Image Credit: Joan Marcus
Broadway revved up for the Tonys this week with four high profile openings — and, sadly, one major close. Matthew Lombardo’s High, featuring Kathleen Turner as a recovering alcoholic-turned-nun, played one official performance Tuesday night before producers announced that it would have its final curtain call this Sunday. As for the other three shows — film-to-stage transfer Sister Act, Lewis Carroll update Wonderland, and London import Jerusalem — we saw, and reviewed, them all. Here are the highlights:
Sister Act: EW stage Thom Geier finds this musical adaptation of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy “such a lark.” He rates the production a B+, and praises star Patina Miller, whom he writes “is blessed with a megawatt personality, terrific comic timing, and a heaven-sent soprano.”
Wonderland: The noisy, muddled update of Alice’s classic adventures earned a C- from writer Melissa Rose Bernardo. “It’s actually a crashing bore,” she warns, “from its clunky New York City-set beginning to its cliched happily-ever-after finish.”
Jerusalem: EW film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gives the UK-set drama about a modern day middle-aged pied piper and his young hangers-on an A, praising its “furious intelligence and exasperated tenderness that transcends the boundaries of its English content.” “The Broadway theatergoer leaves the show,” she raves, “blinking with wonderment.”
Those reviews are all pretty right on.
Lisa Schwarzbaum is such a pretentious, phony blowhard, I find it hard to read her reviews with a straight face.
Sister Act was a disappointment. Yes, the acting is great, and Miller is a worthy sucessor to Goldberg’s indelible performance. but the songs are so generic, such fake gospel-soaring-inspirational pablum. The film’s music was absolutely brilliant in how well it worked. Why couldn’t they just keep all those wonderful Motown hits?
High was like an episode of ‘Law and Order’ on steroids. The creators must have been saying: What’s the worst possible scenario we can think of to put this kid in? It left a bad taste in my mouth. Although, Kathleen Turner was pretty amazing in her role.
Go see Priscilla Queen of the Desert… we loved it!
Wonderland was not that bad. Since when is happily ever after a bad thing…especially for a family show? The music is amazing and the performances were stellar. Yes, the book needs work, but it wasn’t THAT bad
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