Call “Nanny 911.” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” the new musical that opened Sunday night on Broadway, needs urgent assistance.
Why has a movie that was never anything more than a ridiculous star vehicle for the late Robin Williams’ comedic talents been dragged onstage almost 30 years later without him? Partly as a star vehicle for Broadway favorite Rob McClure, who now plays Doubtfire a k a Daniel.
2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, 124 W. 43rd St.
The producers are also surely hoping to ensnare nostalgic millennials, who were bombarded by sappy films about divorce in the 1990s (“Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Stepmom,” “Liar Liar”), and now have kids of their own to torment with them.
What we’re left with is yet another assembly line musical of a movie — an obnoxious one, at that — in which every song by “Something Rotten!” duo John O’Farrell and Karey Kirkpatrick is generic and forgettable.
The first act ends with a ditty called “Bam! We’re Rockin’ Now,” which could fit snugly into every musical that has ever had a guitar in the orchestra pit.
And the finale, “As Long As There Is Love,” goes “So, when the sun has slipped away / And your skies have turned to gray / Well, over time you will find it’ll be OK.” That’s just bad “Put On a Happy Face.”
Like in the movie, Daniel, a struggling actor and doting dad, is forced to put on a woman’s face after his wife leaves him (he mistakenly hires a stripper for their son’s birthday party) and a judge grants him only Saturday visitation rights with his three kids.
He’s a fun-loving, kooky man-child and his ex, Miranda (Jenn Gambatese) is a killjoy stick in the mud. You’ll find that every adult woman in this show has a heart made of barbed wire — well, except that one that’s actually a dude.
That’s Mrs. Doubtfire, the alter ego created for Daniel by his gay brother Frank (Brad Oscar) and his husband Andre (J. Harrison Ghee), that he uses to sneak back into his San Francisco house and spend time with his son and two daughters. All they know is they have a crazy new Scottish nanny.
Nobody questions why an old lady can move like she’s 32, has the same sense of humor as their father and performs a “Riverdance” number when she claims to be from Scotland.
Like a kiss from Richard Dawson on “Family Feud,” the plot of “Mrs. Doubtfire” has grown creepy with age. Drag disguises are common onstage (“Tootsie” is an infinitely better musical and a far superior movie), but when you add young children into the mix and, um, a court order prohibiting the main character from being with them, it’s uncomfortable for us. How can we embrace someone who is traumatizing his family?
Michael in “Tootsie,” who pretends to be an actress to get a job, is a lying jerk, too. But “Doubtfire” goes further and desperately pleads with us to love this schmuck.
McClure is practically selling us a timeshare with his spastic, overeager performance. I can’t deny it’s technically very fine — he does funny voices: Gollum, Borat, Yoda — and jumps around like the stage is actually a trampoline. His high energy grates, though, and doesn’t get enough laughs to warrant acting like he’s on a two-and-a-half-hour coke binge.
As Miranda, a fashion designer whose ho-hum house designed by David Korins does not look like anywhere Donna Karan would ever set foot in, Gambatese changes little, even after she starts dating a British hunk and Mrs. Doubtfire betters her life.
There are, however, two very funny gags in the musical, directed by Jerry Zaks. Frank’s voice gets loud every time he tells a lie (it happens a lot), and a local kids TV program called “The Mr. Jolly Show” has a hysterical host who’s played by Peter Bartlett like a jet-lagged Rip Taylor.
Every time Mr. Jolly left the stage, I resumed being Mr. Angry.
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December 06, 2021 at 10:11AM
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'Mrs. Doubtfire' review: Bringing the movie to Broadway was a huge mistake - New York Post
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