THE STORY OF MY LIFE Reviews — Page 2

lolol i doubt it

---

Not nice, guys.

Boy, at this point, Will Chase's career has taken more lumps than an ice cream scooper.

---

Talkin' Broadway is MIXED-TO-NEGATIVE:

"Anyone can put their baldest emotions on a stage and mildly move or gently touch a viewer; good luck coming away from Bartram and Hill’s outing without thinking about the decades-long friendships that have irrevocably altered your life - that's just the way proximity works. But the greatest shows in the musical theatre canon, the ones that engage the inner circles of your spirit, are those that translate the petty concerns everyone experiences in searing words and music that make them dramatic and universal inevitabilities. Deeply felt as Bartram and Hill’s story may be, it never makes the leap from their existence to ours. Its isolation makes it superficial, and its superficialiaty makes it a really tough slog.

Staying involved - to say nothing of staying awake - would be all but impossible if not for Chase. Unstoppably energetic, whether depicting Thomas’s bullet train ride to adulthood or his writer’s block-inspired lethargy as an adult, he’s absolutely right in every way as the man who’s forever lost within himself, and who’s built everything he has on lies that derive from the truth. Chase’s rock-modern voice may have been put to better use as the lead in High Fidelity (the last role Chase originated on Broadway, over two years ago), but he’s singlehandedly responsible for keeping this show from being as old-fashioned as Bartram and Hill apparently want it to be.

Gets is playing, well, what Gets usually plays: nerdy, neurotic, and impish, an eternal outsider with his nose pressed against the window. It’s mostly right for Alvin, who operates on a wavelength Thomas couldn’t find more foreign. But it’s far too familiar and easy a choice; Gets doesn’t say anything in any way you haven’t heard from countless times in the past.

That makes him not that much different from The Story of My Life itself. Like Alvin, the show is genuine: the truest and sincerest new musical Broadway has seen in the last couple of seasons, and a welcome antidote to the synthetic excesses of the likes of Billy Elliot, 13, and [title of show]. But it prides itself on regurgitating ideas and feelings others have described more originally, more specifically, and more richly elsewhere. When Thomas and Alvin describe their disintegrating relationship with lines like “The symbolism was glaringly obvious” and “The usual platitudes hung in the air,” it’s heartbreaking how intimately you understand exactly what they mean."

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

---

I PERSONALLY have to agree with the negative reviews and agree with much of what they have said: including that the PERFORMANCES are not to blame. I LIKED both Chase and Gets, but couldn't get invested in the story at all. And DITTO to the comments to the likeness of SITPWG....there were moments bordering on THEFT.

---

Word of Mouth is 2/3 very positive. The two women here loved it, but the man thought it was only mildly interesting.

http://www.broadway.com/Broadway-com-VIDEO-ON-DEMAND-Word-Of-Mouth-Reviews/broadway_information_html/5015935

---

Will Chase better line up a stint as Fiyero, because this gravy train just spilled over.

---

j* ~ Is that how long you're betting it lasts or how long until you see it?

---

Negative summary from Brantley:

"Now is exactly the time for a small and simple musical to conquer Broadway. Think of the relief that recession-scorched theater producers would feel if they learned that the new recipe for success was nothing more than the following: a short, modest human-interest story, some sentimental songs, a gifted cast of two and an almost naked set. I am here to report that a musical opened at the Booth Theater that possesses all these elements. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the commercially savvy will be rushing to copy “The Story of My Life,” a two-character portrait of a friendship by Neil Bartram (songs) and Brian Hill (book), starring the appealing team of Will Chase and Malcolm Gets. You see, the creators of this production have taken their reducing program a little too far. In addition to jettisoning the usual excesses of tourist-trapping extravaganzas, they have tossed away such niceties as originality, credibility, tension and excitement." — Ben Brantley

I know some of my friends like this show (nothing personal) but unfortunately Brantley's review will kill this show! IMO.

J*

Updated On: 2/19/09 at 10:32 PM

Are the gay overtones really that apparent? Can't two dudes be best friends and one have a semi-strange fixation on the other without them being gay?

And I thought we'd made progress in this country. No wonder Prop 8 was passed. Stop the H8!

---

The producer is Chase Mishkin, who kept Urban Cowboy alive for a couple of months, so we'll see what she'll do here.

By the way, anyone else find it hysterical that the word p-u-s-s-y-foot got censored earlier in the thread?

---

I think it's just barely a VERY NEGATIVE: Brantley liked Chase and Gets, saying that "it is to their infinite credit that even when they’re extolling the precious glories of snow angels and a butterfly’s wings, you don’t feel like punching them in the face."

But in any case, it is a "close in one night"- kind of review.

---

Updated On: 2/19/09 at 10:49 PM