im suprised the show has been getting this good of reviews so far it deserves to be :)
lets hope the times is positive, and then yeah, itll be good stuff
My 2007/2008 Season:
Grey Gardens (7/5)
110 in the Shade (7/6)
Mary Poppins (7/7)
Xanadu (7/7)
Deuce (7/8)
Spamalot (7/8)
Jersey Boys (8/25)
The Year of Magical Thinking (8/25)
Mauritius (11/2)
Young Frankenstein (11/3)
Rock 'N' Roll (11/3)
Pygmalion (11/4)
Mauritius (11/10)
Mauritius (11/21) Mauritius (11/21)
Sunday in the Park with George (3/6)
South Pacific (3/7)
Gypsy (3/8)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (3/9)
Also, I would call Word of Mouth positive and Variety a rave. So just switch them. Also, Curtains, Hollywood Reporter was not mixed to negative...it was WAY NEGATIVE. So the tally is: 2 Raves (Variety and AP) 3 Positive (Word of Mouth, NY1, and Talkin' Broadway) 1 Flat out pan (Hollywood Reporter)
My 2007/2008 Season:
Grey Gardens (7/5)
110 in the Shade (7/6)
Mary Poppins (7/7)
Xanadu (7/7)
Deuce (7/8)
Spamalot (7/8)
Jersey Boys (8/25)
The Year of Magical Thinking (8/25)
Mauritius (11/2)
Young Frankenstein (11/3)
Rock 'N' Roll (11/3)
Pygmalion (11/4)
Mauritius (11/10)
Mauritius (11/21) Mauritius (11/21)
Sunday in the Park with George (3/6)
South Pacific (3/7)
Gypsy (3/8)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (3/9)
"Can a musical be simultaneously indefensible and irresistible? Why, yes it can. Witness “Xanadu,” the outlandishly enjoyable stage spoof of the outrageously bad movie from 1980 about a painter and his muse who find love at a roller disco in Los Angeles.
Why, you may wonder, would anyone deem it necessary, or even worthwhile, to pay lavish mock homage to a dreadful movie by exhuming it for exhibition onstage? Has Broadway nothing better to do? Has the American musical theater reached such a nadir of inspiration?
Well, yeah. I guess. Whatever. Why pester me with silly questions when there’s so much silly bliss to be had at the Helen Hayes Theater, where the new, improved “Xanadu” opened last night? In any case, Douglas Carter Beane, the impish playwright who has ingeniously adapted the screenplay for the stage (while wearing a Hazmat suit, I hope), trumps such hectoring queries by acknowledging the inanity of the enterprise himself. In his adorably ditzy new book for the musical, Mr. Beane posits 1980, the year “Xanadu” dawned and the year in which the stage version is set, as a cultural turning point. “The muses are in retreat,” muses the god Zeus, played by Tony Roberts, in the musical’s poignant climax. (Kidding!) “Creativity shall remain stymied for decades. The theater? They’ll just take some stinkeroo movie or some songwriter’s catalog, throw it onstage and call it a show.”
Isherwood, not Brantley...I was shocked thinking Brantley had given it a rave.
eta: I do like this part from Isherwood, though: "The show’s winking attitude toward its own aesthetic abjectness can be summed up thus: If you can’t beat ’em, slap on some roller skates and join ’em."
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
Score 1 for Isherwood. Personally, my favorite line: "She’s got a lovely line in arabesque on those skates, too! Can Audra McDonald or Kristin Chenoweth do that?"
Does anyone think that this is a slight stab (in total jest) at Brantley from his fellow New York Times reviewer, lol?