well-assembled, flawlessly staged and performed revues I've ever seen. To be sure, it deserved the Tony for Best Musical that it won. I cannot speak about any subsequent tours, but the original was amazing.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:52pm

That was my point.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:36pm

Talkin' Broadway is up.

Just proof that Murray is as delisional as always. Not a good review, but it's not really a bad one either.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:38pm

Talkin Broadway is actually sorta Mixed:

"It takes a genius to create art from the everyday, but a skilled craftsman can at least make the pedestrian above average. And as far as theatre craftsmen go, you can do much worse than Richard Maltby, Jr., the primary saving grace behind the Broadway production of Ring of Fire that just opened at the Barrymore.

Bucking the trend of recent, troubling seasons, creator and director Maltby has not simply shoved songs written or made famous by Johnny Cash (1932-2003) into an awful book that only highlights their nonexistent theatricality. Instead, he's fashioned them into a rough, bookless tour through the spirit of Cash's life, with all the attendant pleasure and pain. And, amazingly, there's a time or two when Ring of Fire achieves its goal of being a good, old-fashioned Broadway hoedown. (And it certainly does more for red state relations than did Urban Cowboy in 2003 or last season's revival of Steel Magnolias.)

But if this isn't Mamma Mia!, it also isn't Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller song-catalog show Maltby led to terrific success in 1978. That show also had no book to speak of. But Maltby nonetheless established a theatrical atmosphere, so that it always seemed a story was being told; cast members played consistent characters from start to finish, thus allowing for interplay and escalating tension generally alien to the traditional revue.
______________________________________________________________

But as there's no real continuity, neither a story nor characters can ever fully form. So despite Maltby's best efforts, despite the impressive work of projection designer Michael Clark and lighting designer Ken Billington to give the show a varied visual look with an LED-scenery-billboard backdrop, and despite Lisa Shriver's attempts to unify the show's movement with a country choreographic language, everything still ultimately exists in a vacuum.

___________________________________________________________

The show never improves on that, but throughout it's far better than it has to be, especially given Cash's recent popularity resurgence (thanks to the success of the recent film about his life, Walk the Line), and the usual jukebox musical ethic of doing the least possible work for the maximum possible profit. Ring of Fire won't go down in theatre history as a titanic disaster (like Good Vibrations), or as a legitimately inspired hit (like Jersey Boys). But it knows what it is and never pretends to be anything else. Of that, if nothing else, Cash would have been rightfully proud. "



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

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:39pm

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

"It takes a genius to create art from the everyday, but a skilled craftsman can at least make the pedestrian above average. And as far as theatre craftsmen go, you can do much worse than Richard Maltby, Jr., the primary saving grace behind the Broadway production of Ring of Fire that just opened at the Barrymore."

He's got to be on drugs.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:44pm

"But it knows what it is and never pretends to be anything else. Of that, if nothing else, Cash would have been rightfully proud. "

That's exactly what I thought.

And I'm not on drugs.
Updated On: 3/12/06 at 06:44 PM

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:45pm

How lucky you are.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:47pm

Very much so.

It's not the greatest show, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the other crap I've seen.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:49pm

And that's fair, and that's your opinion.

I'm very hard pressed to think of anything in the past that I have hated as much of this. I don't think I can.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 6:55pm

The flops I've seen in recent memory:

In My Life
Good Vibrations
Dracula
Brooklyn
Lennon
Ring of Fire.

I absolutely detested In My Life and Brooklyn. Dracula was decent. Good Vibes I saw for free, but it was high-school. Lennon was too pretentious.

Ring of Fire is by far the top flop on my list.

I didn't have the pleasure of seeing The Redhead in the Mercedes.
Updated On: 3/12/06 at 06:55 PM

Posted: 3/12/06 at 7:21pm

In the New York Times online readers' reviews (36 so far), they all (except one) gave this show 4 or 5 stars! Who are these people? The raves are incredible-----I'm not sure if they're seeing the same show I did. I found it to be so boring----(altho' my husband enjoyed the music). At the intermission, he told me that there were 16 songs in the second act and I actually counted each song as it was completed in the second act---counting down to the end!!! If we weren't with another couple and had dinner plans afterward, I would've probably left at intermission. I was disappointed because I really would've liked to enjoy it---I liked Johnny Cash and his music. I found myself wishing it were Johnny Cash singing instead of the cast (who are very talented--it just didn't work as a musical for me)

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 7:58pm

Broadway.com is up.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=526065


Not good, but not as terrible as it deserves.

[Plum]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 8:18pm

Justafan, were those "reviews" posted by Shirley McShillson, by any chance?

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 8:27pm

Yes, it definitely is.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 8:59pm

What's taking so long!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 9:00pm

Sunday night reviews always take forever to come out.

Posted: 3/12/06 at 9:16pm

Plum, they were readers' reviews-----only "board" names were given. Go to www.nytimes.com/pages/theater and click on Ring of Fire under "opening soon". Then click "readers' review".

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 9:33pm

The AP is Mixed-to-Negative:

"The twang is appealing but the theatrics are bland in "Ring of Fire," which has brought the gospel according to Johnny Cash to Broadway.

We're talking about the music associated with this country legend, shoehorned into an odd little quasi-revue that doesn't quite know how to tell the singer's remarkable tale. What's on stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre is not a biography like the movie "Walk the Line," but rather a vague, impressionistic salute to the Man in Black told through more than three dozen of the songs he performed during his long career.

The result is an almost exhausting parade of numbers, delivered by a talented if generic cast and a superb collection of onstage musicians who make the most of every melody. Just looking at the hardworking fiddler, Laurie Canaan, and listening to her play will set your toes tapping.

Yet despite the exuberance of individual songs and performers, there is little momentum to this mild show, created and directed by Richard Maltby Jr. and based on ideas by William Meade. The evening meanders, which is deadly for a journey musical -- with the requisite train whistle threading through much of the show's musical soundtrack to remind us we should be moving on."

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-theater-ring-of-fire,0,7630249.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 10:00pm

NY Times is Mixed-to-Negative:

The man in black turns sunshine yellow in "Ring of Fire," the show that strings songs associated with Johnny Cash into an artificially sweetened candy necklace. Though Mr. Cash, who died in 2003, is not himself a character in this latest entry in the jukebox musical sweepstakes of Broadway, his spirit is invoked as a friendly ghost with dimples and a twinkling disposition. In other words, "Ring of Fire," which opened last night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, has little to do with the dark, troubled and excitingly dangerous presence that most people remember as Johnny Cash.

If the current bio-flick "Walk the Line" portrays the craggy country singer as a man wrestling with demons, "Ring of Fire" wrestles with a really bad case of the cutes. Personally, I would always pick demons over the cutes for solid entertainment value, but you may feel different. If so, then let "Ring of Fire" transport you to a bygone era — not the vintage years of the Grand Ole Opry or bouncy old Broadway, but the age of "The Lawrence Welk Show" and "Sing Along With Mitch."

Like such perky television revues, which flourished in the 1950's and 60's, "Ring of Fire" assembles a team of clean-cut, anonymously personable singers who dance, mime and, above all, smile their way through an assortment of musical numbers. And like the vocalists employed by Welk and Mitch Miller, these performers have a way of making every song, however different in essence, sound pretty much the same. Even ballads of murder and apocalypse here shade into the aural pastels associated with elevator music."


http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/theater/reviews/13ring.html

Updated On: 3/12/06 at 10:00 PM

[bythesword84]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 11:18pm

I just got home from the opening...they had to lengthen the intermission because the projection scenery on one of the screens kept flicking during Act I so they came out and said intermission would be longer so they could fix the technical difficulties...but it still flicked during Act II.

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 11:42pm

It sounds like the flickering projections are the least of their problems.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 11:43pm

These reviews are far nicer than they should be.