The Blonde in the Thunderbird Reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 7:02pm

Broadway.com is REALLY Negative:

"But one-woman musicals require more than sparkle and resiliency. They also require more than a little talent, which makes the shoddily constructed The Blonde in the Thunderbird (the title comes from Somers' tiny role in American Graffiti) a grim, at times excruciating evening.
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But I don't want to hear her sing songs she has no business singing. (In her defense, nobody has any business singing half these songs.) I don't want to see her in an outfit that makes Elaine Stritch's tights look demure, and I don't want to see Jumbotron screens on any Broadway stage, let alone one of the smaller ones. Late in The Blonde in the Thunderbird, Somers pensively declares, "I think the key is not our stories but what we do with them." I sure hope not. What she has done is turn her sad, inspiring story into equal parts lounge act and Learning Annex seminar. Her story deserves better, and so do we."


http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=515103

[tagiunagi]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 7:07pm

Ouch. Is this show in limited engagement? Is it kind of like 700 Sundays with a string of tawdry songs attatched?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 7:11pm

It's scheduled to run through September 3rd.

[tagiunagi]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 7:13pm

Do you know what will play at that theater after?

Is Somers' show like a memoir kind of production?

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 7:16pm

From the Broadway.com review: "Only rarely, as during a childlike rendition of "If I Only Had a Brain" punctuated with domestic-abuse sound effects, does The Blonde in the Thunderbird attain the sort of ill-conceived bathos that can lend such pieces exalted status among camp aficionados."

Oh, darn! :-P

[BwayTheatre11]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 8:00pm

tagiunagi, The Odd Couple.

[Marc Shaiman]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 8:58pm

nothing personal against that "other" thread, but when I look for opening night reviews, Margo Channing is who I go to!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 9:06pm

Thank you, dear. Just for you, I'll keep posting reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 9:08pm

Talkin Broadway is Negative:

"The rumors must be immediately put to rest: Suzanne Somers's one-woman show The Blonde in the Thunderbird is not a worthless piece of trash. It may in fact be one of the most beneficial shows to open on Broadway in decades, at least as far as crisis centers are concerned. Expect the next couple of weeks to be filled with news reports about major upswings in attendance, because demand among New York theatergoers will soon vastly exceed supply.

This isn't to say there's not an audience for the show, but whether they'll pry themselves away from Somers's show on the Home Shopping Channel long enough to make an official pilgrimage to the Brooks Atkinson is anyone's guess. And collectors of the most unique of theatrical experiences will be delighted, probably to the point of being reduced to quivering piles of orgiastic glee, by the crampy campfest Somers has to offer.
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But do those accomplishments - which she's already chronicled in two books - entitle her to the full-frontal assault on the audience's intelligence that she's trying to pass off as a show? Perhaps, in some mystical way known only to the biggest of stars. But that doesn't put the result in the same strata of successful solo efforts like Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays or Elaine Stritch At Liberty, nor does it make it theatrical. Or even tasteful. The show more closely resembles something Somers might do during one of her Las Vegas engagements, if the city's sense of propriety and artistic integrity suddenly bled away."
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"Personally, I'd prefer that didn't involve sullying songs by greats like Kern and Fields ("Pick Yourself Up") and Meyer and DeSylva ("If You Knew Susie," and no, I'm not joking), or watching her prance about the stage in a waist-high model Thunderbird. That moment is the climax of a dream sequence in which she ponders the best way to say the three words - "I love you" that constituted her entire role in American Graffiti, the film that first thrust her into the spotlight (and provided this show its title).

In the end, Somers explains, director George Lucas decided it better that she mouth the words and say nothing at all. That advice would have greatly improved The Blonde in the Thunderbird, too."


Ouch.

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

Updated On: 7/17/05 at 09:08 PM

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 9:15pm

That Talkin Bway review is so, i dont know, weird to me...

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 9:37pm

The AP is Pretty Negative:

"They say confession is good for the soul but should it masquerade as Broadway entertainment?

The question comes to mind because of "The Blonde in the Thunderbird," Suzanne Somers' one-woman show, now on view at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. This inspirational infomercial highlights the triumphs and tragedies of a performer best known as Chrissy on the late '70s television sitcom "Three's Company" and currently a star of the Home Shopping Network.

Infomercials explain but rarely entertain, and the same could be said for "Blonde," which has the feel of an extended therapy session crossed with a tacky Las Vegas revue -- minus the other show girls.

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Dressed in an unflattering black jumpsuit that resembles something off the bargain-basement rack at "Star Trek," she plunges into a suds-filled tale of alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, low self-esteem, breast cancer and just plain bad luck.
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It says something, though, about "The Girl in the Thunderbird" that one of the biggest rounds of applause occurs when Somers displays a ThighMaster, perhaps the most famous of her many exercise gadgets. Only in a show such as this could a prop upstage the star.


AP Review

Updated On: 7/17/05 at 09:37 PM

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 10:08pm

This all sounds very sad to me. I feel embarrassed for her.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 11:20pm

Wow, don't those reviews make you sorta wanna see it? Hmmm? C'mon, admit it. You kinda do, doncha?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 11:26pm

Sorta. But, not for $90.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 7/17/05 at 11:35pm

That's what I said about CARRIE and I've been kicking myself black and blue ever since.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 12:56am

mentioning this and 700 Sundays in the same sentence is a Crime.
(and i just commited it)
Crystal and his writers and director were able to blend Humor and feeling beautifully
Ms. Somers in a cheap Boa singing "Take Back yur Mink"
as a metaphor for her Alcoloic Dad tearing up her prom dress is insulting
I feel fer her pain but never once did I feel it watching this mess on a Broadway Stage.

[tagiunagi]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 12:59am

Sheesshh! I was just asking! I don't know anything about the show, so I was merely asking if it was a show made up of a collection of memoirs like 700 Sundays is. SHHEEEEESH! Oy! Don't tar and feather me for my crimes against Billy Crystal!

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:08am

The NY Times review. Like, way harsh, Charles.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/theater/reviews/18blon.html

Updated On: 7/18/05 at 01:08 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:16am

Brantley apparently felt reviewing this was beneath his dignity and gave the assignment to Isherwood:

"Something is desperately needed, in any case, to dress up "The Blonde in the Thunderbird," a drab and embarrassing display of emotional exhibitionism masquerading as entertainment. Attired in a cruelly clingy black tights-and-tunic ensemble, Ms. Somers re-enacts or describes triumphs and traumas from her personal and professional life for a grinding 95 minutes, on a stage adorned only by a pair of video screens, an armchair, a prop phone and a coat rack. (It is curious, and telling, that Ms. Somers's magnified, two-dimensional presence on the video screens continually draws the focus away from the woman herself.)

Devoted fans may savor this no-frills, quasi-intimate audience with a favorite celebrity and professional dispenser of uplifting advice, but others may find their attention wandering to the coat rack. And resting there.
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Some of Ms. Somers's recollections are, regrettably, set to music. A performance of Frank Loesser's "Take Back Your Mink" is spliced into a recitation of a particularly violent encounter with her father. I'm not sure why. The show's writer-directors, Mitzie and Ken Welch, have also provided dreadful new lyrics for some old standards. Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern's "Pick Yourself Up" is now a song about bouncing checks and seeking solace in shopping. Unfortunately, Ms. Somers's singing voice is thin and often toneless, and the clanging piano chords underscoring the more anguished moments in her history, usually accented by a dramatic clutch at expensively highlighted hair, are giggle-inducing.

Ms. Somers is undoubtedly sincere in her desire to bare her battles with insecurity and shame in order to serve as a model, and perhaps a healer, for those whose therapy cannot be subsidized by the sale of Torso Tracks. And her frankness about her family's destructive legacy of alcoholism, as first related in "Keeping Secrets," was no doubt comforting to many. But in "The Blonde in the Thunderbird" - the title refers to her cameo in "American Graffiti" - Ms. Somers and her collaborators have packaged her journey from damaged child to healthy woman in glib, shrink-wrapped vignettes that have all the emotional grit of an infomercial. Liberally laced with the bland jargon of self-help books, her story proves the peculiar truth that a victory over low self-esteem often comes at the price of a swan-dive into narcissism.

"I believe that everything that happened to me in my life is a blessing," Ms. Somers says in the show's waning moments, offering implicit comfort to those in the audience dogged by ill fortune. This is a simplistic and solipsistic philosophy to espouse, but it comforts me to know that Ms. Somers still believes this bromide, because, as even she would have to admit, the blessing I have hereby administered is unusually well disguised."

Updated On: 7/18/05 at 01:16 AM

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:21am

Well, now we know why they cancelled the Toronto try-out. It was supposed to come here for 2 weeks in late June. The poser reminded me of the original artwork for WHOOP-UP, another legendary Broadway turkey!

[Marquise]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:29am

Those reviews were oh-so-bitchy. I loved them.

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:34am

Poor Suzanne..

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:34am

And more are coming, Marquise. This might get uglier tonight and tomorrow morning.

Updated On: 7/18/05 at 01:34 AM

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:40am

Margo, do you think they'll close before September?
I mean.. $19.49 average ticket price last week.. Is this an all-time low?

[Marquise]

Posted: 7/18/05 at 1:42am

Poor Suzanne my @ss...Who asked her to parade herself on stage wearing a plastic white Thunderbird as a fashion accessory?
Updated On: 7/18/05 at 01:42 AM