BULLETS OVER BROADWAY Reviews- Page 4

[AndrewAndrew]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:47pm

The musical adaptation of the beloved Woody Allen film Bullets Over Broadway has come under fire for not featuring any new music. Not unlike Allen’s films the show repurposes forgotten popular favorites with updates to some lyrics here and there. Is this remake full of remakes an offer you can’t refuse or would they have been better off going with Bananas? Find out in our full review of Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” at St James Theatre.
Click here for Full Video of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

[ClydeBarrow]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:48pm

Roxy, after your incessant posting on this thread you can add me to the list of people who've ignored you. There is nothing of value in the things you post and you keep saying the SAME SH*T OVER AND OVER AGAIN!

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:49pm

Washington Post is negative:

"Stroman and Allen seem to have concluded that exaggeration is the key to making his celluloid characters live and breathe. As a result, most of them have been turned into clowns–alien to the more affectionate comic portraiture in his movies. Karen Ziemba, as an actress obsessed with her dog, and Brooks Ashmanskas, playing an actor obsessed with his next meal, for example, come across as conveyors of a single joke, repeated over and over and over. The unfortunate outcome of all this is a show that, contrary to the romantic musical themes of the era in which it’s set, remains unembraceable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/04/10/woody-allens-bullets-over-broadway-opens-at-nycs-st-james-theatre/

[Up In One]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:50pm

Examiner, whatever that is, is good
Examiner?

[BeNice]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:50pm

I am SO happy everyone is singling out Nick Cordero. He deserves it.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:51pm

I have the same feeling about you but never uttered it until now. Gee I thought posting in threads was what BWW was about. Unless you disagree with the great Clyde Barrow of course. I will continue and feel free to put me on ignore if what I say bothers you in any way.

Have a good night.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:52pm

From Newsday which, as Up In One said, was positive:

"But, really, the actor who galvanizes is Nick Cordero in a breakthrough performance as Cheech, the thug who discovers his writing talents while baby-sitting Olive. Cordero is quietly hilarious, crooning "Up a Lazy River" in a roadster as he drives victims to the Gowanus Canal. When he and his fellow gangsters tap to " 'Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do," Stroman's strapping, inventive choreography makes them the most appealing Broadway crooks since "Guys and Dolls.""

Cordero is really coming out of these reviews the best. He might just give Iglehart a run for his money.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 9:56pm

The Wrap is negative bordering on a pan:

"Even the usually understated Karen Ziemba succumbs to bizarre vocal inflections, robbing her Chihuahua-attached thespian of the sly vulnerability that Tracy Ullman brought to the Eden Brent role. And pity any anyone — in this case, Marin Mazzie — who attempts to bring Dianne Wiest's divine Helen Sinclair back to life eight performances a week. Don't speak? Don't imitate!

“Bullets” on Broadway rarely breaks free of the movie, and fond memories keep taking us back to the original.

Stroman gave us dancing elephant buttocks in “Big Fish” earlier this Broadway season. In “Bullets,” she gives us very large dancing hot dogs, and a vendor selling frankfurters of various lengths and girths. The number achieves a level of low vulgarity not encountered even among the non-stop obscenities of “The Book of Mormon.”"

http://www.thewrap.com/bullets-broadway-theater-review-zach-braff-guys-dolls-reinvention-susan-stroman

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:10pm

Brantley:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/theater/woody-allen-transforms-his-bullets-over-broadway.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:11pm

Chicago Tribune is mostly positive:

"There are, for sure, times when "Bullets" is stymied by its lack of an original score, although the lyrics have been thoroughly subjugated to its comedic purpose, wittily so. The use of standards was not such a problem on film, since part of Allen's cinematic gestalt was to forge a gauzy comic tribute to a golden age of Broadway. But when you translate Allen and Douglas McGrath's backstage comedy to the Main Stem, somehow the Great American Songbook starts to feel a bit like a cop-out.

Sure, "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You" or "Up a Lazy River" are very funny when they first pop up, and the show does not want for musical color in any way since these songwriters knew their way around a melody. In fact, the choice of songs often is very clever: "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle" sums up most of the characters here with remarkable alacrity. Still, the show cannot help but retreat into pastiche at some of those moments, no matter how many fabulous Atta-Girls are tapping on the roof of the train, as they do when the show-within-a-show heads out of town. With a fresh, funny, zesty score, "Bullets" would have been unstoppable."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/sc-bullets-broadway-review,0,184552.column

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:12pm

I can't remember the last time Arthur Godfrey was referenced in a Broadway Review.

It's Cordero in the lead.

[BroadwayBen]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:13pm

Wow, Brantley gave IF/THEN a better review than Bullets. Didn't see that one coming...

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:13pm

RAT-a-tat-tat!

That machine-gun fire you hear coming form the St.James Theater is the sound of bullets, but ultimately missing the target by a mile!

Updated On: 4/10/14 at 10:13 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:15pm

A pull quote from Brantley's negative NY Times review:

"Mr. Braff, in his Broadway debut, sings and dances with a winning insouciance, though he overdoes the grimaces in conveying the guilt that traditionally eats away at Allen’s heroes. It’s the guy who embodies the source of his guilt who runs away with the show.

That’s Cheech (played by Nick Cordero), a mob hit man who also turns out to be an instinctive man of the theater. It is Cheech who secretly rewrites, and vastly improves, David’s highfalutin dialogue, with David’s anguished cooperation. Chazz Palminteri received a deserved Oscar nomination as Cheech, and Mr. Cordero is just as good."

So Cordero is going to be pretty happy tonight...

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:19pm

NY Daily News is mixed (3 of 5 stars):

"Allen’s showbiz and gangland eccentrics stiffen into cardboard when they’re amplified from two to three dimensions. A sense of nuance and ahumanity goes missing. It doesn’t help that key actors shoot blanks, including Zach Braff, of “Scrubs” fme, and Helene Yorke, of “Masters of Sex.” Both need infusions of charm for their roles as a morally iffy writer and the tootsie ruining his play.

Beyond mediocre acting is the poor choice at the center of this jukebox musical: Instead of coming up with new tunes, Allen shoehorned period songs — hits like “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” and “Let’s Misbehave,” plus lesser-known novelties like “I Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle” — into the existing plot. But all this does is throw the show into neutral whenever the orchestra swells. Even well-performed, the oldies simply underline what’s going on.

...

Mazzie does not eclipse Dianne Wiest’s big screen portrayal of Helen, but she’s gutsy, goofy and glamorous as the needy neurotic. Cordero lends loads of presence and charisma as the criminally talented thug. The show’s zenith comes when he and nimble goons rat-a-tap-tap their way through a rollicking “T’ain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/bullets-broadway-theater-review-article-1.1752357

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:19pm

RE: Brantley's review -- oops! Gentleman's Guide's and After Midnight's chances loom brighter and brighter. Neither are what I call great shows, but now that the completion is officially over, who else is there?

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:21pm

After Midnight is a great show.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:24pm

I loved After Midnight (though I loved it more as Cotton Club Parade off-Broadway), but I just can't see it beating Gentleman's Guide at this point.

[BdwyFan]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:24pm

You're all underestimating Beautiful The Carole King Musical which has the best buzz I've heard this season!

[hockeynut2]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:25pm

Here's my review on DCMetroTheaterArts. It's amazing how the reviews are all over the place. Tony time will be very interesting this year. My friend and I had a great time.
Bullets review on DCMTA

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:26pm

I LOOOOOVED Beautiful. It will not win Best Musical.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:27pm

AFTER MIDNIGHT was the Best Musical of the season, even if it was a revue.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:29pm

Brantley panned a show?

I am beyond shocked

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:30pm

David Gordon over at Theatermania has been drinking the kool-aid as evidenced by him saying that the score sounds brand new. Here are excerpts from his rave:

"As they say in 42nd Street, the words musical comedy are the most glorious in the English language. Well, they don't come any more glorious than Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen's new stage adaptation of his 1994 film, now at the St. James Theatre. With top-form direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, a superb cast led by Zach Braff (TV's Scrubs), and a brand-new-sounding score culled from hits of the 1920s, Bullets is musical comedy with a capital M and C — a smart, zany delight from start to finish.

...

Rather than using the work of a single songwriter, Allen and music supervisor Glen Kelly have opted to use tunes by a variety of composers. Sammy Cahn's "'Tain't a Fit Night Out for Man or Beast" becomes a rollicking tap number for Valenti's gunslingers. Hoagy Carmichael and Sidney Arodin's "Up a Lazy River" is ingeniously used every time Cheech makes a "disposal" in the Gowanus Canal. "The Hot Dog Song," an innuendo-laden comedy number for 1930s duo Butterbeans and Susie, is turned into an uproarious production number for Olive, with as many sight gags as there are double entendres in the text. With Kelly's new, story-fitting lyrics and Doug Besterman's orchestrations for a 19-member orchestra, these songs sound like they were written specifically for this show — a remarkable feat considering that each one is eight decades old."

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/04-2014/bullets-over-broadway_68202.html?cid=homepage_news

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/10/14 at 10:32pm

Brantley panned a show?

I am beyond shocked

You commented about it? Now I'M shocked.