Theater review by Adam Feldman
"To be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one’s heart broken at regular intervals,” wrote Frank Rich in 1981. It is my sad duty to report that more heartbreak is in store at Road Show; sitting in the audience, one can practically hear the collective droop. We have been starved for new Sondheim, but here we must settle for scraps: musical motifs that recall the composer’s earlier scores; lyrics that occasionally meet his standards for verbal dazzle but just as often stumble into uncharacteristic blandness.
Second-rate Sondheim is still better than most people’s best work, but it is weighed down in Road Show by other disappointments. John Weidman’s pell-mell book—which tells the story of William and Addison Mizner, peripatetic brothers in the early 20th century—bears the scars of multiple surgeries: It can’t settle down into any particular style. And John Doyle—who always seems terribly embarrassed to be directing a musical at all—leaches the material of its comedy and vaudeville flair, bathing the production in a glum, brown wash. Several supporting performers make an impression (including Claybourne Elder, Kristine Zbornik and Alma Cuervo as Mama Mizner, who sings a deathbed torch song for one of her sons). But the two lead actors reflect Doyle’s drab vision: Gemignani’s Addison, meant to be sensitive, seems lumpish; Cerveris’s William, supposedly dashing, is charmless. Those of us who have traveled with Sondheim to the far corners of the musical map can only look forward to a better show, somewhere down the road.
