TDC: Forecasting the New York City Critics

[Hawker]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 12:26pm

Odds Line to positively review "The Drowsy Chaperone"

Clive Barnes, New York Post: 3/5--Show really must bomb for this guy to hate it


Howard Kissel, New York Daily News: 2/1--Sometimes stuffy but fairly evenhanded with reviews

John Lahr, New Yorker: 5/2 Went wild in review for "Spamalot" review, "March Madness", expounding virtues of pure silliness ofr its own sake.

Linda Weiner, Newsday: 3/1 Tough call. The woman is kind of schizophrenic. Just when you think she'd rave abut something she torches it, and throws bouquets at shows that you'd swear she would loath.

Ben Brantley, New York Times: 12/1: Wasn't impressed with "Thoroughly Modern Millie"; labelled "Spamalot" as "forgettable". Inevitable comparisons to true gems of genre almost guarantess this one is torpedoed.
Updated On: 4/9/06 at 12:26 PM

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 12:43pm

I bet Barnes and Kissel will like it, Brantley and Isherwood won't, and most of the others will be mixed.

I bet Roma Torre of NY1 loves it and overall I bet the show will do better with the television reviewers than the newspapers.

All heresay. I haven't seen the show, but you are right that you can often gauge a review by knowing the writer's tastes.

[Hawker]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 12:59pm

Roma Torre seemed pretty infatuated with "Spamalot". I enjoyed "Spamalot" very much but at its best it didn't come close in comedic brilliance to, let's asy, Monty Python's "Philosopher's Football Match". That's why I was so surprised to read Lahr's anthem to it. If you missed it, here it is. It's long:

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/theatre/articles/050328crth_theatre

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 1:01pm

That is interesting - though I'm not sure how similar TDC is to Spamalot...

[Katurian2]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 1:01pm

hmm- I was thinking Brantley might give Sutton the boot, but give the show itself a positive look. He just doesn't like her very much!

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 1:06pm

Well, he also didn't like either of her last starring vehicles, so I'd say if he gives her the boot, chances are good he'll kick the show while he's at it!

I mean overall I think the reviews will be mixed, and TDC will probably be the dark horse Tony candidate against front runner JERSEY BOYS. Anything could happen at the Tonys this year.
Updated On: 4/9/06 at 01:06 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 2:45pm

I don't think the comparison should be to Spamalot which I think is a somewhat different animal from Drowsy Chaperone, but to Thoroughly Modern Millie, which would seem to share a similar sensibility. Here are some excerpts from the Millie reviews:


Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "Hard sell doesn't begin to describe Thoroughly Modern Millie, adapted from the 1967 movie musical of the same title. Watching this aggressively eager show is like being stampeded by circus ponies. It";s all whinnying and clomping and brightly decorated bouncing heads, and it never lets up for a second. You'll leave either grinning like an idiot or with a migraine the size of Alaska. The movie might be described as failed camp. The theatrical incarnation-as directed by Michael Mayer, from a book by Richard Morris and Dick Scanlan with new music by Jeanine Tesori-is something different. It's post-camp, and it exults in its cluelessness. For this Millie has shed the barbs of irony for a fuzzy high-spiritedness. Period costumes, settings and music become nothing more than the festive adornments of a costume party."


Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "Millie isn't all that badly fabricated, but it's a collage of bits and pieces coming in from everywhere and ending up nowhere. Everything might have cohered together better had director Michael Mayer provided a stronger hand in the show's shaping and execution. The original movie was expressly designed as a vehicle for a huge star: the irrepressibly sweet Andrews, the woman who gave sweetness back its good name. Newcomer Sutton Foster's own star turn as Millie is perfectly charming, but as a star she doesn't twinkle, glitter or light up Broadway like a Christmas tree defying a July noon. But she has a good voice and is cutely agreeable. Unfortunately, none of the cast - with the exception of Marc Kudisch, as Millie's square boss at whom her marital ambitions are misdirected - seem capable of the heavy lifting any Broadway musical requires."


Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "Being of a certain age, I can remember when people went to Broadway musicals to be entertained. This notion has long been out of fashion, but it started to make a comeback last year with that show about the swishy director playing Hitler. Thoroughly Modern Millie, while not on that level, continues the trend. It has a brightness, wit and high spirits that compensate for the artificiality inherent in the 1967 movie upon which it is based. The Broadway version has no stars, just loads of talented performers-especially newcomer Sutton Foster, who has the pert look, the silver voice and the dazzling legwork to make an extraordinarily winning Millie. Michael Mayer's direction reins in the camp. Rob Ashford's choreography is lively and energizing. If you don't have a silly streak, you";d better steer clear. But if you're tough enough to savor fluff, Millie is absolutely delightful."


Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "Thoroughly Modern Millie is as bubbly as a glass of champagne-domestic, not imported-a bright, breezy American musical with nothing more on its mind than an evening of entertainment. Its story is there to make way for the music, a mostly new score that celebrates the period in a joyous and affectionate manner. The work by composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Dick Scanlan floats airily through the musical. Despite an overabundance of plot, particularly as the musical heads toward its happy ending, director Michael Mayer keeps things moving at a reasonable pace. `Gimme, gimme that thing called love' is Millie";s defiant plea. By the final curtain, she and the audience have found just that."


Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "After disappointing stage adaptations of the films The Graduate and The Sweet Smell of Success, the new Broadway musical Thoroughly Modern Millie is as welcome as a gooey ice cream sundae after a week-long fast. That";s no arbitrary comparison. Millie, which opened Thursday at the Marquis Theatre, is unabashedly self-indulgent and quaint, and some of its excesses and platitudes might have induced a queasy feeling in a less inspired production. Luckily, the show-featuring a book by Richard Morris, who wrote the screenplay for the 1967 film, and Dick Scanlan-offers more than enough irrepressible humor and sheer vivacity to compensate for these potential liabilities."


Linda Winer of Newsday: "Thoroughly Modern Millie is a thoroughly old-fashioned new musical comedy inspired by a thoroughly bizarre 1967 flapper-white-slavery-caper movie that helped turn Hollywood against musicals. The show, which opened last night at the cavernous Marquis Theatre, is a frisky, fresh-faced throwback that dares to enjoy the hokey conventions while indulging a lovely little mad streak all its own. Naturally, we would rather have seen the bright young creative team spend its time inventing a smart new musical instead of lavishing such obvious affection on someone else's flawed old fluffball. But there is real news. Long after our theaters have been emptied and refilled with another bushel of eager movie adaptations, Millie will be remembered as the one that brought Broadway's favorite star-is-born cliches to life again."

Updated On: 4/9/06 at 02:45 PM

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:05pm

What'd Brantley say about Sutton in Little Women?

[Hawker]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:06pm

I used Lahr's review referentially because he doesn't really critique the piece conventionally. There is no deep analysis of the book, score, or lyrics--just passing comments to the things that affected him on a purely visceral level.

Unless I completely missed his point, Lahr summed up "Spamalot" pretty succinctly by suggesting,

“Spamalot” is at its most sublime when it’s most infantile.

("I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal-food-trough wipers! . . . I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”)

This is hardly the stuff of "Guys and Dolls" or the far more clever "Me and My Girl" and yet despite being "infantile" and a pastiche collection of "nonlinear" bits, for this guy it worked wonderfully.

As I said, I loved it. This review completely surprised me because it is not the kind of criticism the cerebral New Yorker is known for--at least when Edith Oliver was the theater critic.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:19pm

Brantley on Foster in Little Women (he really has a problem with her relentless perkiness):

"Sutton Foster never merely walks when she can scamper in the new musical "Little Women," which opened last night at the Virginia Theater. Playing Jo the tomboy in this perky, sketchy adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel of a New England girlhood, Ms. Foster creates a dizzyingly hyperkinetic creature who, were she living in the 21st century instead of the 19th, would probably be on heavy doses of Ritalin.

Admirers of Ms. Foster's performance as an ingenuous flapper in "Thoroughly Modern Millie," for which she won a Tony Award, will be pleased to know that her level of pluckiness remains stratospherically high. "I've got a fire in me," announces Jo, an ambitious aspiring writer. Indeed, she glows with a fever that practically scorches. Though Ms. Foster shows winning flashes of a previously undetected gift for fresh comic line readings, theatergoers not enamored of unstinting eagerness may find her energy less infectious than exhausting.
___________________________________________________________

The slim and supple Ms. Foster has a lot to carry on those twitchy shoulders. If "Little Women" does develop the following of young girls and their mothers the producers have targeted, it will be largely Ms. Foster's doing. Her Jo brings to mind another brass-larynxed misfit, Elphaba, the green-skinned witch created by Idina Menzel in the reigning schoolgirl favorite of musicals, "Wicked." Jo even has an eardrum-quaking first-act curtain number like Elphaba's in "Wicked." It is called "Astonishing." But while Ms. Foster invests it with every ounce of her considerable skill and vigor, like so much of the show the song feels too ersatz to raise a single goosebump, much less astonish."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/theater/reviews/24litt.html?ex=1144728000&en=9fdfae3bcaeb66ae&ei=5070

[Hawker]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:49pm

Man, I'm glad this guy wasn't around to review "Lassie" or "Black Beauty" when I was a kid.

[theatremom2]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 6:29pm

I remember being shocked at some of the Mille reviews, particularly BB's. They consituted personal attacks. A critic is there to eval a show, not assess personalities. Sutton, hardly more then a child, handled herself beautifully and with a lot more grace then her detractor. There is something so transferential about BB's venom toward Sutton. Did his mother like his kid sister better?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 7:29pm

Hardly more than a child? Sutton was pushing thirty when MILLIE opened!