Ironic: Catching Neil Simon Theatre 'Cause It Could
As if it weren't bad enough that
Love Never Dies director
Jack O'Brien and choreographer
Jerry Mitchell already jumped ship for what they certainly must hope is smoother sailing with their other more promising project -- you guessed it
-- Catch Me If You Can -- the irony of the
Marc Shaiman/
Scott Wittman/
Terrence McNally musical capturing
Love Never Dies' place at the Simon Theatre must add insult to injury for Sir ALW. One can only imagine the intrigue that's taken place behind the scenes. (
UPDATE: Producers for Love Never Dies announced on October 1, 2010, that the show would not be mounted on Broadway during the 2010-11 Theatrical Season.)
For composers Shaiman and Witttman, this will mark a homecoming of sorts as their only other full-fledged Broadway musical -- the Tony Award-winning
Hairspray -- occupied the Neil Simon for six and a half enormously successful years. If
Catch Me If You Can catches on with critics and audiences, it'll become the first regular show to have succeeded since their earlier work closed at the beginning of last year.
While casting has yet to be announced, such acclaimed Broadway draws as
Norbert Leo Butz,
Aaron Tveit,
Tom Wopat and
Kerry Butler starred in the
out-of-town tryout in Seattle last summer. I know I'm not alone in hoping each of these talented actors can be caught yet again to reprise their roles on the Main Stem.
Previews for
Catch Me If You Can are scheduled to begin March 7, 2010, and open April 10.
As for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Well, perhaps he'll think twice about never saying never when naming a musical.
This is
Steve On Broadway (SOB).
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.Labels: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Broadway, Catch Me If You Can, First Word On New Show, Jack O'Brien, Jerry Mitchell, Love Never Dies, Marc Shaiman, Musical, Scott Wittman, Terrence McNally
Has "Love" Actually Died?
UPDATED OCTOBER 1, 2010
Arguably one of Broadway's most anticipated new shows may have already withered before ever making it to the United States.
Make no mistake.
Love Never Dies --
Andrew Lloyd Webber's $15 million sequel to
The Phantom Of The Opera that transports the action from Paris' Opera House to New York's Coney Island -- is still playing at London's Adelphi Theatre. But now reports are suggesting that the show won't make it to Broadway this season, if ever.
Update: Love Never Dies producers announced on October 1, 2010, that the production would not be on Broadway during the 2010-11 Theatrical Season.
The musical sequel opened to largely negative reviews in London earlier this year. After seeing the show for myself in May,
I concluded that it needed an immense amount of work if it was ever going to last even a fraction of the twenty-plus years that
Phantom has been around. And indeed, it's been my understanding the performance West End audiences are seeing today is different than the one I saw just months ago.
But apparently that's not enough.
Previews were slated to begin for an open-ended run in April 2011, but all of that has now been called into question since director
Jack O'Brien and choreographer
Jerry Mitchell have
reportedly bailed so they may concentrate on a more sure-fire hit:
Catch Me If You Can.
The
New York Post's Michael Riedel
goes one step farther to say that although his sources have said the show is postponed "indefinitely," he says, "The $15 million London production, which was directed by Broadway vets Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell, will not be seen in New York. Ever."
Thus, I have pulled
Love Never Dies from my
confirmed list of shows scheduled for the 2010-11 Theatrical Season and have placed it on my "
Definitely Maybe" list. Until we hear for certain that Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel is truly a non-starter for this season, it will languish like several other improbable shows on that list.
P.S. I must place a large
SPOILER ALERT on the second comment below. If you don't want to know the plot, read no further.
This is
Steve On Broadway (SOB).
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.Labels: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Broadway, Jack O'Brien, Jerry Mitchell, London, Love Never Dies, Postponement, The Phantom Of The Opera
Fizzled BlondeOh! My! God! Another Broadway musical is about to bite the dust.
Legally Blonde - The Musical, based on the infinitely superior
2001 film, has posted its closing notice.
The
Jerry Mitchell-helmed and choreographed tuner will shutter after its final
Palace Theatre performance on October 19. It will have played a total of 595 regular performances when it closes.
Despite the fact that the show is still pulling a capacity crowd of over 60%, the average ticket price last week of just $52.13 hints at a deeper issue: the effect that the worrisome economy may be having on Broadway as a whole. Not even a dose of stunt casting via an MTV reality series could keep a substantial number of tickets from being sold at TKTS.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Broadway, Closing Notices, Jerry Mitchell, Legally Blonde, Musical
London Critics Can't Stop The Beat Of HairsprayLast evening, after five years of wowing them on
Broadway and just months after the
film musical opened worldwide, the stage version of
Hairspray has finally opened in the West End of London. Overall, critics ate it up.
"Delightful" is how
Benedict Nightingale of
The Times describes the show in his four-out-of-five star review: "The musical resembles
Grease, then? Yes, but only a bit, for
Hairspray is wittier, funnier, more good-natured and, without being pretentious, more morally and politically aware....But anyone would forgive the show’s wishfulness, given the ebullience of
Marc Shaiman’s rock, which might have been written for and delivered by Elvis himself, and the quality of
Jack O’Brien’s cast, which matches its Broadway counterpart for energy."
Describing it as "heaven on earth,"
Charles Spencer of
The Telegraph joins in the praise: "Director Jack O'Brien, who alternates raucous musicals like this with superb revivals of
Tom Stoppard at the Lincoln Centre, ensures that sentiment and laughter are mixed in just the right proportions in a show that offers a sugar-rush of pleasure.
Jerry Mitchell's choreography is splendidly effervescent and newcomer
Leanne Jones, straight out of drama school and making her professional debut, has exactly the right bubble and bounce as Tracy, moving with a lightness of foot that belies her avoirdupois. The show might be less slick than in New York, but there is no mistaking its big, raucous heart."
Calling it "the plump girls' feelgood, romantic comedy of a musical" in his four out of five star review is
Evening Standard's
Nicholas de Jongh: "Hairspray...sent the rare, sweet smell of success wafting through the Shaftesbury last night....Leanne Jones, in an astonishingly accomplished stage debut, plays Edna's big-sized daughter, Tracy....It is through Jones's endearingly earnest Tracy, who dances with a lightness belying her size, that links between love, comedy and radical politics are forged....Marc Shaiman's urgent score, with clever, often witty lyrics written with
Scott Whitman, keeps
Hairspray pulsating with musical excitement as well as political anger."
Proclaiming it a "deliciously fluid production,"
Michael Billington of
The Guardian also offers four out of five stars: "But even if
Hairspray, in the process of being turned into a Broadway musical, has lost some of its glorious tackiness, it retains its generous spirit: this is still a show that not only hymns physical difference but also the basic right to racial integration....Where the show really scores is in its ability to integrate serious issues into a lightweight plot. Jerry Mitchell's joyous choreography is the beating heart of the show. There is something dionysiac about it; and, if the show achieves the ecstasy one looks for in a musical, it comes largely through the dance routines."
Taking note that "this exuberant, breathless production chokes all resistance, smothering all in its orbit,"
Quentin Letts of the cheesy
Daily Mail sniffs, "Here is full-squirt, two-dimensional fun, at times almost dementedly full-on. It doesn't tickle you into mirth. It blooming well shoves you."
Sounds like the Shaftesbury Theatre finally has scored a winning musical. Tickets are now available through next October.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Go East, Young Musical, Go East (July 26, 2007)
Hairspray To Brush With West End Style (March 9, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Critics' Capsule, Film, Hairspray, Jack O'Brien, Jerry Mitchell, London, Marc Shaiman, Michael Ball, Musical
Legally Blonde (The SOB Review) - Palace Theatre, New York, NY
** (out of ****)
Oh my…God help us.
I realize that
Legally Blonde has, like, totally captured the hearts of many an audience member (especially the tween-to-teen set), but the allure of this latest film-to-fluff fare for the stage escapes me. You know a show is in trouble when the most appreciative audience response is reserved for the dogs.
About halfway through the first act of
Legally Blonde, the talented but misused
Orfeh sings the incongruous tune “Ireland” that includes the prescient line, “I don’t know where this metaphor is going.” That line neatly captured my frustration with this over-the-top ode to girlie girldom power that chose several bizarre tangents to veer off toward.
For every genuinely clever line in the book by
Heather Hach -- and there were several like the one where Harvard admissions discussed reasons for letting this blonde bombshell into school: "diversity" -- there was a groan-worthy tune from
Laurence O'Keefe and
Nell Benjamin (like "Serious" that sounds more like a retread from
Saturday Night Fever or "There! Right There!" that I'll get back to in a moment) or serious misstep.
Including in the choreography by
Jerry Mitchell, who’s usually, like, you know, really superb at this sort of thing. I'm a huge fan of his previous efforts, but the moves here work more like a hybrid of “
Bring It On" and
Riverdance. Perhaps he was just a bit too busy adjusting to his additional role -- his first time as a director.
Of all people, Mitchell should know better than to exacerbate gay stereotypes. Whether providing the dykiest of lesbians or the nelliest of hairdressers or the complicit conspirators in the tedious “There! Right There!" number that tries to discover whether a potential perjurer is gay or European, it’s a surprise that
GLAAD hasn’t been knocking the show. It was appalling.
As for Hach's book, there was little other than the memory of
Reese Witherspoon in the movie to help the audience understand why everyone in the show -- including the aforementioned Harvard admissions team -- was so readily capable of making the huge leap toward loving the lead character of Elle Woods.
Don't get me wrong, the lovely
Laura Bell Bundy does what she can with the part, and she's a terrific singer and dancer, but the book does her quite a disservice. For example, we're to believe that this perfectly dressed, well-coiffed Elle will take the advice of the poorly-dressed, wrong-side of the tracks hairdresser Paulette (Orfeh) whom she just met?
Of course, there's so much energy and exuberance that you can't blame the audience for getting whipped into a frenzy, including on numbers like "Whipped Into Shape" -- another tangential number that only marginally moves the story along. The use of the Delta Nu Greek chorus throughout the show is inspired. And I confess that I'm simply unable to get the tune "Omigod You Guys" out of my mind (please! Make it
stop!!).
But I much prefer
Legally Blonde - The Film.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Related Stories:
Labels: Broadway, Film, Jerry Mitchell, Laura Bell Bundy, Legally Blonde, Musical, The SOB Review
Did Critics You Know Like Totally Blonde?
Saying the show "trades up on the original model in both character development and infectious comedy,"
Variety's
David Rooney is perhaps the most generous: "Working from
Amanda Brown's novel and
Karen McCullah Lutz and
Kirsten Smith's screenplay, book writer
Heather Hach has added definition to the story's generic message about being true to yourself and not judging people by their packaging....Choreographer-turned-director
Jerry Mitchell has done a creditable job of driving this well-oiled machine. Its zippiness in the opening stretch, in particular, is almost dizzying."
Bell Bundy and the show are both "peppy and bright,"according to
Linda Winer of
Newsday, but her review is mixed: "[T]he show, directed with cheerfully breathless momentum by Jerry Mitchell, clearly has a healthier 'sell-by' date than the ones marked on the piles of discarded crates that brought
Footloose,
The Wedding Singer,
Saturday Night Fever and (add your own) short-lived movie adaptations. After all, Mitchell choreographed such long-running, crowd-pleasing adaptations as
Hairspray and
The Full Monty. With
Legally Blonde, his directing debut, he takes the logical well-worn step from moving bodies to energizing the total vision. Everything gets moved -- except, you know, your heart."
Labeling the tuner as "tuneless,"
Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press seems to enjoy save for the music: "It really moves....So why, despite the expensive glitz and an aggressive, go-go attitude, does
Legally Blonde only fitfully entertain? Most prominently because of a disappointing score....What slows down the production are some of the songs by
Laurence O'Keefe and
Nell Benjamin. Most of them are vaguely pop, tunes with little discernible theatricality. The melodies evaporate quickly..."
Agreeing on the musical score,
New York Post's
Clive Barnes says it's a "pleasant if noisy night out" in his two-and-a-half star review: "When was it that so many Broadway musicals took "Looney" to their hearts but managed to leave out the 'Tunes'? Heather Hach's book, based on the screenplay and the original novel (who knew?) by Amanda Brown, makes all the right moves and has a good feel for both fun and wit, even though theater necessarily lacks the open-ended possibilities of a movie. And unfortunately, the score never picks up the slack, although the lyrics by the husband and wife team of Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin are markedly sharper than their usual."
Calling
Blonde "high-energy, empty-calories and expensive-looking hymn to the glories of girlishness,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley is largely dismissive with a sugar twist: "
Legally Blonde...has Laura Bell Bundy, the kind of young woman who summons instant parental pride in the middle-aged. In addition to her prom-queen prettiness, she sings and dances flawlessly, and she delivers silly lines as if she meant them. But she lacks the quirkiness and irresistible watch-me egotism that a big, heroine-worshiping musical needs at its center....This means that the weight of the show, directed with hyperkinetic effusiveness by Jerry Mitchell, shifts to its feel-good formula."
"It's only sorta fun," laments
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News : "Hach cleverly uses Elle's sorority sisters as a Greek chorus to pump up the show's girl-power vibe. The dark-haired Leslie Kritzer, as Serena, is a sassy standout, and suggests that if brunettes don't have more fun, they have the funniest lines -- and know how to work them.
Blonde's shortfalls are rooted in the score."
During the upcoming week, I'll be taking in this show, so stay tuned for my SOB Review shortly thereafter.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Broadway, Critics' Capsule, Film, Jerry Mitchell, Legally Blonde, Musical
Legally Blonde Comes Of Age Tonight
Will New York critics react similarly? As I said earlier, I have a hard time believing this is one that Ben Brantley will enjoy. Stay tuned here for the full round-up of reviews for Legally Blonde tomorrow.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Related Stories:
Coming Of Age: Legally Blonde Opens In San Francisco (February 6, 2007)
M-G-M: Movies-Going-Musical (January 3, 2007)
Which New Broadway Musical Are You Most Enthusiastic About Seeing? (October 16, 2006)
A Place Where Nobody Dared To Go...Until Now: They Call It Xanadu (July 18, 2006)
Broadway Bound to Get Nuttier with More Movie Adaptations Turned Musicals (June 7, 2006)
Labels: Broadway, Film, Jerry Mitchell, Legally Blonde, Musical, Opening Night
Ironic: Catching Neil Simon Theatre 'Cause It Could 
