Review Roundup: Emma Stone Makes Broadway Debut in CABARET

The Roundabout Theatre Company just welcomed Emma Stone in her Broadway debut as "Sally Bowles".

Stone joins Joe Masteroff, John Kander and Fred Ebb's Tony-winning musical Cabaret, starring Alan Cumming in his Tony Award-winning role as "Emcee." The production is again directed by Sam Mendes and co-directed/choreographed by Rob Marshall.

Let's see what the critics had to say about Stone's performance...

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: Ms. Stone, in a scintillating Broadway debut, brings a heady whiff of the gin-soaked desperation of that decade to her portrayal...Ms. Stone adds more than the usual box office allure of a big name from the movies attached to the stage. She gives a shot of heart-revving adrenaline to Rob Marshall and Sam Mendes's revival of a revival...She may not be the best Sally Bowles I've ever seen...But she's an exciting and winningly pathetic Sally with whom a hard-drinking sybarite (if the name fits, wear it) sure wouldn't mind spending a night or two on the town...More important, from this attention-addicted character's point of view, she's a Sally you're unlikely to forget...Ms. Stone -- who, for the record, sings and dances well enough to justify her character's job at the Kit Kat Club, while making us understand why she'll never advance much beyond it -- is also savvy enough to let us know that Sally's greatest fear is that she doesn't count. This realization both frightens and angers her, while giving us a crucial key of empathy to her character. Wildly, fiercely affected, she turns both her songs and her dialogue into a seesaw between fierce assertion and painful flashes of self-awareness...It's a relief to report...that Ms. Stone provides a very good reason to revisit this cozy little corner of hell.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: ...hats off to Emma Stone for demonstrating her hunger to tackle an iconic musical-theater role by stepping in seven months after the opening of Cabaret. And doing a commendable job of it...The fear is more carefully concealed in Stone's quite different Sally Bowles, who seems less self-deceiving about the limits of her resources...in Stone's harder-edged characterization she clings aggressively to any distraction she can find to avoid facing her emptiness...there's combative defiance beneath Stone's bubbly facade...In terms of her vocals, however, she only narrowly scrapes by. Stone appears most confident in the lighter numbers like "Perfectly Marvelous."...But the thinness of her voice weighs on the more emotionally revealing numbers, "Maybe This Time" and "Cabaret," with the orchestra often threatening to drown her. That lack of vocal assurance doesn't prevent Stone from giving an affecting performance. In her final scenes, she becomes a wraith-like figure, clinging to her illusions even as she's watched them shatter.

Gordon Cox, Variety: Liza spoiled it for everyone with her thrilling perf as Sally Bowles, the flamboyant party girl in "Cabaret." Although her pitiful musical talents are the least of the services Sally offers patrons of the Kit Kat Klub, Minnelli's star turn still bedevils femme thesps trying to play Sally as the amateurish entertainer she is. That also applies to It Girl Emma Stone...But the red-headed beauty has found a good way to put her own personal stamp on the role -- she acts the hell out of it...Stone goes straight to the little tramp who immediately took to the divinely decadent society of underworld Berlin. Stone's Sally loves the attention she got as "The Toast of Mayfair." The parties, the gifts, the cocaine, the sex -- it's all great fun, until it isn't. This savvy Sally is no innocent outsider, but very much one of the Kit Kat Girls in "Mein Herr," slutty and predatory and scary as hell.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Nine months into its run, "Cabaret" is finally solid as a rock -- actually as a Stone. Just like that, Broadway rookie Emma Stone playing the tatty chanteuse has made the production blaze with an intensity that's been missing in the Roundabout's revival...She's so vivid and can't-take-your-eyes-off-her compelling that Sally looms large -- as she should...The film actress known for "Easy A" and "Birdman" raises the stakes and powers the show's devastating aftershocks -- and earns the production that elusive fifth star from The News...And on stage, as in her best film work, she's very spontaneous. That works perfectly for Sally, who seems to make up her personal life and club routine as she goes along in 1930s Berlin.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: When "Cabaret" opened in April, Alan Cumming dialed it up to 11 as the provocative Emcee of the show's seedy Kit Kat Club. He was the production's darkly charismatic guide, leading us through decadent 1930 Berlin, the setting of Kander and Ebb's masterpiece. Now Cumming's quieted down a bit. Not that he's coasting in this revival of Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall's superb 1998 production -- he's simply making way for a new source of energy...Stone's Sally...is a manic, coked-up go-getter whose manipulative moxie makes up for her middling talent...This Sally is young and brash, and she won't let anyone get in her way...Stone is a little vocally underpowered when she tells us to "come to the cabaret," but she acts out that title song with an intensity as scary as it is controlled. Her pale skin glowing against her black slip, Stone's Sally has the seething fury of someone who's sided with the devil -- and it's thrilling to watch.

Jesse Green, Vulture: What fun! you think as she arrives onstage in a pink marabou-trimmed sleep set for "Don't Tell Mama," her first number. But then it starts, and she starts, and they are not together. Madly rushing the Charleston tempo and getting pitchy on the big notes, she seems both overexcited and underprepared. In a way this, too, is very Sally Bowles; we are told more than once that she's a mediocre performer. And clearly she's not equipped to face what's happening around her in 1929 Berlin. But if that sort of casting realism were the standard, the show would not be very entertaining, and the actress playing Sally wouldn't make it through the first act...Stone ekes it out, getting better as she goes, but in the process blurs the character's gradations and loses a lot of the laughs. She's not the kind of girl you want to save but the kind you want to tiptoe away from, quietly, backwards.

Marc Snetiker, Entertainment Weekly: ...when the intrigue and dazzle of a mega-Hollywood Broadway debut wears off, what's left is simply a performance, and Stone delivers an impressive one that succeeds despite its diversions. Stone is a charismatic firecracker, and she brings that infectious excitability here -- although perhaps a bit too much...her Sally feels decades younger, and the added youth changes Sally's emotional barometer from selected ignorance to genuine obliviousness. There's a layer of scorched earth that doesn't quite exist in Stone's Sally; for instance, in the case of torch song ''Maybe This Time,'' performed by the actress with vigor, she doesn't quite make one believe she's been down this road numerous times before...despite a few too many slips of an accent, and as a singer, Stone's effort is admirable. But it's in her Kit Kat Klub persona that Stone truly demands your attention...If our leading lady's backstage work is uneven, it's easy to see why this immature Sally commands the floorshow. B+

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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