Chaplin
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Cititour.com Review
What is a musical like Chaplin doing on Broadway in 2012? It's not packed with sassy dialogue or screeching pop songs, and it's not adapted from a hit film. There's lots of heart in this little biomusical about Charlie Chaplin's meteoric rise to the top of the silent film world, but a few evocative sequences and a plucky cast of seasoned Broadway performers can't compensate for a book and score that lack the caliber and freshness that defined Chaplin's best work.
The story, scripted by book writers Christopher Curtis and Thomas Meehan (The Producers), spans nearly 80 years in Chaplin's life, from his impoverished London childhood to Hollywood stardom and his subsequent decline, as talkies and communist rumors derailed his career. Except for a few choice scenes, however, Chaplin emerges as a surprisingly passive character in his own life story, and the best song in Curtis's middling score, "All Fall Down," isn't even sung by his title character, but by infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who goes on a crusade in Act II to bring down Chaplin.
Still, Warren Carlyle's production has its winning moments, notably sequences in which the adult Chaplin—played with understatement and comic artistry by the relatively unknown Rob McClure—conjures up childhood memories to create his most famous character, the Little Tramp, and takes drastic measures to coax an emotionally harrowing performance from a young Jackie Coogan (a gutwrenching Zachary Unger) in The Kid.
But even adding in the strength of the supporting players, from Wayne Alan Wilcox as Chaplin's brother and Christiane Noll as his mother, to Jenn Colella as Hedda Hopper and Erin Mackey as Oona O'Neill Chaplin, this musical never distinguishes itself. Chaplin was always innovating, but Chaplin sticks with the familiar.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://chaplinbroadway.com
Cast
Rob McClure, Jim Borstelmann, Jenn Colella, Erin Mackey, Michael McCormick, Christiane Noll, Zachary Unger, Wayne Alan Wilcox
Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/10/2012
Closing 1/6/2013
Preview Open/ Preview Close Dates
Preview Opening 8/21/2012
Closing Open-ended
Box Office
212-239-6200
Theatre Info
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
234 West 47th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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