Finding Neverland
4 / 10
Manic, childish applause might cure the poisoned fairy Tinker Bell, but it's not medicine enough for Finding Neverland, the awkward, garish and manipulative musical...Show-doctored into a state of shrill mediocrity, the patient can barely walk, let alone fly...This being a family musical competing with the superior Wicked, Matilda and others, nonexistent drama has been drummed up (along with the volume, in Jonathan Deans's oppressive sound design) to justify two acts about a successful writer's new project and his crush on a sickly widow. Some of the cartoonish overacting and second-act plucking of heartstrings might be forgiven if the score were enchanting, but Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy's tunes (a mix of Britpop and pseudo-music-hall) are generic and burdened by cheap, trite lyrics. When the brightest element in Diane Paulus's tacky staging is Kelsey Grammer as a curmudgeonly producer, you know it's time to get the hook.

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