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Review
A Tale of Two Cities
Al Hirschfeld Theatre
September 12, 2008
Morgan Wycks
mwycks@nyconstage.org
One almost forgets how good a story Charles Dickens penned for A Tale of Two Cities. In her musical version of the same title, Jill Santoriello flattens that story like road kill. The music is either generic or tuneless, the lyrics that of a gushing teenager and Ms. Santoriello's book a vague reminder that one should re-read the novel.
The production's director and choreographer (???), Warren Carlyle, ensures that everything is fast, loud and obvious on Tony Walton's clunky, noisy set, horribly lighted by Richard Pilbrow. Perhaps Mr. Walton tried to provide the notion of revolution's rolling thunder but within minutes you just want the furniture movers to take a long meal break.
As for the performers, they barely register or are so cartoonish as to give Looney Tunes a bad name. The Manettes are tres manqué; the Defarges de trop détente; Barsad sadly bad; Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross interchangeably unfunny; and in the hands of James Barbour, Sydney Carton becomes a smug sot when he should be a charmingly disillusioned imbiber. And as for everyone's singing, it is of the "American Idol" variety, cranked up and manipulated on the audio knobs by sound engineers.
We don't even get to see a decapitation or two, but a few heads certainly should have rolled. To coin a phrase, "it was the worst of times that got even worser."
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