SILENCE! Is A Scream

Caught the first performance of the much hyped sold out musical take on Silence Of The Lambs this afternoon. It's an absolute riot from start to finish. If there were tickets available, I would probably go again but something tells me this is one show that will definitely have a life beyond the Fringe.

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It's a loving parody. And it's currently part of the NYC Fringe Festival, so I think at the very most, it would be Off-Off.

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I had a completely different response. While I thought there were a few amusing moments, the humor wasn't fresh or very funny. The jokes sounded like they were written by a bunch of 7th graders who thought they were much more amusing than they actually were.

And there should be special mention for Deidre Goodwin who gets the 11 o'clock number and all but steals the show while delivering it.

I was SO thrilled when the generous nature of a BWW member allowed me to see both this and Fleet Week again last night. Silence! really is one of the funniest shows around and to get the parody/love letter balance to the movie as right as they did takes a lot more intelligence and effort than your average 7th grader is capable of.

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SILENCE! is a show I thought might have trouble living up to its hype. I thought maybe the tracks I'd downloaded a couple of years ago might be the best of it and the rest would all be downhill.

Nope. It was brilliant. Most of the dialogue was straight from the movie and the humor came from the delivery of those lines. Very, very well done...and often very subtle. I agree that the weakest parts were those that "broke the spell" by taking you away from the moment by throwing in post-modern references. I won't go as far as to say that "sequal jokes", for instance, irked me...but I could have done without them.

All in all, I was blown away by SILENCE! and would see it again in a heartbeat. There wasn't a weak link in the cast.

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Def an Off-Broadway show--and I could see it being done on Bway. I just hope it stays fairly low scale--the design was quite fantastic as is for the most part.

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I think you are right. I haven't had a chance to see Altar Boyz, but Gatelli's work felt fresh. And, what an excellent freaking ensemble. I hope that most, if not all, of this cast is intact when it moves.

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Got to see it again tonite--fantastic!

Only, right now I have "If I Could Smell Her ****" stuck in my head!!

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Thank you Pinguin, I'm quite proud of it myself .

I see there's a sniffy review in the Times today. Ugh.

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The demand for the opening performance was such that I waited in line for an hour after I got my tickets from Will Call, just so I'd get a good seat.

Anyway, where's the love for Lisa Howard? Her big solo got a gigantic round of applause, and deservedly so- she was far and away the best singer in the cast. That said, everyone there had good comic chops, and the direction and choreography were really polished, witty, and well-done, so kudos to Christopher Gattelli.

Some of the songs outlasted their jokes, and some of the jokes weren't that great at all, but I liked the show as a whole.

:SPOILER ALERT: Saw the show last night and adored it. I think that the humor of the show came moe from the type of event that it was. The fact that it was spoofing a movie that in retrospect takes itself very seriously is always funny...from the first moments that Clarice crosses the stage in her FBI sweatsuit to not not seeing in the dark basement of Buffalo Bill (who won my award for being the most real but still funny at the same time). Plus the fact that it was a fringe show definetly was made fun of...passing the paper on the side of the window rather than through the drawer and also when the sergeant/father actor had three major parts in a row The Doo Wop Wig and gloves he didn't have time to take off for the Sergeant and then he ran out on stage two seconds later in the lonely dead father outfit.

The atmosphere at the show was great too from the audience. I guess because I went the late night showing all of the broadway performers were able to make it there after their shows ended. Everyone was there! I think I saw Molly Ringwald in line and Martin Short snuck in last minute and sat down. I was flipping out that Juan and Matthew and Abraham of Altar Boyz (how nice that they came to support Christopher's newest show!) were standing in line behind me! I also saw Pigtails girl and Jose Llama (who was whooping up the house of course especially for Lisa) of Spelling Bee, and the childcatcher... I felt that I really experienced something special last night and def suggest it to anyone in whatever happens in the future with this show...(which I was told is in the works...) Thank heavens to the senior group that sold me one of their extra tickets for a steal at 10 bucks 45 minutes before the show!

I can't wait to see this show......I'm going tomorrow to the final performance and am so excited due to the positive feedback.