Review Roundup: QUEEN OF THE MIST

 Transport Group's Queen of the Mist is a world premiere musical with words and music by 5-time Tony nominee Michael John LaChiusa (The Wild Party, Marie Christine, Hello Again). Based on an astounding, outrageous, and haunting true story, two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa (Guys and Dolls, Xanadu, 42nd Street) stars as Anna Edson Taylor, who, in 1901, set out to be the first woman to shoot Niagara Falls, in a barrel of her own design.

Navigating both the treacherous Falls and a fickle public with a ravenous appetite for sensationalism, this unconventional heroine vies for her legacy in a world clamoring with swindling managers, assassins, revolutionaries, moralizing family, anarchists and activists. Convinced that there is greatness in her and determined not to live as ordinary, she sets out to battle her fear and tempt her fate.

Ben Brantley, New York Times: It's a bravura piece of music, done full justice by Ms. Testa's magnetically focused interpretation. Yet "The Fall" is also only an intensified version of everything that has been said implicitly before. Even riding the rapids this "Queen" gives the impression that it's mostly just treading water.

Frank Scheck, New York Post: The score, influenced by songs of the period but also featuring the composer's trademark semi-operatic style, has moments of loveliness. Testa, a theatrical force of nature ("Xanadu") delivers an intense, stirring turn as Taylor, and Andrew Samonsky is a standout as her alcoholic manager. Turns out, it took only seconds to shoot the falls. Pity it took LaChiusa 2 1/2 lugubrious hours to relate this insignificant story.

Steve Suskin, Variety: LaChiusa's musings on fame and celebrity have resonance, and not only with respect to the long-forgotten Taylor. The author also introduces us to a deranged anarchist at the 1901 Buffalo Exposition, who immediately after his (presumably fictional) exchange with Taylor goes off and shoots the President. The assassin was front page news until his execution, and then faded from memory. Nowadays, the once notorious Leon Czolgosz is known solely as a character in another modern musical, "Assassins" -- so much so that he gets a gasp of recognition from the audience some 110 years after his one, mad act.

Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press: Unusual configuration of the gym space seats the audience on opposite sides of the stage area, in steeply raked rows, looking down onto the proceedings much as spectators would have lined the waterside at Niagara Falls to watch an entertainment. "Queen of the Mist" musically brings to life a colorful and tragic figure long forgotten by history.

Michael Dale, BroadwayWorld: With Queen of The Mist, Michael John LaChiusa once again shows himself to be one of the most adventurous dramatists we currently have writing for the musical stage and Mary Testa is given a rare chance to star in a piece that properly pushes her abundant musical dramatic talents into the spotlight.

 

 

 

 

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.