Variety "review?" of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at Pasadena

I... just don't even know what to say. What the actual heck is this?

Written by someone who says they have reviewed "over 1700" movies. Some quotes are included below. (italics are my own words)

Critic's Notebook: Stumped by 'Sunday in the Park with George' - Variety

"As a critic, I’m always looking for a fresh challenge, which is one reason I took up writing about theater: It still has the capacity to scare me.

"Reviewing theater is a different discipline, and writing about musicals is an even greater challenge..."

"Here would be my chance to fill in an important gap in my theater experience, and what could be easier than reviewing the West Coast version of a widely respected triumph?

"Now, the show is the show and has existed as such for nearly 40 years, so it hardly makes sense for any review of a regional revival to question the material, and yet, because I was counting on this experience to illuminate Sondheim’s genius, I felt frustrated. Individual lines might be clever or catchy, but most of the music is more conceptual, defying the earworm appeal of classic showtunes (the score is notoriously unhummable). One song — “The Day Off” — hurt my ears while shattering any sense that this was a strictly highbrow affair, as George starts to bark, pretending to be two of the dogs he’s drawing.

Seeing the ensemble, you figure that all these one-dimensional characters will arrange themselves into the famous painting at some point, but not halfway through! Here in SoCal, we’re spoiled by the annual Pageant of the Masters down in Laguna: a series of famous paintings stunningly transformed into tableaux vivants on an outdoor stage. Evidently so impressive on Broadway, that stunt alone is hardly enough to make the show"  (wait, seriously?)

"Then I consulted a collection of interviews with Sondheim, in which his sophisticated grasp of musical theory — and musical theater concepts — both impressed and intimidated me. Sondheim kept dropping terms I didn’t know, like “arpeggio” and “recitative,” as he spoke..."

Regarding use of rhyme in "Putting It Together": "I’m reminded of Jonathan Larson, Jason Robert Brown and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Multiple rhyming sounds snowball and build through the rest of the song..."

in conclusion: "Meanwhile, on the other side of Los Angeles, the Ruskin Group Theatre is doing a tiny yet terrific production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” with lots of laughs and no songs. When it comes to portraits of Parisian post-Impressionists, that show is more my speed."

 

Sunday in the Park with George is never going to be a widely popular musical. An audience member has to work to get into the world on display before him. He must care about the characters, and empathize with the them although they do little to consciously generate that empathy. He must forego the pleasures of a melodious score. If a musical lover must choose turning left to hear "The Best of Times" or right to hear "Finishing the Hat," most will turn left. 

But that's all right. Those who love the musical are lucky to be able to enjoy it and will probably feel a little superior to those who will invest no time in it. I have my own Sondheim. I'm one of the few in the world who really enjoys the novels of Henry James and has read most of them. To most, James in the master of the unending run-on sentence and stories that creep forward when a James character has had to stop talking to catch a breath of air. But myself and a few others who find The Ambassadors to be a great novel are happy that they can appreciate it and it should be the same with Sunday in the Park.

darquegk said: "I totally get that the show is Sondheim’s masterwork."

I don't think that's a widely held opinion.

This is a challenge with theater criticism in general outside of New York when it comes to productions of old shows.  Many local critics are not solely focused on theater, and there's a decent chance they aren't familiar with a show that is well-known in theater circles.  So then they review the content of the show from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time, rather than the effectiveness of the production from the perspective of someone who already knows what works and what doesn't in the script. The former may actually be more useful for local audiences, who also are less likely to be familiar with the show, but completely useless for theater fans who really want to know how effective this particular production is at presenting this show.

But a major LA publication like Variety has no excuses.  This reads like a high school student's blog post.  Don't they have an actual theater critic?  Why isn't that person writing this?

Theatre criticism has long been dead in the UK, with the newspapers having basically fired everyone knowledgeable to replace them with entertainment reporters who know nothing. Or worse, social media influencers.

I had hoped things were different in the US but with this on top of the NYT posting that ridiculous piece about Sweeney not having been seen in NYC for 43 years... :/

Haha, it was initially brought back by a spam post, which has been deleted. I didn’t even realize the original posts were from last year.