Talkin Broadway is mixed-to-positive:
"The Woman in White, which just opened at the Marquis, proves, the composer has finally learned how to fight back. Yes, indeed - he's found a way to insinuate himself back into the public taste with a show that miraculously manages to be completely new while feeling like both a revival and a jukebox musical (if one of 19th-century extraction)! If this show is, for all intents and purposes, a revival of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and a jukebox collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Greatest Hits (or what sounds like them), does that matter?
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Set designer William Dudley (also responsible for costumes and video) has gone all out in defining every location that can possibly appear on the three blank-canvas panels that rotate almost continuously in search of scenic satisfaction.
While this is occasionally effective - as in the use of a pastoral setting in the first act that includes running water - too many effects just look silly, and could be achieved more effectively through simpler means. But that's Lloyd Webber for you: Be it a soaring tire, a crashing chandelier, or a flying mansion, you often get more than you absolutely need. His musicals have always thrived on excess, whether of music, high belting, or scenic design, and to settle for anything less would be more ordinary than even a commonplace entertainment like The Woman in White could bear.
Dudley's work, however, is unquestionably innovative; it feels as new and fresh as the rest of this show does familiar. One might wish for a stronger focus on story and character, but it probably won't be hard for this show's target audience of Lloyd Webber's ardent, unquestioning fans to make that happen by doing some projection of their own.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/WomanInWhite.html
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
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"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 11/17/05 at 06:47 PM