if "Desperately Seeking Susan" comes to Broadway

[dfwtheatreguy]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 11:39am

If this show makes the leap across the pond from London, who would be good as Roberta and Susan?

I'm thinking Jane Krakowski would be a good Roberta.

Who else?

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 11:42am

It got horrible reviews. Why would it come here?

Besides, it's got 2 strikes against it. It's a musical based on a movie AND it's a jukebox musical.

[dfwtheatreguy]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 11:44am

It can always be retooled - besides a jukebox musical with the songs of "Blondie" has to be good

[Liverpool]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 11:51am

yeah just like a juke box musical with the songs of Elvis has to be good, and a juke box musical with the songs on John Lennon has to be good. and a jukebox musical witht he songs of bob dylan has to be good.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 12:41pm

AMY SPANGER!!!

[Al Dente]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 2:30pm

Orfeh = Madonna, too obvious. But this is one show that ain't never coming in.

[Craig]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 2:40pm

Al - I'd have to agree. This show isn't transferring unless someone with deep pockets decided they wanted to produce it here in hopes of it touring. It hasn't fared well in the UK despite the talent that's on the stage.

[pab]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 2:47pm

Desperate Crap

[Al Dente]

Posted: 11/13/07 at 2:50pm

And honestly, if it didn't do well there, there's not a chance it wouldn't be completely massacred here. I happen to know the pockets were deep enough but the pocket holders not daft enough.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/14/07 at 5:19pm

OK first of all it hasn't had horrible reviews as it hasn't opened yet its still in previews,it opens tomorrow

The show is a very bland show though with not much going for it apart from Emma Williams

[WickedBoy2]

Posted: 11/14/07 at 5:31pm

Reviews! What reviews? Ah the ones we'll see on Friday!!!!!

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/14/07 at 5:36pm

Craig im surprised at you saying it has not fared well when it hasn't opened yet.At least let the show open lol

[devonian.t]

Posted: 11/14/07 at 7:03pm

I hear it's going to open in rep with Carrie 2 the Musical. Bill Kenwright is producing. Connie Fisher stars in both shows.

Wicked is being evicted from the Gershwin for this amazing project.

All tickets will be $800.

Book now.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:06pm

hahahahaha devonian.t, that made me fall of my chair laughing

Well now the reviews have come out and they have been a disaster.In fact the critically lambasted version of Rent Remixed got better reviews.

If you pop on the west end board you will find all the reviews on a thread there as well as a video from the show.

And will it come to Broadway hahahahahahahaha no no no no

[WickedBoy2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:11pm

Take it! Its yours! PLEASE!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:17pm

Variety is Mostly Negative:

"I can see it now: Some bright spark will grab the back catalog of the Doors and open a musical version of "The Towering Inferno" with "Come On, Baby, Light My Fire." To be fair, "Desperately Seeking Susan" -- the stage blending of Blondie's hits with the 1980s cult movie -- never stoops that low. But it's soon depressingly clear that this combination of on-the-beat rock and off-beat comedy is less a collusion than a collision.
The production's basic problem is its lack of imagination. The book, by Off Broadway writer/performer Peter Michael Marino, doesn't so much cleave as cling to the movie's mistaken identity/life-swap plot, which was none too watertight to begin with........

.....The other structural problem is unexpected. It's not that the well-loved Blondie songs don't fit the action -- it's that they do. The opening sequence finds Roberta feeling frustrated and Susan irritated and disaffected. They're both dreaming: Cue song of the same name, which augurs well for the evening as a whole.

But, after that, in almost every instance, instead of advancing plot or building tension, the numbers merely (over)illustrate what we already know. The songs don't dramatize situations -- they prolong them. In "Atomic," for instance, during which Roberta and Dez (under-used Alec Newman) fall for each other, the lyrics simply restate an emotion endlessly, leaving no room for dramatic development.

The singing is the show's strongest point. The cast have uniformly solid voices, especially Mark McGee as Susan's band-singer boyfriend, who delivers serious rock vocals. Williams' sneering Susan, made up to look more like Debbie Harry than Madonna, compensates in vocal power for what she lacks in real sexual threat......

....The clue here, sadly, is in the title. The desperation on display is that of a production team trying to hide the awareness it has painted itself into a corner. Instead of keeping the basic plot and then ditching and reimagining everything else in theatrical terms -- see "Billy Elliot" or "The Lion King" -- the fidelity of this screen-to-stage transfer is its undoing."






http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935449.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:20pm

I have to say i didnt hate it, it was just there,

it was alright but just blah....

The thing what bugged me the most was how the songs were just thrown in and made no sense and have no relevance to the story.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:22pm

The Daily Telegraph (UK) is Negative:

"Watching this lamentable musical, in which the immaculate pop songs of Blondie have been pressed into the service of a plodding dramatisation of a so-so caper movie from the 1980s, I began to imagine what further horrors might lurk over the horizon.....

....In what he doubtless saw as a blazing flash of Einstein-like genius Peter Michael Marino (no, I've never heard of him either) conceived the idea of teaming up Blondie and Desperately Seeking Susan.

Superficially it makes a kind of sense. Both band and movie have a distinctive New York background, both are from roughly the same period, and there is a smart new-wave freshness about Blondie that the more charitably disposed might also discern in the film.

Unfortunately, wonderful though Blondie's hits are, they have absolutely nothing to do with the movie's plot in which a respectable but bored New Jersey housewife finds herself mistaken for a streetwise punk urchin on the run from a Mafia hitman.

Whenever a musical number comes along you are left scratching your head, wondering what on earth the song has to do with the show. At the same time Marino has been absurdly faithful to the lacklustre script of the original picture, so that the action limps along in a succession of scrappy little scenes, alarmingly devoid of both energy and dramatic point.

Andy Blankenbuehler, the choreographer, hasn't come up with a single exciting dance number, while the director, Angus Jackson, has no idea what to do with the ensemble in what is essentially a chamber piece. The songs meanwhile, including such classics as Atomic, Call Me and Heart of Glass, are performed at maximum volume with a brutal, bludgeoning efficiency that is entirely devoid of either soul or affection.....

.....I fear that Desperately Seeking Susan will leave most discerning theatregoers desperately seeking the nearest exit."





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/16/btsusan116.xml

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:27pm

Thought i would bring the reviews i posted from the west end board.So here you go

Desperately Seeking Susan


** Novello, London

Michael Billington
Friday November 16, 2007
The Guardian

This is cheekily described as "a new musical with the songs of Blondie". It would be more truthful to call it an adaptation of the 1985 movie into which Blondie songs have been inserted. As such, it has a mechanical efficiency that makes one pine for the distant days when composers and lyricists came up with original ideas for musicals.

Peter Michael Morino, to whom we owe the book and concept, has played fair with the movie's identity-switch plot. We see Roberta, the bored wife of a New Jersey hot-tub salesman, mistaken for punkish, freewheeling Susan whose footsteps she has faithfully dogged through the personal ads.

Article continues
Once she dons Susan's pyramid-adorned leather jacket, the hapless Roberta is pursued by the Mob, slung in the slammer as a prostitute, and sawn in half as a magician's assistant. She even finds true love with a movie-buff, while Susan is finally reunited with her rock-band lover.

While the show fuels fantasies of escape, it would be much wittier if it followed the identity-swap to its logical conclusion: I'd love to see Susan settling down in the suburbs and proving that inside every punkette lurked a domestic goddess.

The real interest lies in seeing how well the Blondie songs dovetail into the story. Some work deftly such as the use of Dreaming to express Roberta's secret yearnings, and One Way or Another to depict the Mafia villain's frenzied pursuit of the life-swapping heroine.

But unlike Mamma Mia where the book was invented to cue the Abba songs, here you sense the strain of constantly fitting the numbers into a pre-existing plot. Instead of rising organically from the story, the songs feel grafted onto it.

What the show finally lacks is heart. Angus Jackson's production literally keeps the action moving with the aid of a travelator. Tim Hatley's swiftly-sliding sets neatly evoke the shifting locales. Kelly Price's Roberta also reveals a demure sexiness, while Steven Houghton's dark-shirted, silvery-haired baddie looks like a dead ringer for Richard Eyre. But Emma Williams's laid-back Susan can't displace movie memories of Madonna, and there is no chance for the dancers to achieve true lift-off. The show feels like a business product calculatedly tailored to appeal to Blondie fans. What it never acquires is the ecstasy that is the musical's justification.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:28pm

# Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (two stars)

- “The only way to enjoy the show is to submit to the songs, which makes for a totally passive experience … Heavy on base, pulsating with sexiness and full of good harmonic progressions, these songs bring back an era even if they don’t make a musical … Kelly Price and Emma Williams belt out their songs with balls and dedication, but it is impossible to differentiate between them, really, apart from in their hairstyles. Perhaps that’s the point. Roberta’s Jacuzzi-selling husband is fleshed out, just about, by Jonathan Wrather, and Alec Newman is Dez the boy chasing the surrogate Susan through her adventures as a prostitute, prisoner and magician’s assistant. There are some feisty dance numbers choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, but nothing to get too over-excited about, and Tim Hatley has designed sets and costumes that suggest the market aimed at by the show is not one for musical theatre but the retro-punk concert-going crowd. It’s the very sense of calculation in this that gives the game away: the show’s got no soul.”

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:29pm

# Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph -

“Watching this lamentable musical, in which the immaculate pop songs of Blondie have been pressed into the service of a plodding dramatisation of a so-so caper movie from the 1980s, I began to imagine what further horrors might lurk over the horizon … Unfortunately, wonderful though Blondie's hits are, they have absolutely nothing to do with the movie's plot in which a respectable but bored New Jersey housewife finds herself mistaken for a streetwise punk urchin on the run from a Mafia hitman … Andy Blankenbuehler, the choreographer, hasn't come up with a single exciting dance number, while the director, Angus Jackson, has no idea what to do with the ensemble in what is essentially a chamber piece. The songs meanwhile, including such classics as ‘Atomic’, ‘Call Me’ and ‘Heart of Glass’, are performed at maximum volume with a brutal, bludgeoning efficiency that is entirely devoid of either soul or affection … I fear that Desperately Seeking Susan will leave most discerning theatregoers desperately seeking the nearest exit.”

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:29pm

# Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (three stars)

– “I do not know whether Blondie's songs were even reasonably suited to the action. The seven-strong band ran to such a volume of sound that they drowned out the singers with cruel efficiency. The chorus never seemed much more than redundant … Still, the musical breaks free of familiar, romantic territory … Angus Jackson's ingenious production, which steers a slick, speedy passage through all the hokum, makes this musical version of the film less a romantic comedy and more of a film noir send-up, shading into Hugh Vanstone's stylised bursts of purple lighting. (Against) Tim Hatley's atmospheric design … Jackson stages the chases with a stylised brilliance on a circular revolve and on the gallery walkway where the harder you run the less progress you make … When Roberta abandons marriage to risk all with Dez, she finally achieves an exhilarating, feminist victory - love over materialism.”

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:30pm

Simon Edge in the Daily Express (two stars) –

“It’s a cut above the normal boy-meets-girl pap of this genre and the principals are competent. Kelly Price is an enthusiastic Roberta and Alec Newman is likeable as her lover Dez, even if Emma Williams struggles to get near the effortless danger that Madonna brought to Susan on film. Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography is also enjoyably moody, but Angus Jackson’s production is undermined by some odd design decisions. Most of the decor has been relocated to the mid-Seventies, while Susan’s outfit remains resolutely 1985. And some of the supporting acting is pretty lacklustre, depending on the goodwill of a laugh-at-anything audience. But the biggest problem is the music, a deafening irritant that gets in the way of the action and actively undercuts the tale of contrasting worlds, inasmuch as the Blondie tempo remains constant whatever the mood or scene. The programme boasts that the lyrics have not been altered because they are such a perfect fit. I’ll have to take that on trust: I could barely decipher an over-amplified word.”

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:30pm

Paul Taylor in the Independent –

“Here, a delightful film has been adapted with clunky literalism (by Peter Michael Marino) and the resulting mess has been pumped with phoney energy by the uninspired direction (from Angus Jackson) and by the well-executed but terminally banal choreography (by Andy Blankenbuehler). Easing with finesse into Madonna's ripped tights, Emma Williams is in strong voice but fails to tantalise as a SoHo vamp. She and Kelly Price as the housewife from Squaresville who assumes Susan's identity are swamped by the idiocies of the adaptation. Take the glorious bit in the movie where Madonna dries her armpits using an upturned hand dryer in the toilets. Williams is allowed to raise her arm for all of three seconds in the vague direction of an unmodified machine. The moment does not work either as an allusion to the film or in its own right … Frantically seeking profit, this is a show that may have to be renamed ‘Desperately Avoiding Closure’.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/17/07 at 1:33pm

As much as i LOVE Emma Williams (in fact we were in stage school together at stage 84) she is hideously miscast as susan, she has none of the charisma Madonna had in that role.

Though even with a new actress in that role it would not help this lackluster show

here is a video from their website of the show

http://www.seeking-susan.com/

I also love how on their web site there is a section devoted to News and Reviews....oddly enough it has no reviews in it lol

Updated On: 11/17/07 at 01:33 PM