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1 article from 2007

12 July 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Broadway has apparently turned Hollywood on its head by turning the 1980 musical flop Xanadu into a stage hit. By and large, the show, which opened Tuesday night, has received enthusiastic reviews. Calling it an "outlandishly enjoyable stage spoof," New York Times stage critic Charles Isherwood writes that it is "simultaneously indefensible and irresistible." Isherwood concludes: "The show's winking attitude toward its own aesthetic abjectness can be summed up thus: If you can't beat 'em, slap on some roller skates and join 'em." Linda Winer in Newsday calls the show "a grand little piece of smart dumb fun." And Joe Dzienmianowicz, in the New York Daily News calls it "eye and ear candy that's delightfully inspiring ... a cure for summertime blues." But Clive Barnes in the New York Post isn't buying any of that. Noting that the original movie was credited with killing off the large-scale Hollywood musical for more than two decades, Barnes suggests that the only thing "not awful" about the Broadway show is the music. "That, I suppose, is the only goodish news of an absolutely ghastly show" in which the performers all have "to keep their tongues in their cheeks for so long it must give them earaches," he remarks.

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1 article from 2007