Word: witnesses
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...card. The saving grace is Joan Allen in the title role. Winner of a Tony Award last year in Burn This, Allen becomes a strong contender to repeat with a performance that displays much the same virtues: an inviting vulnerability, an approach to romance simultaneously fragile and fearless, a wit at once acerbic and diffident. While Wasserstein (Isn't It Romantic?) has written mostly whiny and self-congratulatory cliches for the surrounding characters, she has given Heidi -- or Allen has found -- a complex, self-aware and poignant life...
...best lines in the play. Donning the guise of a dozen different rogues, Thomson acts in true Rodney Dangerfield fashion, claiming he doesn't get any respect as the resident commoner. Thomson, however, has no problems gaining the audience's respect. With his sassy sarcasm and bemused wit he has the audience at his feet...
...episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents. Starlight spangles a lunar beach as the baron's ship drifts ashore for his interview with an Italianate creature (Robin Williams, unbilled and hilarious) who identifies himself as "the King of Everything -- Rei di Tutto. But you may call me Ray." The king's body is detachable from his head, which provokes schizophrenia of celestial proportions...
Clearly, more is riding on this show than a mere $8 million. For Jerome Robbins' Broadway is a sacred remnant of the musical at its mid-century peak -- a fusion of wit, precision, melody and high spirits -- that an aging generation of theater lovers miss terribly and want back. "We are in an era of high school production numbers and arias set to a backbeat," says Jule Styne, who wrote songs for five Robbins musicals. "A lot of people will see this show and realize what they've missed." Co-producer Emanuel Azenberg must hope so too. "Shows that have...
...striking singer in the entire company. The most problematic is Robert + La Fosse, a New York City Ballet star who moves gloriously but whose facial expression seems limited to a scowl and a simpering grin. Jason Alexander, who serves as narrator and plays seven characters, has wit, charm and the requisite razzmatazz -- his parts in Forum and Fiddler were played by Zero Mostel -- but lacks the star attribute of effortless ease. Yet if Robbins has not unearthed the treasure trove that many hoped for, he still offers a richly illuminated manuscript from the book of Broadway's beloved past...