Sweet Smell of Success
It could be worse. Success stinks, dot, dot, dot.
It’s what SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS is wired to tell you.
A musical about Broadway, the First Act of SUCCESS
suffers from the self-consciousness of imitation. In fact, the tunes
sound like Marvin Hamlisch imitations. Marvin Hamlisch wrote them.
And the story is doggedly conspicuous, about the corruption that drove
the tabloids in New York in the earlier part of the 20th
century, with Chief Guru Walter Winchell at the helm. The muckraker
who slurred the names of Marilyn Monroe and J. Edgar Hoover until
there were six degrees of separation. John Guare wrote it.
In fact the entire first act is a sophomoric journey
into the celebrity consciousness that pervades our culture. The protagonists,
stargazed lovers, Jack Noseworthy as the nightclub singer Dallas and
his girlfriend, Susan, played by Kelli O’Hara, are far too one-dimensional
to pull off a convincing moral.
In Act II the story soars to new heights. Intrigue
meets intrigue, as the divergent story lines converge, and the murderous
tale is revealed. There’s the evil tabloid journalist J.J. Hunsecker
played smoothly by John Lithgow and his protégé Sidney,
journalist as hit man. Dramatic Fosse-like choreography and Nicholas
Hytner’s staging, in which multiple story lines intersect, make
for a hot night on Broadway.
Bob Crowley’s soaring New York skyscrapers
look like only King Kong could shake them, a pertinent reminder of
the way we were.
That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa
Goldberg.
