Word: nicks
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...NICK & NORA. Remember that lovable Asta? Well, the only new American musical of the 1991-92 Broadway season, based on the Thin Man movies, is quite a dog itself...
...NICK & NORA Music by Charles Strouse; Lyrics by Richard Maltby...
...depressingly symbolic. Five years and more in the making, derived from the beloved Thin Man movies, shaped by creators whose credits range from Gypsy and West Side Story through Applause and Annie to Miss Saigon, cast with three Tony Award winners and designed by two more, Nick & Nora should have absolutely everything going for it. But the show that opens on Broadway this week is a crashing bore -- cranky and arbitrary as a love story, tedious and pointless as a murder mystery, ham-handed as comedy, clubfooted as dance, at best wanly pleasant as music. A few scenes work, some...
...pity for everyone involved, and for the American theater. As the cost of Broadway production soars and the number of new shows per season plummets, each arrival becomes precious -- especially the handful of big musicals, the Great White Way's economic mainstay and artistic signature. The producers of Nick & Nora blamed Broadway economics for their decision to cancel out-of-town tryouts. Instead the show played a near record nine weeks of in-town previews at full prices, prompting New York City's consumer- protection department to promulgate new rules for theater advertising. During that time, songs were scrapped...
...turns out to have been the usual shifting of deck chairs on the Titanic. Writer-director Arthur Laurents gave his plot not just one hook but two: the murder of a female bookkeeper with a surprisingly glamorous set of associates and the marital troubles of Nick and Nora Charles (Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason), the detectives who are on the case. But Laurents seems to have had trouble taking either half of the story seriously. The mystery investigation involves a series of pantomime flashbacks, each sillier-looking than the one before. The title characters are written so carelessly that...