Solomon Thomas is a football player for the NFL who is also a massive Broadway fan!
15.03.2024 - 01:11 / deadline.com
To say The Notebook had a devoted, built-in audience before it sang so much as a note on Broadway would be an understatement this romantic tear-jerker never attempts.
Based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 bestseller about a young – then older, then much older – couple who survive a lifetime of tribulations (until they don’t), the musical opening tonight at the Schoenfeld Theatre is the theatrical equivalent of muzak, comforting in its unapologetically manipulative way and unabashed in its disregard for anything approaching the grit of the real world. (The 2004 film adaptation, if it’s known for much today besides nostalgia, is remembered for the early casting of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.)
The reference to muzak, by the way, isn’t meant to suggest that composer Ingrid Michaelson looks back quite that far for her musical inspirations. She has a lovely way with a melody, even if so many of the songs in Notebook are samey mid-tempo ballads sung directly to the the audience as if anything less obvious might risk one or two folks in the balcony missing some the point: Ally and Noah love each other. Really, really love each other.
Of all the show’s disappointments planted like so many wild flowers ready for plucking, none stings quite so much as Michaelson’s score. Not that it’s bad – it isn’t, far from it – but in more than 2 hours of music you’d be hard-pressed to find two minutes and 17 seconds as melodically lovely or as lyrically clever as the singer-songwriter’s charming 2007 indie pop hit “The Way I Am,” with its sweet pledge of young love “I’ll buy you Rogaine/when you start losing all your/sew on patches/to all you tear.” An early duet between the Younger Ally and Younger Noah – “Carry You Home” – comes close,
Solomon Thomas is a football player for the NFL who is also a massive Broadway fan!
and an inner child is a deeply relatable idea, even in a cuckoosical such as this one.David Korins’ set of spaceship white-neon frames is more streamlined than past “Tommy’s,” but it’s used so deftly by McAnuff, lighting designer Amanda Zieve and choreographer Lorin Latarro to paint lush and kaleidoscopic stage pictures. Most wouldn’t call this musical a dance show, but Lotarro’s thrilling choreography makes a case for that category.
Certainly one definition of great music might include an ability to meet the present – and the future – head-on and come out unbruised, even triumphant. By that standard and many more, The Who’s Tommy, opening tonight on Broadway, is thrilling proof that the premiere concept album of 1969 is great music indeed.
Broadway’s first salvo of spring newcomers was more than holding its own last week, with recent arrivals drawing strong audiences.
Editor’s Note: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Appropriate, starring Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll and Michael Esper, re-opens on Broadway tonight in a commercial transfer to the Belasco Theatre. The play, starring Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll, Michael Esper, will run through June 23.
Water For Elephants, the musical opening tonight at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, is perhaps best viewed as a redemptive attempt to adapt Sara Gruen’s popular 2006 historical romance novel into something, anything, to block from memory the middling, grim 2011 film starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon.
Broadway‘s insanely busy spring doesn’t really kick into full gear until next month when 14 new shows have their official openings, but with March as a sort of sign of things to come – five shows have opened or will soon this month – box office was strong last week.
The acclaimed revival of An Enemy of the People had a star-studded audience on opening night!
Whether or not the climate activists who interrupted a critics preview of Broadway’s An Enemy of the People last week persuasively made their “water’s coming for us all” message isn’t for me to say, but I will note that the disruption spoke very well for this production.
Princess Catherine and Prince William have a big decision to make!
Given some of the star-studded titles that have closed out SXSW in previous years, a romantic comedy that could best be described as Harry Styles Wish Fulfillment might seem like an odd choice to round out the festival. But “The Idea of You,” a Michael Showalter adaptation of Robinne Lee’s book of the same name, proves that romantic comedies, when done well, are every bit as deserving of the red carpet rollout.
Christopher Vourlias When two-time Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou revealed in 2020 that she had been raped by a senior member of the Greek sailing federation while competing for the national team, she inspired dozens of other women to break their silence, sparking the country’s #MeToo movement. In her feature-length directorial debut, “Tack,” which premiered this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Greek-British filmmaker Vania Turner follows one such story: the shocking case of a younger sailor, Amalia Provelengiou, who alleged she’d been repeatedly abused and raped by her coach — beginning when she was only 12 years old.
Aramide Tinubu Long before Instagram stories and TikTok videos were a thing, gossip magazines and television allowed everyday people to feel a connection to the wealthy and beautiful. In real life, few are brave enough to elbow their way onto the A-list, but others are bold enough to demand a seat at the table — which brings us to “Palm Royale.” Based on Juliet McDaniel’s novel, “Mr. & Mrs.
In Michael Showalter’s The Idea of You, based on the novel by Robinne Lee, Amazon/MGM brings to the screen a narrative that tantalizes with the prospect of exploring the complexities of love, age disparity, and the pursuit of happiness in the digital age. Anchored by Anne Hathaway’s Solene, a single mother and art gallery owner, and Nicholas Galitzine’s Hayes Campbell, a young pop star from the fictional band August Moon, the film sets its sights on charting the course of an unconventional romance, but the script muddles it all up to produce a somewhat funny, somewhat entertaining, albeit overly long romantic comedy.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic When you’re 10, it sounds like every line your favorite boy band sings is being aimed directly at you. Somewhere along the line, the illusion shatters.
The new Broadway musical The Notebook celebrated its opening night this week!
Frank Rizzo Musical theater can be a sucker for a romantic tale, whether it’s about obsessive devotion, idealized passion, or lost loves. “The Notebook,” based on Nicholas Sparks‘ bestselling, 1996 debut novel, has elements of all three — but they’re thinly rendered here in this Hallmark movie of a musical, awash in sentimentality and drenched in wistful longings and wish fulfillment. The huge fanbase of the romance novel and the 2004 hit film might initially boost the box office, but it will take more than recreating that iconic rainstorm to win over other theatergoers looking for more than clichés, tropes and triggers.
a popular movie starring a young Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Like Pavlov’s pups, millennials habitually sob during that 2004 film, and the production has seized upon its teary reputation by selling branded tissue boxes. During the final 10 minutes, the noses are deafening.I suspect, however, that it is audience members’ fond memories of the movie and book, more so than the merely pleasant proceedings in the theater, that are prying open their tear ducts.Because as elegantly staged as “The Notebook” is by co-directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams, and despite boasting an appealing cast, the show amounts to a series of un-involving pencil sketches rather than a layered portrait of a decades-long love.Not a single change book writer Bekah Brunstetter has made improves the simple story’s effectiveness.
A slate of Broadway newcomers drew strong audience figures last week, with several – An Enemy of the People, The Notebook and The Who’s Tommy filling every seat and then some.
The winner of Dancing On Ice 2024 is Ryan Thomas, who triumphantly beat Miles Nazaire and Adele Roberts during the live final on Sunday, 10 March. The former Coronation Street star was speechless as he was crowned the winner of the hit ITV skating competition alongside his pro skating partner Amani Fancy, following two spectacular performances, including a showstopping routine of the legendary 'Bolero' number.