Review Roundup: Todrick Hall's MIDNIGHT Opens Off-Broadway

Todrick Hall's new musical Midnight recently celebrated its opening night Off-Broadway, and the reviews are rolling in in. Find out what critics are saying about the new production below.

Set in the American South during the 19th century, Midnight explores love, identity, empathy, and the relationships that connect people across divisions of race and class. The sung-through musical features a score blending gospel, rhythm and blues, pop, rock, folk, opera, and musical theatre.

The story follows twelve interconnected characters, six Black and six white, whose friendships, romances, and personal conflicts challenge their beliefs and the social expectations of their time.

The 28-member company includes Todrick Hall, Jeremy Beloate, Charlotte Odusanya, Kennedy Caughell, Kolbi Jordan, Bella Coppola, Tony Award nominee Sidney DuPont, Jimmy Brewer, Dwayne Clark, Ciarán McCarthy, Ayana George, Autumn Hurlbert, Jenni Thomasson, Bronwyn Tarboton, Nissi Shalome, Ndaya Dream Hoskins, JJ Niemann, Brayden Newby, Jaylon C. Crump, Brandon Burks, Abbey Friedmann, Aveena Sawyer, Keely Beirne, Emily Yates, Barnaby Reiter, Matthew Varvar, Omar Madden, Gregory Carl Banks Jr., and Kyla Bartholomeusz.

Helen Shaw, The New York Times: The more compelling is the sprawling “Midnight,” an intermittently gorgeous, often exasperating, utterly overstuffed quasi-opera at the Daryl Roth Theater, written by, directed by, choreographed by and starring Todrick Hall.

Kyle Turner, New York Theatre Guide: Midnight is surely entertaining: The cast feels gloriously unified while also giving actors like Charlotte Odusanya, Bella Coppola, Ayana George, Kennedy Caughell, and Kolbi Jordan standout vocal moments of their own. The choreography is dynamic and creates fine stage imagery, and the score has multiple earworms. But one can’t help but wonder if Midnight is also indebted to the age of the megamusical, when spectacle mattered more than a meaningful relationship between the subject matter and the style in which it's delivered. Does Miss Saigon really need that gigantic helicopter to convey the impossibility of love in a fruitless, tragic war? Does Midnight really need clubby strobe lights while Rail gets beaten on a plantation? Probably not, but it certainly is memorable.

Dan Rubins, Slant Magazine: If Midnight makes the leap to Broadway, Hall should embrace the show’s thorny uncertainties, including the risky possibility that audience members asked to see the world through a new lens may glimpse vastly different vistas. Rather than pulling his punches, he can acknowledge that his theatrical experiment, much like race in America, is complex, messy, and resistant to easy solutions. Midnight already sounds, looks, and innovates like the best new musical of the year. Instead of smoothing over its difficulties, Hall should go further, exposing the rough edges.

Kelsey Minor, 1 Minute Critic: The voices are powerful, and by the end, theatergoers will wonder whether they could live someone else’s life. Although the show is set in the 1800s and centers on racism and homophobia, both remain sources of contention today. The music will keep you in your seat, but the message, especially so close to a monumental midterm election, will challenge your heart and mind.

Elysa Gardner, New York Sun: Mr. Hall not only provides the music, lyrics, book, and essentially the leading performance, but also serves as the production’s director and choreographer — roles that not even Lin-Manuel Miranda, who juggled all those other tasks for “Hamilton,” assigned himself.“Hamilton” is actually a good reference point for “Midnight,” as Mr. Hall seems to have studied that mega-hit assiduously. In everything from its rhythms and rhymes (mostly sung, with some rapping as well) to its constant movement to its alternately winking and sober nods to history, “Midnight” practically declares itself a successor to Mr. Miranda’s venerated blockbuster.  That’s a tall order for a first musical, and if Mr. Hall deserves an A for ambition, “Midnight” does not, unfortunately, offer the sparkling wit, dazzling score, or sheer ingenuity that more than mitigated the self-importance of “Hamilton.”

Pete Hempstead, Theatermania: It’s certainly ambitious, but once the initial shock wears off, we’re left with a meandering second act that seems even longer than the first (it’s actually 15 minutes shorter). Part of this has to do with the musical’s lack of creative perspectives, which might have helped scale back some of its excesses. MIDNIGHT is that rare case of not enough cooks in the kitchen.

Cary Wong, The Interested Bystander: There are some shows that make so much noise before it opens that I know the show’s whole history and paper trail reviews before the first note is played. I can’t say this is the case with Midnight, the exciting, daring and unwieldy new musical by internet and reality show personality Todrick Hall, whose previous projects missed me completely. But when I hear one person wrote the book, songs, choreographed and directed his first ever musical, my first instinct is skepticism. Stephen Sondheim had Hal Prince and Michael Bennett. Lin-Manuel Miranda had Thomas Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler. But as they say, confidence is half the battle, and whoever Hall convinced to help him produced a show that is truly his vision, the gamble paid off.

Mason Pilevsky, Pages on Stages: Todrick Hall’s Midnight is the bold, completely original theatrical adventure I have hungered for in Broadway’s recent years. Profoundly meaningful, provocative, and dangerously thrilling, this show explores humanity’s innate susceptibility to hatred in an epic opera. The score weaves a rich vocal tapestry augmented by instruments. It is a slice of life story in which the audience gets to know everyone on stage over the course of a three hour journey, rife with moments of laughter and moments of tears. The show washed over me in waves of emotion as the audience’s empathy was challenged, prodded, and poked, all with the end goal of asking us to sit with ourselves to acknowledge the power we hold and how we hold it over others.

Stephen Kearley, The BroadGAYS: Midnight is the first musical to receive The BroadGAYS’ MUST-SEE designation. The score, the voices, the dancing, and the sheer imagination of the staging make this an extraordinary night of theater. I can already imagine audiences discovering it for years to come, and I’m grateful I got to experience this production in person. Tickets are nearly sold out. Go get yours right now.

Joshua M. Hayes, Josh at the Movies: To call Midnight sprawling would almost be underselling its grandiose scope. The costumes alone are stunning in their detail, the lighting effects are spectacular, and the choreography equally matches the ambitiousness of the vocal hoops that performers are asked to leap through. This is ultimately an important show, largely original in every way. Ayana George could not have been a better pick for the narrator to sweetly guide us on this journey.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Even great creators need strong collaborators, sounding boards who will nudge them to revise, streamline, and “murder their darlings” in the service of producing a better final product. Midnight has flashes of luminous greatness, but too often Hall does not know when to stop. There’s a meandering final song, full of muddled references to the number 12 and spoken-word updates on the progress made toward equality for Blacks and queer people in the U.S. since the 1860s, that feels utterly superfluous. Especially when compared to encore song that Hall leads post-curtain call, a choral masterpiece that perfectly sums up the “new day” that the show envisions and sends the audience out on a goosebumpy high.

anatazia x, Black Star Reviews: Until now, I hadn’t been curious enough to deduce that while Cinderella was a-scrubbing and a-mopping, so were my ancestors. But now that I see the connection, I feel a different power in the costume, that I could fashion my child self a princess less than 4 generations later. Todrick has written all of himself — Black, gay, talented, hazel-eyed — into a history that has never included perspectives like his and he’s done it with style. Though Rail may be bound in MIDNIGHT, I see glimpses of liberation in Mr. Hall’s impulse to be seen in a story that would rather leave him out.

Matthew Roland, Theater Scene: MIDNIGHT has incredible bones and extraordinary performers; it just needs a little more editing. At almost three hours, some moments felt cut short and rushed to make way for others that, in contrast, seemed to drag. Despite these pacing issues and some choreographic choices that did not quite land, the production is electrifying, shocking and deeply moving. Pairing extraordinary vocals with powerful storytelling, MIDNIGHT is an ambitious musical that challenges perspectives and leaves you with plenty to think about long after the final note.

Kyle Torrence, Attitude: I left with the songs in my head and admiration for the performers. The heart and message are there. With substantial editing and a more varied emotional pace, Midnight could give its love story, and its audience, the breathing room they deserve.

Allen Neuner, Out in Jersey: I had been mostly unaware of Todrick Hall’s abilities prior to this show, so I was unprepared for the overwhelming amount of talent he and his cast delivered in Midnight. I cannot more strongly urge you to attend a performance of this show before its regrettably short engagement ends. You owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of the multi-talented Todrick Hall and the cast of Midnight!

Ese Ofurhie , Enspire: MIDNIGHT is a testament to Todrick Hall’s remarkable artistic vision. It is bold, imaginative and technically impressive, but its most powerful moments for me came before the roles were reversed. What began as a moving exploration of Black suffering and resilience became less convincing as the story progressed. Sometimes the greatest impact comes not from asking an audience to imagine history differently, but from allowing them to confront fully the weight of history as it was.

Brian Scott Lipton, Cititour: Any “vanity” aside, it’s never in doubt that Hall sincerely wants “Midnight” to be a wake-up call that we should all learn to treat each other better. I’m just not sure he had to clock us over the head with that message.

Suzanna Bowling, Times Square Chronicles: What makes this so effective is that Hall does not simply ask us to imagine injustice. He makes us watch familiar characters experience it from the opposite side. The reversal exposes the arbitrary cruelty of a system in which one person’s humanity is determined by another person’s authority. It is bold, unsettling, and theatrically ingenious.

Average Rating: 77.2%