Review Roundup: O'Hara & Pasquale-Led FAR FROM HEAVEN

Due to popular demand, Playwrights Horizons' World Premiere production of the eagerly-awaited new musical Far From Heaven will now play an additional week through Sunday, July 7. FAR FROM HEAVEN features a book by Tony Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain, the current The Assembled Parties), music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel (Grey Gardens at PH and on Broadway, Finding Neverland) and lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie (Grey Gardens at PH and on Broadway, The Grapes of Wrath, Finding Neverland). The production is choreographed by Alex Sanchez (Giant, Fiorello!) and directed by three-time Tony Award nominee Michael Greif (Grey Gardens at PH and on Broadway; Rent, Next to Normal, Giant).

The musical is based on the Focus Features/Vulcan Productions motion picture Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes. The production has an Opening Night set for Sunday, June 2 at 7PM at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street).

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, New York Times: When Kelli O'Hara sings the word "garden," an arid landscape blossoms into lushness. This poetic note is sounded halfway through the first act of the generally prosy new musical "Far From Heaven,"which opened on Sunday night at Playwrights Horizons. And all your senses come to attention, the way they do on one of those days when an early, full-blown spring seems to have broken through winter without warning.

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: While Greenberg's book sticks close to Haynes' script, MichaelGreif's production aims to find theatrical equivalents for the movie's appropriation of stylized screen tropes to expose complex emotional truths. Greenberg has expanded upon the modern art exhibition scene from the film, adding commentary about how every image - even the most abstract - is open to individual interpretation based on personal experience. Arguably the production's least successful stroke is adopting that idea as its design cue.

Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly: Scott Frankel's score (with lyrics by Michael Korie) is full of pleasant, meandering melodies and measured wordplay. But in a great musical, the mixture of song and story creates alchemical fireworks. In a good one, the two elevate each other. In Far From Heaven, they feel as uneasily integrated as the fractured black, white, gay, and straight communities of 1950s Hartford, Conn. - struggling just to coexist.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press: A luminous O'Hara leads the picture-perfect, lilting opening number, "Autumn in Connecticut," as housewife Cathy Whitaker happily sings about her wonderful life and the beauty all around her. In subtle contrast, her African-American housekeeper/nanny, Sybil (a skillful performance by Quincy Tyler Bernstine) trudges back and forth across the stage as she performs her job.

Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg: Scott Frankel's bombastic music precludes dramatic tension and Michael Korie's lyrics tend to the banal. The exceptions are two deeply-felt duets for Cathy and Raymond -- "Miro" in Act I and "A Picture in Your Mind" in Act II. And Frank's confession to Cathy, when it does come in "I Never Knew," is brutal: He doesn't gloss the fact that he's found what marriage to her could never provide.

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: Despite snags in the material, the cast delivers, and Catherine Zuber's period costumes are luscious. It's O'Hara's show - the role of Cathy was tailored to her voice and talent - and the four-time Tony nominee is splendid. If the rest of the production was more heavenly, her Cathy would leave you sighing.

Linda Winer, Newsday: Clearly, ambitions are bigger than this sold-out run for the show, created by most of the same team that first opened the wildly smart and eccentric "Grey Gardens" in this theater seven years ago. Improvements were made before that one moved to Broadway. Can adjustments bring "Far From Heaven" closer to Broadway, too?

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: The score is more deft at evoking the superficial order of the '50s and the turmoil and regrets roiling beneath. One song in particular, "Tuesdays, Thursdays," captures Cathy's disillusion as she looks back on her perfect world. "Promises I put my faith in," she sings, her heart crumbling. "Every minute every day/Gone."

Matt Windman, amNY: One can't help but wonder if "Far from Heaven" will transfer to Broadway. There hasn't been a score like this there since "The Light in the Piazza" in 2005. If there is no place for it there, it is Broadway's loss and a chilling reminder of its commercial limitations.

Scott Brown, Vulture: Some heart remains, though, thanks primarily to O'Hara and Pasquale, whose sincerity and dedication to these characters pays off. (Actors should always default to sincerity; the same rule, however, does not apply to writers and directors.) Johnson turns in a fine performance, but he reads a little young - and not in a way that delivers the Rock Hudson-Jane Wyman frisson I suspect the creative team was aiming for. Nothing kindles between him and O'Hara. The repression just doesn't press.

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