WISHFUL DRINKING Reviews

[LearnToBounce]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 7:57pm

The Associated Press is Very Positive:

"Fisher is a raconteur in the best sense of the word. She knows how to tell a story. And "Wishful Drinking," her hilariously perceptive journey through a world of celebrity and self-destruction, is chock-full of funny, fascinating tales.

It helps that Fisher has enormous rapport with the audience at Broadway's Studio 54, where her autobiographical one-woman show opened Sunday."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iQNH5ojoNfCANGQIBjbCysgDoeEwD9B4J5380

*****

Variety is Mixed-to-Positive:

"Helen Lawson brayed in "Valley of the Dolls" that "Broadway doesn't go for boo-ooze and dope." Too bad Carrie Fisher appears to have taken that edict seriously, because her otherwise winning and frequently hilarious solo show, "Wishful Drinking," could use a little more time at self-sabotaging rock bottom. Instead, she delivers selective candor without vulnerability. Fisher is likable, acerbic, clever and wryly forthcoming about the warped reality of life in the celebrity bubble, but her stage memoir is a journey to self-knowledge that rushes through the bumpiest part of the trip -- the addiction years -- always en route to the punchline."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941298.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 9:12pm

backstage.com is Positive:

The only segments that fall flat involve audience participation. Unfortunately, Fisher is no Dame Edna. You can practically feel the discomfort in the air as an unlucky theatergoer reluctantly climbs on stage to try on a Priness Leia wig with the bagel-size hair coils.

Apart from these awkward interludes, Tony Taccone's staging never flags and Fisher never fails to keep us from chuckling at the insanity of her life and admiring her resolve to survive.

http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-broadway/ny-review-wishful-drinking-1004018385.story

Updated On: 10/4/09 at 09:12 PM

[LearnToBounce]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 10:17pm

I think Backstage is more Positive than Mixed: Sheward made the show a Critics Pick, and seemed to enjoy it.

Anyway, Ben Brantley is Very Positive:

" Though cursed with an addictive personality and, it turned out later, bipolar disorder, Ms. Fisher was blessed with a sense of the howling absurdity built into fishbowl lives. And long before she created “Wishful Drinking,” which was first seen in Los Angeles in 2006, she had channeled that sensibility into wry, autobiographical novels, most notably “Postcards From the Edge.”

I wasn’t a big fan of that book or the 1990 movie it inspired. It had a smart-girl-among-the-philistines smugness that got on my nerves. But if Ms. Fisher had read it to me herself, I might have loved it. What you don’t sense in her books is the disarming, entre-nous presence that she brings to live performance."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/theater/reviews/05brantley.html?scp=4&sq=Wishful%20Drinking&st=cse

[LearnToBounce]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 10:19pm

USA Today gives the show 2 1/2 Stars out of 4:

"...anyone with a passing knowledge of pop culture over the past three decades knows Fisher, or at least knows of her, as the woman who played Princess Leia in Star Wars and later established a career as a comic actress and author of considerable wit and charm.

In Drinking... which opened Sunday at Roundabout Theatre Company's Studio 54, those talents are stretched, sometimes to the breaking point. Two hours and change is a long time for any autobiographical performance piece, let alone one whose subject's personal and professional history has been, as she acknowledges, tabloid fodder. But Fisher solicits attention with such brazen vitality and earthy, self-deprecating humor that she never loses us completely."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2009-10-04-wishful-drinking_N.htm

Updated On: 10/4/09 at 10:19 PM

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 10:21pm

I love you Matthew, marry me!

Talkin' Broadway is Mixed-to-Positive:

The double-bun wig and the metal bikini may be long gone, but a few glimmers of a princess still live within Carrie Fisher. Not just Leia Organa, mind you, though thereâ??s no hope the 52-year-old actress will ever escape the character she played so memorably in the original Star Wars trilogy. But also the purple plasma she inherited as the daughter of show-biz royals Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, and which to this day helps her carry on through even the rockiest days with strength, humor, and occasional grace. Fisher brings all of these qualities to her one-woman tell-most, Wishful Drinking, which just opened at Studio 54, and if the show is sometimes as bumpy as Fisherâ??s life, itâ??s a two-hour stretch that in most ways is almost as rewarding.

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

Updated On: 10/4/09 at 10:21 PM

[LearnToBounce]

Posted: 10/4/09 at 11:01pm

John Simon is Mixed-to-Negative (giving the show 2 Stars):

"To give her due credit, she makes fun of herself, often quite amusingly, sprinkled with just the finest dusting of pathos. There is smart, vengeful riffing on her marriage and after-marriage to the singer and songwriter Paul Simon.

Still, hers has been one of the more applauded acts in American celebrity life: the confessed sinner who tells all but can afford to tell it laughingly, and to vociferous encouragement from the audience even during her show, and with thunderous standing ovations at the end."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601098&sid=aq54DDEJxAgI

(I must say, John Simon is pretty nice to Fisher in terms of looks, considering her use of a past quote describing her as "having inherited the worst aspects of her parents." He does describe her here as looking like "a retired lady wrestler," but that's rather generic.)

Updated On: 10/4/09 at 11:01 PM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 12:48am

TheaterMania is very positive:

"Carrie Fisher begins Wishful Drinking, her consistently entertaining stage memoir now at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Studio 54, by singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" in a voice stronger than either her mother, Debbie Reynolds, or her father, Eddie Fisher, ever had. She means the ditty ironically -- because the tale she's fixing to tell is not about a never-ending string of cloudless days at the beach.

...

There's no denying what Fisher is doing is a stand-up routine; but as directed by Tony Taccone and designed by Alexander V. Nichols, that aspect of its origin is craftily disguised.

...

Luckily, Fisher is such a cheerfully sober -- and sometimes subtly sobering -- host that a good time is had by all. "
Full Review

[lull89]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 12:24pm

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-

". . . her dissertation on her own manic depression is even a little touching. The second act meanders and a bit with a life-size Leia sex doll flops, but those are minor quibbles. Plus, we're afraid if we complain too vocally we might end up in a Princess Leia wig. And, as Fisher demonstrates, she's not the only one who looks like an idiot in that hairstyle"
Stage Review: Wishful Drinking by Melissa Rose Bernardo

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 3:22pm

The New York Post is mixed with two out of four stars and a little snippy for no particular reason. The last line of the second paragraph got me.:

"CARRIE Fisher has ac cumulated a life time's worth of good will. This isn't be cause as Princess Leia she proudly wore a metal bikini in "Return of the Jedi." It's because she's managed to somewhat refresh the hoary tell-all memoir genre by combining shameless revelations with acidic self-deprecation.

Still, while the actress-turned-author is handy with a quip, "Wishful Drinking" quickly wears thin. After more than two hours of raspy-voiced zingers and Hollywood gossip -- it's actually faster to read the book this touring show inspired -- you feel as if you've been stuck in a simultaneously garish and cheap boudoir with a garrulous drag queen who just. Won't. Shut. Up

...

"You have been invited tonight not to look at my mansion but to listen to my furniture," she announces. But the people Fisher is saying this to haven't exactly been invited: They've each paid as much as $111.50.

"Wishful Drinking" is a New York jackpot: a therapy session where the shrink -- the audience -- forks out the dough."
Full Review

[Eris0303]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 3:57pm

Gosh, that is very snippy. Even if the critic didn't like it there's no need to go that far. Comparing her to a drag queen is just way out of line. Unfair to Carrie and drag queens.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 3:59pm

It's weird; I liked Vincentelli's reviews until I saw her on Theater Talk. She came off as a narcissistic, know it all snob.

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 3:59pm

Has Elizabeth Vincentelli looked at herself?

Updated On: 10/5/09 at 03:59 PM

[TimesSquareRegular]

Posted: 10/5/09 at 6:20pm

Congrats to Carrie on the generally positive reviews ..... and I am pleased to see that I am not the only one who thinks that Vincentelli is NYC's new Queen of Mean.

[TimesSquareRegular]

Posted: 10/6/09 at 8:58am

Elizabeth Vermincelli (oh ...did I misspell her name???) obviously thinks all the other NYC critics don't know what they're talking about, as per this item she blogged:

"5:39 PM, October 5, 2009 ? By Elisabeth Vincentelli

I was a little surprised this morning by the amount of love lavished on Carrie Fisher's show, "Wishful Drinking." At worst, the reviews were indulgent, and mine -- which isn't even that bad -- came in at the bottom of the heap aggregated by Critic-o-Meter . Of course I enjoy critical divergences, but I'm also wondering why this particular benevolence for this particular woman."

[Kad]

Posted: 10/6/09 at 9:17am

She doesn't think her review was "that bad"? She compared the show to a bad drag queen who won't shut up and implied that the audiences are being scammed by paying for it.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/6/09 at 9:32am

I'm telling you, go to theatertalk.org and search for her interview. She just comes off as snarky right from the first minute.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/6/09 at 7:13pm

NY1 is mixed to positive:

""Wishful Drinking" is a lot of fun -- a dry martini with extra olives that offers a potent escape. But the high is short-lived. And anyone looking for a more meaningful experience may be disappointed.

Carrie Fisher is a product of Hollywood who's learned how to turn adversity into punch lines and she's a master at it. Just don't mistake candor for soul-baring.

...

"Wishful Drinking" will likely bring to mind Elaine Stritch's solo Broadway turn, "At Liberty." And while both women can dish with the best of them in highly entertaining fashion, Ms. Stritch gave us a complete meal. Ms. Fisher, by comparison, is a cocktail."

Full Review

[TheaterBaby]

Posted: 10/7/09 at 3:02pm

I saw it for almost free (thanks Theatermania) and my friend and I liked it so much that we bought tickets to see it again.

I feel that if you're not somewhat knowledgeable of Carrie Fisher and/or "old" Hollywood (meaning the Debbie/Elizabeth era), then it may not be the show for you. Though really, even if you know nothing prior, you know it by the time she finishes; and she's funny.

I just wish Roundabout would take stock in some smaller theaters for their plays. Studio 54 is way too big for this particular show. Good thing it's a limited run.

In other thoughts, Vincentelli looks like a man. :[

[wonkit]

Posted: 10/7/09 at 7:57pm

I was at the matinee today. It ain't Shakespeare but it is a lot of fun. The audience participation is a little strained at times but I enjoyed watching Ms. Fisher and she seemed to be enjoying doing the performance. I especially liked the Hollywood Inbreeding 101 segment, probably because I am old enough to remember the checkered celebrity history she talks about.