Harker Jones — Theater Critic

The only negative is that, while Stereophonic is always engaging, it is far too long at three hours. Director Daniel Aukin can do only so much when a script is that lengthy, and he does his best to keep things moving without seeming like the story is fast-forwarding, but many people left at intermission, perhaps due to the fact that, despite there being a lot of humor, the show could use a boost of energy.

The book deviates from the screenplay, updating it for more contemporary times, but it does so in an organic way. It’s like this is exactly how the film would have been if it had been able to be in the 1950s. It’s clever and smart but not smirking. It’s romantic and sweet, but never saccharine. Everything about it fires on all cylinders, gleaming like a brass band.

The problem is that the story, and thus the cast, is so bloated, it’s difficult to track. It would land much more powerfully if it had been trimmed, both characters and songs. Another problem is that the music doesn’t really pop. There’s a lot of it, but not much is memorable, which ends up being true for the characters as well. There are so many, it’s hard for them to stand out. It also means many of them are so thinly characterized, they’re not fully realized, so there’s no significant connection to them, no emotional tie.

Filled with puns and pratfalls, mugging and mannerisms, the energy never flags for the show’s brisk 75-minute runtime. Written by Sandy Rustin, based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, it is broad camp, laugh-out-loud funny, and absolutely joyous. The film is hysterical but experiencing the zaniness in person is a whole different level of lunacy and the audience on opening night was there for it. Clearly there was great love for the film and the enthusiasm was contagious.

t’s a great musical-comedy setup, but it never fulfills that potential. Daniel is such a man-child it borders on annoying. You can see why Miranda wants a divorce. McClure, who has enormous shoes to fill following Robin Williams’ indelible performance, is frenetic, playing his character not as over the top but as Beetlejuice posing as an older white woman.

Telling the true story of Ziegfeld Girl Fanny Brice (Hannah Shankman, trading off with Katerina McCrimmon), from her upbringing in 1910s Brooklyn to her rise as a Broadway star as a protégé of Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Coppage), a prolific producer of stage shows, to her relationship with Nick Arnstein (Stephen Mark Lukas), a wealthy investor, FUNNY GIRL is more than just funny. Fanny is an ebullient, unsinkable character who perseveres through dramas, romances, and the ups and downs of show business through grit and determination. Told pretty forthrightly that she’s not classically beautiful enough to be a star, she makes inroads with chutzpah and sheer ability. It’s how stardom should go. Chasing beauty, in the end, cannot compete with raw talent.

Telling the true story of Ziegfeld Girl Fanny Brice (Hannah Shankman, trading off with Katerina McCrimmon), from her upbringing in 1910s Brooklyn to her rise as a Broadway star as a protégé of Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Coppage), a prolific producer of stage shows, to her relationship with Nick Arnstein (Stephen Mark Lukas), a wealthy investor, FUNNY GIRL is more than just funny. Fanny is an ebullient, unsinkable character who perseveres through dramas, romances, and the ups and downs of show business through grit and determination. Told pretty forthrightly that she’s not classically beautiful enough to be a star, she makes inroads with chutzpah and sheer ability. It’s how stardom should go. Chasing beauty, in the end, cannot compete with raw talent.

The script deviates a bit from the film in which Beetlejuice is, essentially, a supporting character—one who steals the show, but a supporting character all the same. In the stage production, he’s introduced in the first few minutes and is Lydia’s co-lead. It’s also been contemporized (Delia was a sculptor in the movie and is now a life coach, for example), and Lydia’s relationship with her father is made more complex, giving both them and the show more heart. The score by Eddie Perfect with a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King (music supervision and orchestrations by Kris Kukul) is rousing and complements the inspired mayhem with catchy, instantly classic songs like “Creepy Old Guy,” “That Beautiful Sound,” and “Barbara 2.0.”