Review Roundup: ROAD SHOW at Menier Chocolate Factory

Following on from the Menier Chocolate Factory's acclaimed productions of Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music, Stephen Sondheim's latest musical, Road Show opened last night, July 6. This production is directed and designed by the Tony Award Winning John Doyle and features David Bedella, Michael Jibson, Jon Robyns, Gillian Bevan and Glyn Kerslake.

Set in the early part of the twentieth-century, Road Show tells the true boom-and-bust story of Addison Mizner and his fast-talking brother Wilson, two of the most colourful and outrageous fortune seekers in American history.

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Road Show played The Public Theater in 2008. New York Magazine described the musical as "a boisterous picaresque about two brothers flimflamming their way from the Yukon to Boca Raton at the turn of the 20th century." For tickets, visit: www.menierchocolatefactory.com

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: Musically, this is not as layered and complex as a lot of Sondheim's work, and a large portion of the lyrics, though flecked with sardonic touches, prove uncharacteristically straightforward. But there's much to admire: this may be minor Sondheim, too dense with self-quotation, yet it is performed with sparkle.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: John Doyle's production, played on a traverse stage, is a model of integrated activity in which Addison's global travels are evoked through the simplest props and placards. David Bedella also exudes the right raffish charisma as Wilson, whom Anita Loos described as "America's most fascinating outlaw", and Michael Jibson is a perfect foil as the architecture-loving Addison. What we are left with is an intimate epic that, while giving enormous pleasure, aspires to be nothing less than a state-of-the-nation musical.

Michael Coveney, Whatsonstage: Even though, for all the musical invention and spirited performance, it still fails to hang together in any sort of dramatic fashion, as a piece of musical theatre machinery it's just fine and dandy: a streamlined hybrid of the original Wise Guys, workshopped by Sam Mendes in 1999, the Hal Prince production of Bounce that belly-flopped in Washington in 2003, and Doyle's own New York version, at The Public Theater, three years ago, under this title.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: The recurring visual motifs are wads of greenbacks flung into the air and a death-bed whirled around like a stage-within-a-stage. The latter eventually becomes the site for a touching gay love song, "The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened" between Addison and a handsome poor little rich kid (a spot-on Jon Robyns) who will eventually be horrified by Wilson's cocaine-fuelled megalomania.

Mark Shenton, The Stage: The rich, varied and tuneful score is as audacious and complex as any Sondheim has ever written, but although it pulls together the competing strands of their lives to give their stories some dramatic coherence, it still proves difficult for the show to provide more than a cursory biographical overview. But John Doyle - following in the footsteps of Sam Mendes and Hal Prince who respectively directed the earlier incarnations of Wise Guys and Bounce - brings a seamless fluidity to it, even if the repeated motif of dollar notes being strewn over the stage soon tires.

Photo Credit: Catherine Ashmore