Review: ‘It Shoulda Been You,’ a Wedding on Broadway
6 / 10
'It Shoulda Been You'...confirms the sad truth that weddings...bring out the worst in some people. That includes cynics, show-offs, heavy drinkers, envious have-nots and, it would seem, the creators of American musicals...'Shoulda'...occupies that treacherous comic ground between smirky and perky. Mining an illusion of charm from such terrain is hard, if not impossible, work for any contemporary performer. Not that the eminently talented ensemble members here don't do their best to fill out the paper-doll stereotypes they have been asked to embody...For the most part, the score sticks so relentlessly to the same up-tempo jauntiness that you expect a bouncing ball to materialize...There's not an element in 'It Shoulda Been You' that hasn't been used, and wrung dry, before. Adding latter-day twists to this cocktail of clichés somehow makes it taste all the flatter.
