Broadway Watch - The Woman in White
Fri, 18 Nov 2005, 01:31 pmWalter Plinge2 posts in thread
Broadway Watch - The Woman in White
Fri, 18 Nov 2005, 01:31 pmThe Woman in White
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics by David Zippel
Book by Charlotte Jones
Directed by Trevor Nunn
[Broadway version of original 2005 London production]
Opened 17th November 2005
Extracts from various reviewers:
“In a way, it's hard to not feel sorry for Andrew Lloyd Webber. As unofficial head of the British Invasion, he helped jolt Broadway from its 1980s sleepiness and reinvigorate a musical theatre too often struggled under the weight of skyrocketing ticket prices and languishing creativity. (Thank goodness times have changed!) At several points, he even had three musicals running on Broadway simultaneously - an impressive feat by any standard.”
“…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)!”
“Jones has diluted much of the novel's story into watery dourness, suggesting rather than capturing the convoluted lives of the souls at the play's center.”
“But there's no lack of overwrought, pop-opera fixtures: Marian's determined "All for Laura," despite Friedman's fiery rendition, is an anonymous showcase number for any steely female star; "I Believe My Heart" is a syrupy duet of almost deadening obviousness; Walter's second-act "Evermore Without You" is a power ballad so firmly entrenched in Lloyd Webber's singular oeuvre that it would rightly be called derivative if conceived of by anyone else. David Cullen's orchestrations and emphatic conducting by Simon Lee do little to add distinctiveness to the score.”
“Friedman and Paice, troopers both, are essentially indistinguishable but for their hair color, though Friedman makes more of her stage time, plowing through her role with a conviction that's admirable but never completely proves why she's the toast of West End musicals.”
“If Italian music halls exist, Ball would be right at home in one - his performance is ridiculous but restrained, free of the comic histrionics that could too easily infect a role so shticky that its big second-act showpiece climaxes with the help of a live white rat. Practically everyone else, unfortunately including the ever-reliable Walter Charles as Laura and Marian's crotchety uncle, tends to fade into the background.”
“…the overriding (okay, only) visual concept is the use of projected scenery. 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.”
“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.”
Talkin’ Broadway – Matthew Murray
“The world's first pre-Raphaelite musical has arrived on Broadway. (Not that anyone has been clamoring for one -- at least, not since the 1870s.)”
“Dudley wanted the look of lush natural backgrounds and ornate interiors against which scenes of plummy inspiration could be played. With the help of lighting designer Paul Pyant, he got it right in the motion-sickness-inducing projections that provide the background for the musical.”
In Collins's capable and cagey hands, the narrative… is irresistible. … Its suspense is principally engendered by the mysterious woman in white and the secret she insists that she keeps; but perhaps its greatest attraction to modern readers is Marian, whom Collins depicts as an intelligent and perceptive woman.”
While book writer Jones (Humble Boy) sticks to the Victorian notions of marriageable women, she doesn't hew to Collins's brainy Marian... Marian's high I.Q. may not have seemed the right stuff for this tuner, but that aspect of the book isn't all that's been lost.”
“Left for audiences to grapple with is a tepid watering-down of the plot, and Lloyd Webber's music does little or nothing to elevate the proceedings. The composer almost seems to have tired of his own work; every so often, he unfurls a colorful banner of melody but doesn't sustain it.”
“Only Ball, outfitted in a fat suit that makes him look like a Toby mug, keeps his vocal counsel; partly for that reason, he's the most appealing figure on hand. Friedman might have been able to do better had the Marian she's been asked to embody possessed the acumen of Collins's Marian.”
“When Kenneth Tynan reviewed Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song, he famously deplored it as "a world of woozy song." Not since then has a musical earned that description so completely as Lloyd Webber's attempt to foist his pre-Raphaelite fantasia upon a William Dudley-assailed public.”
Theater Mania – David Finkle
“Are we watching a Broadway show or playing Myst? There are times during The Woman in White, whose sets consist almost entirely of curved white walls upon which designer William Dudley projects a dizzying array of computer-animated backdrops, when an audience might wish they had a keypad or a joystick to speed things along, or choose to see one character more and others less. Instead this would-be Gothic mystery, based on Wilkie Collins' baroquely plotted Victorian page-turner, is planted firmly in a world with its own rules of tempo, mood and overheated narrative logic, a place somewhere between operetta and theme park.”
“In other words, the lordly peerage of composer/impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Lloyd Webberland has been terra incognita on Broadway for some time now… so it makes a fascinating exercise to see how much of the landscape has changed, and how much has not, in this gold-plated realm. Yes, Lord Lloyd Webber is now regularly plundering less from Puccini or Richard Rodgers than from his own catalogue. He still has an unmistakably tin-eared way with through-sung recitative, and the uncanny knack of making every lyricist he works with… sound softheaded and fatuous. He still manufactures ear candy like some kind of musical Willy Wonka, and some of it still tastes genuinely sweet when it's not giving us a sugar headache.”
“What's changed? … some of the cobwebs and clutter seem to have cleared from Lloyd Webber's familiar pop-opera shtick. The harmonies are more foursquare and hymnlike than ever, the go-for-the-gut arias huger and more sweeping, the comic fillips (such as they are) more pin-precise.”
“The fierce, unflappable Friedman, making her Broadway debut, … lends her conviction to even the show's silliest moments. At one point, her utter commitment to the play's fiction actually gets a laugh: when she's prowling on a window ledge and grasps at a slide-projected ornament on the building's side.”
“Charlotte Jones' libretto makes Collins' narrative more convoluted than mysterious, while Trevor Nunn's direction, big on stage fog and spooky lighting effects… hasn't a single scary moment. The appearances of the title character (Angela Christian) seem impish and arbitrary, and the romance that blossoms between Laura and a visiting tutor, Walter (Adam Brazier), spawns a series of dutifully ardent duets. As with Phantom's Raoul and Christine, the ostensible romantic leads are the dullest figures onstage.”
“There' s a final unintentional titter at a climactic special effect, toward which all the projected animation has been inevitably leading. I shouldn't reveal it, though I will say it reminded me more of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride than anything from the Gothic canon. And that's the news from Lloyd Webberland: He may have refined and clarified his palate, but he's still essentially offering a feast of cheese and syrup.”
Broadway.Com – Rob Kendt
Next Broadway Musical opening – The Color Purple – 1st December
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics by David Zippel
Book by Charlotte Jones
Directed by Trevor Nunn
[Broadway version of original 2005 London production]
Opened 17th November 2005
Extracts from various reviewers:
“In a way, it's hard to not feel sorry for Andrew Lloyd Webber. As unofficial head of the British Invasion, he helped jolt Broadway from its 1980s sleepiness and reinvigorate a musical theatre too often struggled under the weight of skyrocketing ticket prices and languishing creativity. (Thank goodness times have changed!) At several points, he even had three musicals running on Broadway simultaneously - an impressive feat by any standard.”
“…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)!”
“Jones has diluted much of the novel's story into watery dourness, suggesting rather than capturing the convoluted lives of the souls at the play's center.”
“But there's no lack of overwrought, pop-opera fixtures: Marian's determined "All for Laura," despite Friedman's fiery rendition, is an anonymous showcase number for any steely female star; "I Believe My Heart" is a syrupy duet of almost deadening obviousness; Walter's second-act "Evermore Without You" is a power ballad so firmly entrenched in Lloyd Webber's singular oeuvre that it would rightly be called derivative if conceived of by anyone else. David Cullen's orchestrations and emphatic conducting by Simon Lee do little to add distinctiveness to the score.”
“Friedman and Paice, troopers both, are essentially indistinguishable but for their hair color, though Friedman makes more of her stage time, plowing through her role with a conviction that's admirable but never completely proves why she's the toast of West End musicals.”
“If Italian music halls exist, Ball would be right at home in one - his performance is ridiculous but restrained, free of the comic histrionics that could too easily infect a role so shticky that its big second-act showpiece climaxes with the help of a live white rat. Practically everyone else, unfortunately including the ever-reliable Walter Charles as Laura and Marian's crotchety uncle, tends to fade into the background.”
“…the overriding (okay, only) visual concept is the use of projected scenery. 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.”
“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.”
Talkin’ Broadway – Matthew Murray
“The world's first pre-Raphaelite musical has arrived on Broadway. (Not that anyone has been clamoring for one -- at least, not since the 1870s.)”
“Dudley wanted the look of lush natural backgrounds and ornate interiors against which scenes of plummy inspiration could be played. With the help of lighting designer Paul Pyant, he got it right in the motion-sickness-inducing projections that provide the background for the musical.”
In Collins's capable and cagey hands, the narrative… is irresistible. … Its suspense is principally engendered by the mysterious woman in white and the secret she insists that she keeps; but perhaps its greatest attraction to modern readers is Marian, whom Collins depicts as an intelligent and perceptive woman.”
While book writer Jones (Humble Boy) sticks to the Victorian notions of marriageable women, she doesn't hew to Collins's brainy Marian... Marian's high I.Q. may not have seemed the right stuff for this tuner, but that aspect of the book isn't all that's been lost.”
“Left for audiences to grapple with is a tepid watering-down of the plot, and Lloyd Webber's music does little or nothing to elevate the proceedings. The composer almost seems to have tired of his own work; every so often, he unfurls a colorful banner of melody but doesn't sustain it.”
“Only Ball, outfitted in a fat suit that makes him look like a Toby mug, keeps his vocal counsel; partly for that reason, he's the most appealing figure on hand. Friedman might have been able to do better had the Marian she's been asked to embody possessed the acumen of Collins's Marian.”
“When Kenneth Tynan reviewed Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song, he famously deplored it as "a world of woozy song." Not since then has a musical earned that description so completely as Lloyd Webber's attempt to foist his pre-Raphaelite fantasia upon a William Dudley-assailed public.”
Theater Mania – David Finkle
“Are we watching a Broadway show or playing Myst? There are times during The Woman in White, whose sets consist almost entirely of curved white walls upon which designer William Dudley projects a dizzying array of computer-animated backdrops, when an audience might wish they had a keypad or a joystick to speed things along, or choose to see one character more and others less. Instead this would-be Gothic mystery, based on Wilkie Collins' baroquely plotted Victorian page-turner, is planted firmly in a world with its own rules of tempo, mood and overheated narrative logic, a place somewhere between operetta and theme park.”
“In other words, the lordly peerage of composer/impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Lloyd Webberland has been terra incognita on Broadway for some time now… so it makes a fascinating exercise to see how much of the landscape has changed, and how much has not, in this gold-plated realm. Yes, Lord Lloyd Webber is now regularly plundering less from Puccini or Richard Rodgers than from his own catalogue. He still has an unmistakably tin-eared way with through-sung recitative, and the uncanny knack of making every lyricist he works with… sound softheaded and fatuous. He still manufactures ear candy like some kind of musical Willy Wonka, and some of it still tastes genuinely sweet when it's not giving us a sugar headache.”
“What's changed? … some of the cobwebs and clutter seem to have cleared from Lloyd Webber's familiar pop-opera shtick. The harmonies are more foursquare and hymnlike than ever, the go-for-the-gut arias huger and more sweeping, the comic fillips (such as they are) more pin-precise.”
“The fierce, unflappable Friedman, making her Broadway debut, … lends her conviction to even the show's silliest moments. At one point, her utter commitment to the play's fiction actually gets a laugh: when she's prowling on a window ledge and grasps at a slide-projected ornament on the building's side.”
“Charlotte Jones' libretto makes Collins' narrative more convoluted than mysterious, while Trevor Nunn's direction, big on stage fog and spooky lighting effects… hasn't a single scary moment. The appearances of the title character (Angela Christian) seem impish and arbitrary, and the romance that blossoms between Laura and a visiting tutor, Walter (Adam Brazier), spawns a series of dutifully ardent duets. As with Phantom's Raoul and Christine, the ostensible romantic leads are the dullest figures onstage.”
“There' s a final unintentional titter at a climactic special effect, toward which all the projected animation has been inevitably leading. I shouldn't reveal it, though I will say it reminded me more of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride than anything from the Gothic canon. And that's the news from Lloyd Webberland: He may have refined and clarified his palate, but he's still essentially offering a feast of cheese and syrup.”
Broadway.Com – Rob Kendt
Next Broadway Musical opening – The Color Purple – 1st December