Review Roundup: A WALK ON THE MOON With Tovah Feldshuh, Talia Suskauer, Max Chernin, Sam Gravitte, and Andréa Burns

Reviews are in for A Walk on the Moon, the new musical based on the acclaimed 1999 film. Directed by Sheryl Kaller and starring Talia Suskauer, Max Chernin, Sam Gravitte, and Andréa Burns, the production is now running at the Laura Pels Theatre through August 22.

The production stars Talia Suskauer as Pearl, Max Chernin as Marty, Sam Gravitte as Walker, and Andréa Burns as Lillian. Six-time Emmy and Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh, who appeared in the original film as Bubbe Lillian Kantrowitz, lends her voice to the role of Mrs. Fogler, heard throughout the show over the Catskills bungalow colony PA system.

Set during the summer of 1969, A Walk on the Moon follows Brooklyn housewife Pearl Kantrowitz as she spends the season in the Catskills while America undergoes profound cultural change. Against the backdrop of the moon landing, the rise of the counterculture movement, and a transformative era in music, Pearl begins to imagine a life beyond the one she has always known.

The cast also includes Sophie Pollono as Alison, Oscar Williams as Ross, Jodi Bluestein, Leo Caravano and Reid Gardner Clarke (alternating as Danny), Andrew Faria, David R. Gordon, Megan Kane, Caroline Pernick, Ellie Schwartz, Richard Spitaletta, Becca Suskauer, Michael Tacconi, and understudies Tucker Gold.

Now playing at The Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. The production will play a limited engagement through August 22.

Raven Snook, Time Out New York: If the whole thing feels awfully familiar—and the lyrics (and accents!) too on the nose—sometimes you just need a comfort nosh, and that's what director Sheryl Kaller and her company serve. Tal Yarden's scenic and video design and Ricky Lurie's costumes hammer home the cultural divides of the 1960s. Suskauer and Chernin, who played husband and wife in the Parade national tour, have a lovely, lived-in chemistry, but she's also convincingly lustful for Gravitte, who looks great and sings well in an underwritten role; Burns is moving as an astute mother-in-law trying to hold her family together, and Pollono and Williams's coming-of-age courtship has an authentic awkwardness. It may not be out of this world, but A Walk on the Moon is a pleasant trip.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Theatre Guide: Otherwise, the score is easy on the ears but generic with pleasures that wax and quickly wane. The other issue is that too many songs, as directed by Sheryl Kaller, are performed like they’re showstoppers. Not every musical moment needs to blast off and be blown out. In stories about intimacy, quiet moments are ones that grab attention. The moon doesn’t have to be full for us to appreciate its wonders.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Director Sheryl Kaller creates some beautiful stage tableaux, deploying Tal Yarden’s brightly hued set and projection designs and Robert Wierzel’s lighting to good effect to re-create the magic of the moon landing and the psychedelic swirl of Woodstock. But there’s little that she or the talented Suskauer can to make Pearl a plausible heroine. By the end, we don’t comprehend why this woman embarked on a fling with a stranger, why she regretted it, or how that experience might have changed her, for good or otherwise. Her journey is neither a small step nor a giant leap, but occupies some blank space in between as yet uncharted by NASA.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: There seems an effort in the musical to imply a similar transformation through psychedelic elements in Tal Yarden’s scenic and video design. But I detected no such effort in the score. There are a couple of cheerfully over-the-top musical numbers that I found outright annoying, but the score is mostly quite pleasant. Compared to the sounds of the 60s, however, it feels positively generic.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Beginning to end, there’s certainly nothing amiss with the cast, including Tovah Feldshuh supplying Mrs. Fogler’s voiceovers. Sheryl Kaller is the director and also directed what could be called the pre-off-Broadway try-out when in 2022 it opened at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse. (Josh Prince is the helpful choreographer, Andy Einhorn the helpful music supervisor and arranger.)

Average Rating: 60.0%