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THE FIRST WIVES CLUB Reviews?

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#1

THE FIRST WIVES CLUB Reviews?

Posted: 8/1/09 at 1:43am

Was THE FIRST WIVES CLUB in San Diego not open to the press?

I haven't been able to find any reviews anywhere.

It may be because of the West Coast time difference, but usually a few would at least be up by now.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
#2

re: THE FIRST WIVES CLUB Reviews?

Posted: 8/1/09 at 2:37am

YOU AND ME BOTH!

I've listened to SISTER ACT 3 times in the car and on the ipod and then back in my home stereo in a continous loop. I have been checking for reviews the whole time. Where ARE they?!

A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely,
P

P.S. 3 24 and 22 year old straight males with no particular affection for musical theatre have given SISTER ACT a firm "its really f*ckin' good, and I don't even feel f*ggy saying that!" this evening in my company. So there we are, sisters.
#3

re: THE FIRST WIVES CLUB Reviews?

Posted: 8/1/09 at 3:05am

In most cities it takes a day or two (or four!) for reviews to come out. They aren't immediately at midnight like NY.
#6

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/2/09 at 5:44pm

Are there quotas for number of messengers killed per day?

Theatermania's review by Rob Stevens appears to be mixed, with surprisingly (or shockingly probably) good things to say about Zambello's direction.
Rob Stevens review on Theatermania
#7

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/2/09 at 6:35pm

The LA Times is similar, recognizing that the show is a crowd pleaser but needs a lot of work:

"One definition of 'critic-proof': A dramatic work you're meant to enjoy with your cognitive lamp on dim.

'The First Wives Club,' the new Broadway-bound musical based on the 1996 Diane Keaton-Bette Midler-Goldie Hawn middle-aged chick flick and Olivia Goldsmith's stampeding 1992 fictional bestseller, fits this definition to a T. The show, which is receiving its world premiere at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, is obviously counting on a majority of its audience to arrive in just the right giddy mood of sisterhood solidarity.

In other words, ladies of the producers' dreams, gather your girlfriends for a few fruity cocktails beforehand and enter the theater already squealing with laughter. (White ensembles, like the ones donned by the film's radiant triumvirate, are a plus, though not required)..."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/theater-review-the-first-wives-club-at-the-old-globe-theatre.html
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.

Updated On: 8/2/09 at 06:35 PM

#8

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/2/09 at 7:41pm

While this isn't an out and out pan, it's certainly one of the most negative theatre reviews I've read in the LA Times. Their critics are usually pretty easy to impress, or at the very least they're soft on out-of-town tryouts.

Still nothing from Variety...
#9

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/2/09 at 7:49pm

Well, I don't recall, but what was the LA Times assessment on 9 TO 5? I remember their A CATERED AFFAIR review pretty much matched what the NY critics said.
Variety is my go-to source for out of town reviews, where are they?
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
#10

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/2/09 at 8:14pm

I reluctantly disagree with you ABB2357. I think McNulty is tough to please. I write this not as a booster of First Wives, which sounds terrible to me, but as an observer of the LA scene.

Updated On: 8/2/09 at 08:14 PM

#11

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 12:48am

Now, if you can overlook the often generic R&B elevator music of Motown writing legends Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, the cut-and-pasted and cursorily reimagined book by Rupert Holmes, and the fact that the three stars (Barbara Walsh, Karen Ziemba and Sheryl Lee Ralph) seem like they barely know each other, you might very well have a night to remember -- though you?ll need plenty of aspirin and water the next day.

That sounds like a money quote. LOL.
#12

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 12:59am

They still have a good pull-quote from that review.

"Inherently intoxicating" -Charles McNulty, The LA Times
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
#13

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:56am

And another money quote "A Night to Remember!"
"God, I hope it's not a REAL emergency...I only brought one bottle of Vodka!" That's my Diva Dog, Sake in the picture.
#14

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 1:06pm

A very positive review from The San Diego Union Tribune:

"It's the same old song: Passion fades, restlessness sets in, that old spark is mostly a memory. (You start to wonder, was it ever really there to begin with?) And then something happens to breathe life and hope into what seemed in danger of winding up on the rocks. Little thing called Act 2.

'The First Wives Club' ? the Old Globe's new, movie-based and maritally minded musical ? kicks off with more fits and starts than a dithering bridezilla in a dress shop.

But that first half, when we meet the wives and their woes, is just a setup for the second, when they actually go into action. That's when ?First Wives? and its new songs by the incomparable Motown team Holland/Dozier/Holland step up with a pizazz that befits a (potentially) Broadway-bound show.

Once the musical finds that rhythm, it's funny, it's kinetic and (for whatever this might be worth) way better than the movie that inspired it..."

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/03/1c3globe013539-first-wives-2nd-act-dazzler/?features&zIndex=143080
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
#15

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 5:36pm

Variety didn't like it. No suprise.

'The female empowerment tuner, lately represented by "Mamma Mia!," "9 to 5" and "Vanities," gains no fresh luster with "The First Wives Club," which slavishly follows the hit 1996 pic in every respect except the most important one: the emotional grounding to make us care about its titular trio. Constructed around vague hear-me-roar sentiments hammered out in generic Motown terms, this Old Globe tryout tuner is eyeing Gotham, but one is skeptical -- to paraphrase Groucho -- whether audiences will opt to join any club with these ladies as members.'

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940766.html?categoryid=33&cs=1



Updated On: 8/3/09 at 05:36 PM

#17

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:08pm

Wow, the Variety review makes the show sound incredibly awful. I think I'll be skipping this one unless some major overhauling (the kind that the once-not-so-great SISTER ACT went through) goes on.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
#18

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:24pm

I think this is the best quote they can get from variety:

"To report inaccuracies in review credits, please click here."
--variety.com
#19

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:31pm

If they wonder what's next for the show, Variety has given them great quotes as a hint:

Constructed around vague hear-me-roar sentiments hammered out in generic Motown terms

One-dimensional victims

Generic anthems

No chemistry...no logic...no interest

They just hug like crazy as the tuner lurches from one outlandish sequence to another

Tedious retro gay stereotypes

Francesca Zambello seems to have served more as a traffic cop than a shaper of emotional highs and lows

Lisa Stevens' choreography is perfunctory at best.

Almost every word and lyric is aggressively self-congratulatory


RIP
Listen, I don't take my clothes off for anyone, even if it is "artistic". - JANICE
#20

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:44pm

Poor sistas going to be doing it for themselves on the unemployment line very soon.
#21

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:47pm

They can still hug like crazy.
Listen, I don't take my clothes off for anyone, even if it is "artistic". - JANICE
#23

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:48pm

Francesca Zambello just can't make a moive into a musical.
#24

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 6:56pm

"I think this is the best quote they can get from variety:

"To report inaccuracies in review credits, please click here."
--variety.com "

AwesomeDanny, I think this quote just got you officially into the... as ljay would call it (FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?) once upon a time... INSIDER'S CLUB of BWW.

Love it, baby.

A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely,
I'll Show You Yours,
If You Show Me Mine,
P - a true Insider
#25

FiRST WIVES CLUB REVIEWs?

Posted: 8/3/09 at 7:04pm

I think Ana Gasteyer and Carolee Carmello were smart to do other projects instead like "The Royal Family" (which Ana will star in) and "The Addams Family" (Carolee is doing it. I think it's creative team and cast seem better).

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