The Music Man On Broadway, A Review
Meredith Willson’s endearing fable of the con man who comes to River City in search of easy money and finds redemption in the love of a local lass has been given riotous new life by protean director-choreographer Susan Strohman. Strohman’s other Broadway offering this year, “Contact,” won her the Tony, but “The Music Man,” for which she was also nominated, is the sentimental favorite.
Aida On Broadway, A Review
At its best, Aida is so deliriously ghastly it is great fun to watch. At its worst it is embarrassing. Much of the time it is merely boring. Mr. John, who can write a catchy tune now and then, has risen to his level of incompetence to produce a sort of Mc-rock score and Mr. Rice follows suit with gratingly banal lyrics — although it must be said in his defense that Mr. John’s truncated musical lines didn’t give him much to work with. The book often manages bathos when it strives for drama and its humor is on a par with the best of today’s sitcoms (which is to say it’s pretty dreadful).
Wrong Mountain On Broadway, A Review
“Wrong Mountain” is, in fact, a delightfully bilious play of ideas about art, intellectual snobbery, the meaning of success, and the ability of theater to transform the lives of those on both sides of the curtain. It is also, not incidentally, very, very funny.
Give Me Your Answer, Do Off-Broadway, A Review
No one writes more incisively or more lyrically about the plight of the artist in society than Irish playwright Brian Friel. In Faith Healer he presented a bleak vision of the artist destroyed by his audience for failing to produce instant redemption. In his latest play, Give Me Your Answer, Do, he is only slightly less metaphorical in exploring the relationship of the artist, particularly the writer, to fame, fortune, and family. The play has the painful immediacy of a cri de coeur and you can’t help wondering how much autobiography is being served up here.
Dame Edna: The Royal Tour On Broadway, A Review
For those who don’t know, Dame Edna is the alter ego of Australian-born, London-based comedian Barry Humphries. Over the years he has elevated Edna from typical Australian housewife (Say “average” with an Australian accent) to a bespangled mega-star who hobnobs with royalty and dispenses wisdom and insight to her adoring fans
The Weir On Broadway, A Review
There’s not much to “The Weir”, really. A small group of fraying-at-the-collar regulars gather in a drab pub in a backwater of Western Ireland. They are joined by a local-boy-made-good who is squiring an attractive newcomer from Dublin. Drinks are poured, old rivalries flare and sputter, tales are told, the changing times are bemoaned, the pub closes. But it is the tales that hold our interest, Irish shaggy dog stories of fairies that grow ever darker and ever spookier and that somehow speak volumes about human loss and longing.
Amadeus On Broadway, A Review
This “Amadeus” is a more neatly balanced piece of work. In the original, if memory serves, Salieri was more a villain and Mozart more a twit. The villainy and the twittery are still there, of course, but now with more shading. All in all, the changes make for a a more fully satisfying evening.