A playwright who needs someone to back his next show. A mobster who needs some way to please his showgirl girlfriend.
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship - or a brand new musical comedy!
Based on the screenplay of the acclaimed film, Bullets Over Broadway brings the talents of Woody Allen and Susan Stroman together for the first time.
Loaded with big laughs, colorful characters, and the songs that made the 20s roar, Bullets Over Broadway is ready to bring musical comedy back with a bang.
'Bullets Over Broadway' is the show everyone hoped would get those flickering Broadway lights blazing again. In certain wonderful ways -- Susan Stroman's happy-tappy dance rhythms, the dazzling design work on everything from proscenium curtain to wigs, and a fabulous chorus line of dancing dolls, molls and gangsters -- Woody Allen's showbiz musical is the answer to a Broadway tinhorn's prayer. Surprisingly, though, the book (from Allen's own screenplay for his 1994 film) is feeble on laughs, and certain key performers don't seem comfortable navigating the earthy comic idiom of burlesque. So, let's call it close -- but no cigar.
It's Stroman's vision that will keep this cute, brashy ode to Broadway on Broadway for long to come. She has staged a truly deliciously vulgar scene sung to 'The Hot Dog Song' that, let's put it bluntly, will not be making the Tony telecast. She has teamed up with Santo Loquasto's ambitious and lovely set designs to put a snazzy looking real car onstage and yet also make a train out of dancers dressed as red caps in white gloves. When she has mobsters in three-piece suits tap dance to ''Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do,' their masculine movements are a joy. When the play-within-the-musical is staged, the proscenium has real dancers posing like carved statues. It's all been so well thought out and executed, right down to its bouncy chairs and rotating houses. Stroman has the right to sing, as the title of one song goes 'Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You.' When the critical reviews of the fictional play come out at the end of the show, the consensus must be the same about this fun, beautiful musical: 'A work of art of the highest caliber.'
Videos