SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#0SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 2:12am
Inspired by another thread, I decided to pull together a bunch of quotes by the most hateful, nastiest, meanest, racist, sexist, homophobic critic in the history of the American Theatre -- New York Magazine's curmudgeonly John Simon. He's belittled, dismissed and panned most of the great (and not-so-great) stage artists of the last half of a century to the point where it's almost a rite of passage for any up-and-comng performer, writer, director, designer etc to get "Simonized" on the way up the ladder to success.
New York Mag's archives only go back to 1998, so these excepts of his reviews are only from the last 6 years (he's been reviewing for many, many decades, though -- in one review of a revival of Streetcar from a few years back, he waxed poetic about the original 1947 production that he saw and remembered in detail).
I compiled quotes until I just couldn't take it anymore -- he's a brilliant writer, to be sure, but a bitter, horrible human being and it's impossible to read too many of his reviews without getting more than a little quesy:
The Bubbly Black Girl 7/10/2000
"Show-biz autobiographies have become just about the dreariest nonentertainments visited on us. They are even more alike than Tolstoy's spurned happy families. Although Kirsten Childs has denied that The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin is autobiography, a mere reading of her program bio gives the lie to that, her accomplishments being roles in four musicals and one movie. She has received five major awards for this project, for which she wrote book, music, and lyrics. And indeed, she is quite literally a triple threat, being equally untalented at all three."
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Jesus Christ Superstar 5/1/2000
"Don't assume you have seen the worst before experiencing the latest revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, a production so stillborn I defy God himself to resurrect it. The Australian director Gale Edwards, aiming the gospel story at young audiences, comes up with part Godspell, part Middle East Side Story. The time is mainly today, plus some Fascist Italy, nastily blood-smeared no-period Jews, East Village kids as apostles, and a Las Vegas Herod. The set is the abandoned pillars of a bridge connected by a freight elevator carrying actors up and down, while others keep climbing those pillars.
Judas is a spike-haired, black-leather blond, Mary Magdalene a vaguely biblical trollop, and Jesus a sandaled Armani Exchange model. As Glenn Carter plays him, he is practicing for a more important appearance at Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Only Tony Vincent's Judas shows both energy and vocal prowess, but why does he come back after hanging himself? Could the Almighty have mistaken him for Jesus? As Herod, Paul Kandel is a decrepit Miss America Pageant host reduced to camping it up in Vegas; Siegfried and Roy would consider his act de trop.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's orchestrations of his own music, staggering between ear-blasting and barely audible, attest to advanced self-hatred. Anthony Van Laast's choreography tries to be inconspicuous, but unfortunately does not succeed. Except for torturing Jesus more than necessary, and having him repeatedly roll across the floor like a human mop, surrounded by paparazzi and redundantly projected onto a giant screen, Gale Edwards's direction contributes little. The set designer's chief invention is a crucifix made of enough light bulbs to blind an entire audience to all but the worthlessness of this revival."
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The Ride Down Mt. Morgan 4/24/2000
"The bad is compounded by Patrick Stewart in the lead. One of the hammiest and (except in the eyes of Trekkies) most uncharismatic actors, Stewart struts, gloats, mugs, delivers his lines as if from a revivalist's pulpit, and clobbers us with his charmlessness and the obtuseness of those who recklessly, Treklessly star him"
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Aida 4/10/2000
"Elton John has concocted a score wherein everything sounds the same -- i.e., tuneless, without even enough theatrical savvy to make the particular tunelessness appropriate to the character who mouths it. For the first-act finale, though, he reached for something grander, "The Gods Love Nubia," a sort of hymn or anthem for Aida and her fellow Nubian slaves in an Egyptian internment camp, on whose evidence the gods don't give an old-fashioned rap for Nubia. The arrangers and orchestrators -- Paul Bogaev (who also conducts), Steve Margoshes, and Guy Babylon (slightly east of Suez) -- have supplied Sir Elton's music with a disco-from-hell beat that manages to make it, to coin a phrase, worse than it sounds. Tim Rice's lyrics, some of which I tried to take down but my hand balked, wallow, perfectly matched, in the same trough as the tunes.
Aida is Heather Headley, ex-lioness from The Lion King a tall, angular young woman whose acting consists of feral scowls, whose speaking voice is an ominous growl, and whose singing is a confrontational blend of bellowing and caterwauling. It appears that you can take the girl out of The Lion King but not the lioness out of the girl.
The Radames, Adam Pascal (formerly of Rent), boasts of not having had a single singing or acting lesson, which proves incontestable, and that he has ignored the Puccini and Verdi originals so as not to "taint his ideas" -- an unnecessary precaution, as he seems free from anything resembling thought. The supporting players, who might have made modest contributions, abstained -- perhaps from an excess of modesty.......
It is rumored that the true inspiration for Aida was Disney's search for an excuse to market a black doll. If it does not make Hadleyan sounds to frighten little children, it should be a huge success."
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The Torchbearers 3/13/2000
"as the supposedly piss-elegant Huxley Hossefrosse, Don Mayo gives the phrase "hold the mayo" a whole new meaning."
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Two Sisters and a Piano 3/6/2000
"When, some years ago, I saw Nilo Cruz's Dancing on Her Knees at the Public, it felt like the worst play ever. Cruz's latest, Two Sisters and a Piano, again at the Public, is a step forward; it feels like the second-worst play ever: the clumsiest, often unbelievable, linguistically barren, and generally derivative melodrama. If the subject were not Castro's Cuba, Cruz not a Cuban-American, and affirmative action not alive and well in the theater, this claptrap would never have been mounted.
It is passably acted by Adriana Sevan, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Gary Perez, but Paul Calderon, despite his name, is much more African-American than Hispanic. The fumbling director, Loretta Greco, absurdly has the cast speak with Spanish accents; Robert Brill's set, even on a shoestring, could have been less wretched. At least it is on a par with Nilo Cruz's writing."
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Look Back In Anger 11/1/1999 (which he admits leaving at intermission, yet still filed a review)
"Reg Rogers has his uses in some roles, but not as a leading man whose appeal must mitigate his obstreperousness. Where Jimmy should be taut and aquiver, Rogers is a crazed Jack-in-the-box, his excessive and exaggerated outbursts unrelieved by charm. There is something flabby and grotesque about him, his face, in intense moments, drooping into expressions that look painfully like stupidity. As Alison's trouble-making friend, Helena, Angelina Phillips contributes her own brand of annoying smugness. Enid Graham, as Alison, looks confoundedly British but, like the others, manages the accent only with certain intermittencies. The set by Narelle Sissons, a designer whose chief virtue appears to be cost-saving, is wrong in more ways than I can enumerate, and Jo Bonney's staging is, when not overheated, pedestrian."
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Tartuffe 9/6/1999
"I have had my bad times at the Shakespeare Festival in Central Park: I have been bored, annoyed, disgruntled, and exasperated. But it remained for Mark Brokaw's production of Tartuffe to make me leave at intermission disgusted. Molière wrote a high comedy in exquisite verse; Richard Wilbur magically transmuted it into equally lovely English dramatic poetry. What Brokaw, who has shown great skill with contemporary plays both comic and serious, gives us is the lowest kind of farce, performed by actors, some of whom can do much better, carrying on like vulgar mountebanks, if not, worse yet, schoolchildren imitating vulgar mountebanks.
Every conceivable offense against wit, style, taste, and common sense is perpetrated here in the rankest fashion, with a lack of period sense, despite the period costumes, that only church-mouse-poor judgment can muster.......
The ingénue, Mariane, is played by Danielle Ferland, who has a chubby, pug-nosed face and a high-pitched, faintly Dogpatchy voice, and outpouts a pouter pigeon. As the smart, witty maid, Dorine, Mary Testa has an even shriller voice with which to belabor our hearing, turning our eardrums into blackboards across which she runs her words like fingernails. She hams for all her girth is worth, rolls her eyes like runaway billiard balls, and gives new dimensions to the notion of obnoxiousness........
Christopher Duva, as Valère, Mariane's lover, seems to have just drifted in from the nearest gay bar, and often sulks and postures like a constipated gazelle. Charles Kimbrough plays Orgon as a senescent halfwit, with a ludicrously mincing walk, a preposterous puppet-show voice, and a gaze that cannot quite choose between squinty and bug-eyed. Most embarrassing is Dylan Baker's Tartuffe, leering and stridulous, oozing smarminess too rancid to fool anyone at Orgon and comic-book lechery at Elmire that should reduce any woman to giggles.........
Tawdry yet simplistic costumes by Jess Goldstein, adequate but unresourceful décor by Riccardo Hernández (an eavesdropper must emerge from an improbable trapdoor), and overamplified pseudo-baroque music by John Gromada compete for our inattention. Brokaw's staging does the rest. Only Dana Ivey, as the old scold Pernelle, is persuasive, so that a character whose departure we can hardly wait for in other productions here leaves all too soon, taking Molière with her........"
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Taming of the Shrew 7/19/1999
"Yet as Katherina, the wonderful Allison Janney is wrenchingly miscast. Looking most of the time like Janet Reno on a bad-hair day, and acting as sexy, she makes Petruchio's motives seem purely venal."
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bash 7/12/1999
"The best work comes from Calista Flockhart, whose timings and inflections are unerringly on target, no matter what preposterous demands are inflicted on her. Still, if your reason for going is not so much relish of nastiness as wanting to see Ally McBeal in the flesh, be forewarned: There is very little flesh on dem bones."
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Ain't Nothin But The Blues 5/17/1999
"I was particularly taken with the two white, middle-aged, middle-class women behind me clapping after every number like crazy, usually also whooping like unhinged cranes, and shouting out "Oh, yeah!" to prove themselves possessors of soul. Talking to a savvy record-company publicist, I found that he, too, left after the first half. We racked our brains for someone who stayed on for the second to enlighten us about it. He finally came up with somebody, but she also loved the first half, which, we felt, disqualified her. Rabid p.c. is alive and well at Lincoln Center."
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Cider House Rules 5/17/1999
"Some of the others also squeeze out a bit from their fragmented roles, but I have a problem with Jillian Armenante. It may well be that Irving wrote Melony as a frightening freak -- he revels in creepiness and brutality -- but it is one thing to read about such a thing and quite another to have one's nose rubbed in it."
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Annie Get Your Gun 3/15/1999
"Miss Peters, however, is petite, cute, and cuddly, just an iota short (or long) of JonBenet Ramsey."
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Mineola Twins 3/1/1999
"Paula Vogel's not-quite-new The Mineola Twins (originally The Minnesota Twins) is neither top- nor bottom-drawer Vogel, though it is written in good part from her drawers. The mind and the crotch have harmoniously collaborated in this her most openly lesbian play, and what emerges is more than a campy piece in which three women play six parts, three of them male......
Joe Mantello, a passable actor, is rapidly developing into an unsurpassable director of a type of (usually homosexual) comedy, to which he brings steady sophistication, resourcefulness, and effervescence."
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The Misanthrope 3/1/1999
"It was probably a coup to secure Uma Thurman for Jennifer, and though she looks almost as good as Nicole Kidman, she bares even less, except for a certain lack of talent."
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You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown 2/15/1999
"The crowning fiasco, however, is the Charlie of Anthony Rapp. In the vastly overrated Rent, he was, in my view, the greatest irritant, but he was doubtless cast here as bait for the Rent fans. His straining to portray a lovable loser only emphasizes his basic smarminess. Hard as it is to define charm, I can define its opposite in two words: Anthony Rapp."
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The Captain's Tiger 2/1/1999
"So, you think you know what boredom in the theater is? You once saw two Frank Wildhorn musicals in one day? Well, yes; you do get points for that. You've sat through the entire Texas Trilogy in rapid, which is to say slow, sequence? Not bad, but still smallish potatoes. You spent a day at the Chinese opera? I feel for you, but you still have a way to go.
Tell me, however, that you have sat through the intermissionless 100 minutes of Athol Fugard's latest, The Captain's Tiger, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and I'll give you every drop of my sympathy, commiseration, and condolence, plus, if it were mine to give, the Purple Heart. You have drained the bitter cup to the dregs.
The end of apartheid may have brought happiness to multitudes, but for one man it spelled pure disaster. Alas, poor Athol! It took away what was his one subject -- a mighty one, to be sure, from which he wrested endless, often successful, variations. But apartheid apart, the man is reduced to purveying ditch water.......
Except for a few scattered crates and a blue-green backdrop, there is no set. Except for two dresses and a nightgown for Betty, there are no costumes. And except for 100 minutes of trivial and pointless palaver, there is no play.....
Fugard the director tries to compensate for Fugard the writer by goosing his cast into jigging (the usual sense) and bopping. All honor to Tony Todd as Donkeyman for relative underplaying. Felicity Jones has duly learned the right accent but, no doubt under heavy prodding, overacts relentlessly. Fugard the actor is determined to turn his country singlehandedly into a chief exporter of ham. He reads every line as if it had been given to him on Mt. Sinai by a burning bush, and capers about like an old satyr refusing to face that his nymph-chasing days are over."
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The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told 1/11/1999
"Worse yet is Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, which must have begun as a smartass idea a smarter person would have promptly dropped........The problem is not that the play is aimed almost exclusively at homosexuals, but that it is aimed at audiences, gay and straight, of the lowest common denominator."
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Swan Lake 10/19/1998
"The great prima ballerina Galina Ulanova described Swan Lake as "the most beautiful ballet you could imagine." But could you also imagine it as a danced homosexual melodrama with semi-nude male swans, a seedy nightclub scene, the outing of a closeted homosexual prince, a palace ball with a pistol-toting final shootout, an insane-asylum sequence, and similar absurdities?
You couldn't. But the choreographer Matthew Bourne could, in what is now, all too aptly, touted as Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Not even poor, closeted-homosexual Pyotr Ilyich would claim it as his...........
The homosexualization of great heterosexual love stories proceeds apace. Romeo and Juliet has been converted into R&J with a four-schoolboy cast; there have been several all-male As You Like Its (and please, don't tell us again about Shakespeare using boy actors -- under duress); etc. Most of this, characteristically, of British origin. I have no objection to homosexual ballets, whether campy or not, as long as they are new and so conceived; they should not, like cuckoos' eggs, be smuggled into the nests of other birds, notably swans."
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Twelfth Night 7/27/1998
"Like the costumes, speech, and acting, it ranges meretriciously all over time and place, whether to capture the kudos of young, know-nothing audiences or out of sheer anomie, I lack the psychiatric credentials to determine.......
Paul Rudd's insufferable Orsino just manages to be, in his better moments, merely obnoxious. Lolling around like an affected lounge lizard, mouthing words as if they were pastilles, preening and posturing as if auditioning for a Calvin Klein ad, he confuses Illyria with Chippendale's.
As Viola, Helen Hunt is as bad as it gets. She wears a permanently befuddled expression, scrunches up her eyes as though under a barrage of grapefruits, and always leads with her head as if to butt her lines into an enemy goal. Her delivery is a tuneless singsong, and whereas some Violas have trouble passing for a boy, this one has problems reminding us she's a woman. No less ludicrous is the Olivia of Kyra Sedgwick, though here the heavy directorial hand is more guiltily evident. She behaves largely like a sideshow freak, with double-jointed contortions, unhinged crouches and leaps, grimaces unlimited, and fishwifely squeals and yelps -- and this, mind you, from a supposedly frosty, aristocratic beauty in unthawable mourning. In a production in which unlikely and painfully protracted smoochings proliferate, her near-rape of Sebastian takes the cake -- if not the ale as well."
New Yok Magazine's Theatre Archive -- John Simon's Reviews 1998 to the Present
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 02:12 AM
Speed
Broadway Star Joined: 7/12/03
#1re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 2:38amNice. Simon comes off a bit misinformed during his JCS review, though. Judas came back to sing the title song after his hanging in the original. Why is he suddenly criticizing that plot point 30 years later? Also, he seems to confuse orchestrations with sound design. What do ALW's orchestrations have to do with how loud the music was?
Speed
Broadway Star Joined: 7/12/03
#2re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 2:41amAnd wow he has an issue with gays, doesn't he? Check out how many times he uses the word "homosexual."
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#3re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 3:01amHe has major issues with gay people, non-white people, non-traditional casting in any form, non-slender and/or non-beautiful (in his judgment) women, Americans doing Shakespeare, avant garde theatre, music written after 1960 ......... other than that, he hates everything.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 03:01 AM
Broadway Matt
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
#4re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 3:04ami was unaware of his reputation/track record. his wife Pat is quite a pleasant person.
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#5re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 3:17amHe was one of Sondheim's major detractors during the 70s, panning Company, Follies, ALNM, Pacific Overtures and most of his other work. His wife Pat was a big Sondheim devotee and in time, according to Simon himself, managed to change his mind about Sondheim. Thanks to Pat, Simon has gone from hating Sondheim to appreciating him to being a major fan, and has given raves to several NYC revivals of Sondheim shows that he panned in their original incarnations.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Broadway Matt
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
#6re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 3:48amshe certainly does love her Sondheim. last semester at my school she taught a course about the musicals of Sondheim and Hal Prince, which included a series of speakers who had worked on or in their collaborations. The end of the semester brought an excellent symposium with both men. Wish I had taped it or taken notes. They had some brilliant things to say about how the state of musical theatre has mutated over the years. Wish she could convince the hubby to change the rest of his views.
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
Broadway Matt
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
#7re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:31am
Here are a few other Simon quotes I came across. Aside from wanting to get the rest of the board to take some interest, I just thought these were funny. Idina fans will be pleased to see that he comes as close as possible to complimenting her, as he also does in his Wild Party review which has her stealing the show.
ON BOMBAY DREAMS:
"The convulsive cavortings and strained vocalization of Manu Narayan are no better than his misleading-man looks. If you owe a present to your most hated relatives, you might want to buy them tickets to Bombay Dreams."
"“Bomb” it assuredly is. I’ll go further: It almost manages to make The Boy From Oz look good."
ON DRACULA:
"But that music! It is like a long, uniform sausage made of sawdust, cut into uneven slices (rhythm) with singing sometimes yelled, sometimes whispered (variety). It is not so much composed as ground out, enough to give monotony a bad name and make one yearn for the melody of an interrupting cell phone."
ON WICKED:
"What of a score by Stephen Schwartz, who has clearly lost it? Only one song, “Wonderful,” has a memorable tune, and even that rather trite."
here's my fave-
"As Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth is cute as a button, but rather makes you wish for a zipper. She sings the worthless songs admirably, and speaks her would-be-funny lines with spice, even as the accomplished Idina Menzel brings genuine pathos and edge to Elphaba, but all in vain."
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
amasis
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/7/04
#8re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:52am
He really is one vicious individual. If I remember correctly, though, he did give a nice review for 'Proof', which is one of my favorite plays. I remember it being a nice review because it was such a shock.
*Edit:
I looked it up, and here's a quote from the Proof review. As much as one hates to admit it, his writing is definitely not as entertaining when he's being nice.
"Here, those of us who want their dramatic characters to be real people need not feel excluded. (...) All four -- whether loving, hating, encouraging or impeding one another -- are intensely alive, complex, funny, human. (...) Out of this curious quartet, Auburn creates emotionally and intellectually enveloping music."
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 04:52 AM
MasterLcZ
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/12/03
#9re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 5:22am
Yeah, but EVERYBODY likes Sondheim now.
He would have been far more amusing had he continued hating him.
He's a flip-flopping wimp. 
"Christ, Bette Davis?!?!"
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 05:22 AM
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#10re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 8:45am
If memory serves correct, he once intimated that Brian Stokes Mitchell was not "black enough" for the role of Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime.
He also, in a review , made fun of Minelli's physical appearance
Poster Emeritus
kjklo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/29/03
#11re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 11:27am
I don't know how many remember this, but back in 1985 Simon got into big trouble when he was overheard by about 30 people telling the actress Carrie Nye in a theatre lobby, "Homosexuals in the theater! My God, I can't wait until AIDS gets all of them!" By the way, this wasn't just a rumor--Simon admitted to the remark.
Around the same time, he referred to a play, in one of his printed reviews, as "faggot nonsense."
After an uproar and a threat of dismissal from New York magazine, he attempted to apologize by saying that he wasn't proud of his comments, that he was sometimes irrational, and that when he was angry he didn't know what he was saying.
For more on the situation, see Ned Rorem's book "Other Entertainment," which includes the transcript of a lengthy conversation with Simon about his hateful attitudes.
#12re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 11:54am
There was something in his review of the Tyne Daly GYPSY revival taking a potshot at the size of Tracy Venner (Dainty June)'s calves. As usual, completely irrelevant to a theater review.
Have you ever noticed an unkind word about Betty Buckley from him? No, and you won't. She's one of his favorites, as she's quite attractive, and also one of his close friends.
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 11:54 AM
sean martin
Broadway Star Joined: 7/4/04
#13re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 2:05pmSimon is one of those many, many people who started believing his own press and now seems honour-bound to sustain his reputation... no doubt, like Howard Stern, for the shock value more than anything else. Face it: controversy sells tickets -- and magazines. And as long as he's the critic everyone loves to criticize, we'll continue to read his reviews.
"That duck was a sexual toy, and it was on display!" -- an unknown Nashville town leader
#14re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 2:14pmI stopped reading him years ago.
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
Updated On: 10/23/04 at 02:14 PM
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#15re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 3:49pm
Ragtime
"Brian Stokes Mitchell would be a first-rate Coalhouse were he not too dapper and too pale. Unlike Doctorow’s older, heavier, and darker-skinned man, this Coalhouse could have driven past the racist firemen without being taken for a black. As the brittle and girlish Sarah, Audra McDonald, a barreling powerhouse of a woman and singer, is all wrong, especially when she tries to act girlish with mincing steps that look like some kind of hopscotch."
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Bells Are Ringing Revival
"There are several things wrong here, but the worst -- contrary to what you may have read elsewhere -- was the casting of Faith Prince as the solicitous and charismatic phone-answering-service operator Ella Peterson, a role Judy Holliday irradiated at the 1956 premiere with armor-piercing charm. Miss Prince, regrettably, has some twenty extra years and an equal number of extra pounds under her belt, which, however, is trifling compared with her slim spontaneity and slender charm. Looking like Angela Lansbury on a bad-hair day, she seems about as likely to fill the sullen and hostile riders on a New York subway with fraternal love as able to transform the Sahara into a botanical garden."
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Minnelli on Minnelli
"She is a performer whose chief diet is audience adulation, and what is partly a tribute to Dad's movies is also partly Daughter's comeback from alcoholism, overweight, and an overlong absence from regular performing.
Undeniably, someone or something fills up the Palace stage. It is not so much the now chubby Betty Boop face, the tubby torso that Bob Mackie's artful, and sometimes even tasteful, costumes toil to disguise. Nor is it the voice, although it can still, despite some frayed edges, belt out a song punchily, even if dentures (?) put an extra h after the s's and an extra y after the t's. It is certainly not the dancing, done mostly by a clutch of agile chorus boys who sometimes, in one of showbiz's oldest tricks, wheel Liza about on a chair with casters, which here takes on symbolic dimensions."
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Speed
Broadway Star Joined: 7/12/03
#16re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:08pm
Why is it considered wimpy to change your mind??
Why is it considered strong to not let your life change you, to not let new experiences affect you, to stick with your original belief despite new information?
So is it wimpy for our country to abolish slavery? Perhaps we should still have slavery. Perhaps women should still not be allowed to vote.
I guess it would be wimpy for Osama Bin Laden to admit what he did to our country was wrong and attempt to turn over a new leaf???
Come on folks. Change one's mind is how one GROWS. It's how the world becomes a better place.
I'm sick of hearing the term "flip flopping" as some TERRIBLE thing.
Let's say I went to a show and hated it. But then let's say that I got older, grew as a person, went back and saw the show and LOVED it. Am I weak?
Chloe
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/28/04
#17re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:19pm
I think you're absolutely right, that there's nothing wrong with changing one's mind if it comes out of personal growth or new information. However, since Simon hasn't changed much overall other than in his opinion of Sondheim, it seems more like a concession to his wife than change from within.
I'm surprised he didn't dissolve in his own acid long, long ago.
#18re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:20pmThat Minnelli review is sickening. What a vulgar, hateful man.
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
Broadway Matt
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
#19re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:46pm
i don't think many people are upset at Simon for changing his mind about Sondheim. it seems more likely to be his refusal to change his mind about anything else. i don't think flip-flopping is really seen as a bad thing unless you're involved in something viciously competitive like a presidential race where you'll take an angle anywhere you can find it.
as for how it relates to shows, there's a perfectly good explanation for hating a show originally then suddenly liking it in a 2nd, more recent viewing. theatre used to be better. what looked relatively like crap 15 years ago might very well be one of the best things on Broadway right now. i'm not nearly as extreme or condemning as John Simon, but the belief that the best has come and gone seems to be a generally accurate guideline when I think of a show like "Rags" closing after 4 performances compared to a lot of the dreck currently enjoying long runs. there is quality theatre being made but the ratios aren't lookin too good, and everything is relative. one season's "Mail" might be another season's "Lion King".
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
#20re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:48pmSo true, Matt. MAIL could very well be a huge hit were it to open in this generation of theater. *shudder*
Have I ever shown you my Shattered Dreams box? It's in my Disappointment Closet. - Marge Simpson
#21re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 4:50pmGrrrrrr! If I see this man on the street...
"The stage is where I live and come alive and act out all the things that go on in my life. It's not just what I do for a living, it's my shrink and my love affair. No one in my life has ever or ever will kiss me on the mouth like this lover called my relationship with my performance."
sndtrklvr
Stand-by Joined: 5/10/04
#22re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 5:00pmI come from the home town of Elliot Norton, who epitomizes everything a theater critic should be. John Simon is a vicious, gay hater who also takes delight in belittling any woman does not meet his standard of beauty. He is serves no purpose to this community.
So my dear you think you can get to Broadway. Well, let me tell you something. Broadway has no room for people like you. Not the Broadway I know. My Broadway takes people like you and eats them up and spits them out. My Broadway is the Broadway of Merman, and Martin, and Fontaine, and if you think you can build yourself up by knocking other people down... ...GOOD LUCK... Seinfeld
MargoChanning
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/5/04
#23re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 5:03pmI saw MAIL (notable now for being Brian Stokes Mitchell's first musical). I remember thinking at the time that it was a rather promising if less than great show -- in the 15 years since, though, I've seen many many others which were far worse. With some fine tuning and revamping, who knows, maybe it could play today.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Broadway Matt
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
#24re: SIMONIZED -- The Wit & Wisdom of John Simon
Posted: 10/23/04 at 5:03pm
"MAIL could very well be a huge hit were it to open in this generation of theater"
ugh I almost regret mentiooning MAIL, but it's kinda seeming true. i'm picturing all the shills and overly-enthusiastic young people begging to know where they can get the lyrics to "Skyline" or setting up accounts as MaraGetzLuvr4Ever. and what really worries me is that it doesn't seem so bad.
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
