I give the show a year, maybe a little more, on Broadway. I'm expecting mixed reviews, pretty much along the lines of the comments posted here: "It has flaws but a big heart and lots of dazzle, It's better than I thought it would be, etc.". But the running costs have to be very high, they've been discounting heavily throughout previews, and there's not a huge advance.
I'm in the minority, I guess, in my opinion of the show, which I found troubling in key respects. As others have mentioned, ROCKY feels like a small story engulfed by a huge machine. The modest scale, simplicity and irresistible corniness and heart of the movie made it a huge hit. The movie WAS Rocky - a scrappy underdog, produced on a shoestring, written by and starring a charismatic doofus who seemed to come out of nowhere. People loved it. Here, that basic but uplifting story about two inarticulate losers finding each other and triumphing against the odds is made to conform to the bombastic, presentational style of contemporary Broadway, and technical wizardry beats the crap out of sensitive, well-crafted storytelling and character development.
I agree with those who've said the score is weak (the two interpolated compositions, EYE OF THE TIGER and Bill Conti's original ROCKY Theme, get by far the biggest reaction). It's true, Adrian's second act number, I'M DONE, gets a big hand, but was anyone else confused by that scene and Adrian's relationship to Paulie? From the Thanksgiving scene I got that Paulie's a handful, with a volatile temper and a drinking problem, but he does seem to have Adrian's best interests at heart when he pushes her to get out of the house and go on a date with Rocky. Later, when Paulie busts in on Rocky and Adrian, and he tries to drag her off with him, it didn't make sense to me. He's drunk, okay, but why is he trying to break them up? Where's the close family he wants to take her back to? And then when Adrian launches into her song, I wondered why she was attacking him so vehemently. The dynamic between them that she was singing about wasn't something I'd picked up on - that he was cruel to her or holding her back. The number was performed well; it just felt random and misplaced to me.
But if the scale of ROCKY THE MUSICAL is bloated, and the dramaturgy shaky (I could cite other characters and sequences), for me the biggest bummer was the show's extended money shot - the fight. It's true there's some nifty stagecraft going on here that to my knowledge has never been tried before, but, again, I feel it happens at the expense of the story. The action screeches to a halt while the first rows of the audience are reseated, the orchestra vamps, and the stagehands do their thing. It's a flashy, glorified (but still tedious) stage wait that shifts our focus from the story and the characters to the mechanics of creating this big event. There is something exciting and uniquely theatrical about "letting the wires show", so to speak, and asking the audience to meet you halfway to create onstage magic. But this felt like "Woo hop, sit back, relax, and check out what we can do!". It felt desperate, frankly, but I understand the motivation for going high tech. If the final boxing match had not been staged in this bell-ringing, whistle-tooting, uniquely three-dimensional way I think the show would have limped to a very tired conclusion indeed. The show needs buzz and a socko finish, and the last 15 minutes delivers. But when I left the theatre and walked by the generator they've installed on 7th Ave (the show was apparently causing outages) I felt depressed that so much time and money was being spent to provide juice to keep the lights on and the machinery moving when proportionally less care seems to have been given to the book, score, story and characters.
PS. Nothing but love for the actors who are all gifted and in there swinging.
On a side note, I feel like there's almost an Icarus-like cautionary tale to be found in the attachment of talented theatre artists to these massive, tech-heavy shows. Alex Timbers, who's done so much with so little on other projects. Julie Taymor on SPIDERMAN. Robert LePage's RING CYCLE at the Met. It's debatable how much huge budgets and fancy toys have really inspired their best work. I've written more than I meant to and keep weaving between lanes, sorry, that's enough.
Updated On: 3/13/14 at 12:31 PM
), and while it would have been awkward to still break into song in the middle of a boxing match, it still felt strange how non-"musical" the entire end sequence became, and how rigidly it tried to convey simply a "live", in-person version of the movie version. Having said all of this, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, so perhaps it will still have a decent run with those hoping to see the movie come to life, with a few new songs thrown on… 
