Word: broadway
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...Anne Rice's novels) that spans a couple of hundred years and loses us at about year 65, and induce Elton John to write a score that (except for one lively rock number in the second act, in which a tween-age vampire cries for ?More?) sounds instinguishable from Broadway's usual power-pop Muzak? Lestat is a predictable bore, sometimes a laughable one. Only redeeming feature: it prompts some retrospective kind thoughts for two previous vampire musicals - Jim Steinman's Dance of the Vampires and Frank Wildhorn's Dracula, both of which had more going for them...
...Wedding Singer This musical version of the Adam Sandler movie looks like nothing so much as one of Broadway's ubiquitous jukebox musicals ? in which a cheesy, tongue-in-cheek story is draped with old pop hits from Elvis or the Beach Boys. Except that this time someone has written new songs, which kind of defeats the purpose. The show winks at the audience so relentlessly, with references to ?80s icons from Flashdance to Mr. T, that eventually you just tune out. Some good tunes would have helped, but the score (by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin) is forgettable, like...
...Clifford Odets' leftwing '30s drama about the struggles of a Bronx family in the depths of the Depression made a big impact on me during my English major days and in one previous staging I've seen. But I was let down by this slack, erratically acted Broadway production, which was (again) unaccountably hailed by the critics. I'll buy Zoe Wanamaker as the strong-willed matriarch, but the overrated Mark Ruffalo is simply grating as the gigolo next door, and the estimable Ben Gazzara doesn't seem to have the energy to make much out of the Marxist grandpa...
...left out Julia Roberts, making her Broadway debut in Three Days of Rain, but the poor girl has had enough grief from the critics - not to mention a Tony snub. She's too stiff, and her Southern accent isn't even very good, but the real shame is how tinny Richard Greenberg's once-intriguing play now seems...
...this spoofy musical. Then its cheery, self-mocking inventiveness wins you over. A lonely-guy theater buff (played by co-writer Bob Martin) puts on his LP of a fictional 1928 musical, and, faster than you can say Flo Ziegfeld, it materializes in his apartment. There's a Broadway diva, a scheming producer, gooey love songs and stock comic sidekicks. Best of all, there's the sensational Sutton Foster, who, in one knockout number, spins plates, does cartwheels and pulls out every other stop just to prove, as she sings, "I don't wanna show...