Theater Reviews: Stew’s The Total Bent and Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour
5 / 10
Paramour's idea of the Broadway musical is particularly disturbing, evincing as it does only the skimpiest knowledge of the form. If we broadly describe a musical as an entertainment that offers a story about characters through song, we have already raised the bar too high. What Paramour offers is more of a series of clichés about humanoids accompanied by sounds. The main cliché is the one that glorifies Old Timey Hollywood as a land of tragic romance and glittering sophistication. ('Welcome to the Golden Age / Tux and tales [sic] it's all the rage,' the opening number helpfully explains.)
