Bullets Over Broadway
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Cititour.com Review
Too many new musicals arrive on Broadway carrying weak scores like albatrosses. Happily, that’s not the case with Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen’s buoyant, occasionally dark but ultimately gleeful adaptation of his 1994 film, about an aspiring playwright and the compromises he makes to get his work onstage. The score is a compilation of songs from the period in which it’s set, 1929, yet somehow they fit. And with the sure hand of director and choreographer Susan Stroman steering the proceedings, Bullets is easily one of this season’s musical highlights.
Songs by Cole Porter, Sammy Cahn and Hoagy Carmichael, to name a few, are part of the aural pleasures in a show that features Zach Braff, of Scrubs fame, making an impressive Broadway debut. He plays David Shayne, a young scribe who thinks he has tons more talent than is actually the case. Nevertheless, he gets a shot at the big time when rich mobster Nick Valenti (The Sopranos’ Vincent Pastore) agrees to back David’s play if Olive Neal (Helene Yorke), Nick’s moll, is in it. Let’s just say the blond showgirl isn’t exactly typecast as a shrink. She’s a terrible actress, but the script’s not destined to win a Pulitzer, though the input of Nick’s henchman Cheech (Nick Cordero) vastly improves it.
This screwball setup actually gives Allen ample space to explore ideas like artistic compromise, what makes a writer and the value of art versus people. Even the presence of a few murderous mobsters rarely dampens the comedy. A relative newcomer to Broadway, Yorke is fabulously funny as the heavily New Yawk-accented Olive; she nearly stops the show in the first act with the double-entendre-filled number “I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll.” Other keen performances come from Marin Mazzie as the leading lady of David’s play, Betsy Wolfe as his ignored girlfriend, and Brooks Ashmanskas and Karen Ziemba as the other members of the oddball company. The quirks of the latter pair — he eats everything, she’s obsessed with her dog — are overexploited, but Ashmanskas and Yorke’s bouncy “Let’s Misbehave” song-and-dance is a highlight.
Braff brings exasperated charm to his character, even when he frequently does the wrong thing. (Maybe we’ll see him as Leo Bloom in The Producers someday.) But he’s equally matched by Cordero as the straight-faced henchman who discovers his artistic flair — and takes it all a bit too seriously. As she did with The Producers, Stroman maintains a light tone throughout and delivers wonderfully stylish dances. David’s play may be awful, but Bullets Over Broadway abounds with the many joys of musical comedy.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://www.bulletsoverbroadway.com
Cast
Brooks Ashmanskas, Zach Braff, Nick Cordero, Marin Mazzie, Vincent Pastore, Betsy Wolfe, Lenny Wolpe, Helene Yorke, Karen Ziemba
Open/Close Dates
Opening 4/10/2014
Closing 8/24/2014
Preview Open/ Preview Close Dates
Preview Opening 3/11/2014
Closing Open-ended
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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