Hi, I'm looking for some help! What are some of the most hilarious, scathing reviews Broadway shows ever? Carrie? China Doll? Links to the reviews would be much appreciated. Thanks!
"Good Vibrations" sacrifices itself, night after night and with considerable anguish, to make all other musicals on Broadway look good....
"Since the performers really aren't to blame for the aimlessness of "Good Vibrations," I won't mention any of their names, though there are a few who make you feel that smiling should be outlawed for a while."
For a review of an individual performance, you can't get much worse than Dorothy Parker's review of Katharine Hepburn's performance in the 1933 Broadway production of "The Lake": "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."
I know it's out of place here, but I can't resist. When the multi-million dollar war epic from 20th Century Fox opened a lifetime ago, I still remember the headline from The Boston Globe review:
"Don't be fooled by that twisted piece of rubble on West 44th Street. It isn't a burning building -- it's the worst musical to hit Broadway since...gee, I'm not sure. "Good Vibrations"? "Bombay Dreams"? "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue"? What the hell, let's swing for the fences: "Lennon," which opened Sunday and will surely be laid to rest as soon as the next of kin can be notified, could well be the most awful show to come along in my adult lifetime."
Also, from early in the decade, Rich's review of Albee's stage adaptation of Lolita:
"After weeks of delays, Edward Albee's ''Lolita'' finally opened at the Brooks Atkinson last night, and all one can do is wonder why it did. This show is the kind of embarrassment that audiences do not quickly forget or forgive. It's not just that ''Lolita'' is incompetent or boring or that it lays waste to a masterpiece of modern literature: those are pardonable sins that have been known to occur in Broadway theaters. What sets ''Lolita'' apart from ordinary failures is its abject mean-spiritedness. For all this play's babbling about love, it is rank with indiscriminate - and decidely unearned - hate."
There was a famous line from a review of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I wish I knew which production and who reviewed it, but the one line summary of the review is priceless: "More chitty than bang bang."
How hated was/is Frank Wildhorn? In 2004, right before the Broadway premiere of Dracula, the New York Times published an article tearing his work apart in general - and they quoted the critics.
"In recent telephone interviews, three theater critics elaborated on their published invective. Linda Winer, of Newsday, said that Mr. Wildhorn writes ''dunderheaded musicals for people who find Andrew Lloyd Webber too difficult.'' Ben Brantley, of The New York Times, allowed, ''They're fine if you're in the mood to be emotionally knee-jerked.'' And Charles Isherwood of Variety said of Mr. Wildhorn: ''His natural home is in Las Vegas. That might be his most sensible career move. Skip Broadway altogether.'"
"Other people's dreams are boring, I know. But please, for the sake of my sanity -- and possibly yours -- let me tell you about this one.
I dreamed I went to a Broadway show that was supposed to be madly eccentric and surreal, featuring a giant lemon, transvestite angel and a hero with Tourette's syndrome. But then, in one of those head-spinning shifts of setting that occur only in nightmares, I found myself trapped inside a musical Hallmark card, a pastel blend of the twinkly teddy bear and sentimental sunrise varieties. And suddenly, as the breath was leaving my body, I realized I was drowning, drowning in a singing sea of syrup.
Hey, wait a minute. That was no nightmare. That was "In My Life," the new musical that opened last night at the Music Box Theater, written, directed and produced by Joseph Brooks, who is also the show's composer and lyricist."