Dec 9, 2011

On a Clear Day, You Can Seethe Forever

Is the New York Post on some kind of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever jihad? First there was Riedel's vulture-circling notice, and now a preemptive slam from Jonathan Podhoretz, conservative pundit and sometime theater critic (though pointedly not the Post's actual full-time critic, Elisabeth Vincentelli). Though the show—which reimagines the quirky Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner musical about a shrink and reincarnation—opens Sunday night, but that didn't stop J-Pod from posting a story titled "New musical an abject failure":
Most really terrible pieces of popular culture are utterly uninteresting. On a Clear Day (which is in its last week of previews — I bought tickets at full price, so I’m violating no reviewing embargo) is both really terrible and interesting in spite of itself...When shows go as wrong as this one, everything goes wrong, and from the first minute. Watching the simpering florist flouncing limp-wristedly around the stage at the beginning serenading his flowers with the words “hey buds below, up is where to grow” might, in another context, cause ACT-UP to reconstitute itself, storm the theater and throw blood on him.
Stay classy, Post.

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