"Awfully lowbrow…Dopey fun is one thing, but ‘Escape to Margaritaville,’ a paean to the pleasures of zipless debauchery, is pitched so low it will temporarily extinguish your IQ...A coherent aesthetic experience, in that laziness is not just its method but its message...The score is beautifully sung...It’s the songs themselves that are problematic. They may work well enough on the radio or in concert but, conscripted for theatrical service, grow quickly monotonous."
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"Hokey and sometimes pokey. But I’ll level with you: I had fun…The show doesn’t shoehorn Buffett’s songs into a story so much as cobble a story around them, extrapolating characters and situations from details in the lyrics, which is more successful in small ways than in large ones…Performed by a vocally overqualified cast…the score is pleasantly catchy…'Escape to Margaritaville' revels in its own goofiness. It’s not trying to be paradise; it’s fine with being a cheeseburger.”
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“‘Escape to Margaritaville’ is about as much fun as buying a dud hermit crab as a pet. It seems like it’ll be exotic, or at least cute, but it’s really kind of sad, and definitely a rip-off, and, at the end of the day, actually just an empty shell…‘Margaritaville’s’ best moments happen when director Christopher Ashley decides to take things just briefly into over-the-top weirdoland…The story sketched around Buffett’s big hits by Garcia and O’Malley has all the freshness of a rerun of ‘Friends.’”
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"One of the most mediocre musicals ever to come to my attention. The book is witless, the cast mostly bland, and while some of the songs are quite good, they’re all used in the most banal ways imaginable…Christopher Ashley has staged this sodden mess with the same lively energy with which he infused ‘Come From Away,’ and Kelly Devine’s dances and Walt Spangler’s sets are predictably excellent. If professionalism were all, ‘Escape to Margaritaville’ might be worth seeing.”
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"May fit the bill if you’re in the mood for a breezy but dopey diversion…Shoehorning songs into a plot ‘Mamma Mia’-style doesn’t exactly accentuate Buffett tunes that already tell tales of their own. And the weak and weird book doesn’t help matters…A show one wishes was more fun. A saving grace is the cast, which makes the most of the material. Another is the batch of Buffett songs, easygoing ear candy — although hard-driving Broadway belts can work against the style.”
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"The hedonistic spirit of Buffett's feel-good 'gulf and western' music is on flamboyant display in this witless but colorful songbook musical custom-tailored for the fans...Garcia and O'Malley break no fresh ground with their corny story...But the placement of the Buffett songs isare smartly matched with the developments of the so-called plot...However well packaged, the show just isn't a good fit for New York...The production is ship-shape to travel...anywhere but here."
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“Even those unfamiliar with Buffett's songwriting oeuvre should find the proceedings relaxedly enjoyable…It's only when the writers attempt to provide literalism to the lyrics...that the show feels hopelessly strained…Nonetheless, the overall silliness goes down fairly easily, and even easier if you partake of the frozen margaritas...The show exudes an affable likability that's hard to entirely resist…It also helps immeasurably that such a talented cast of Broadway veterans has been assembled.”
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"The lamely antiseptic musical...Insufferably dumb show, about a beach bum guitarist who falls for an environmental scientist...The musical is built around the Buffett song that practically everyone knows...The lyrics are used as such a literal guideline that one of the characters is actually 'nibblin' on spongecake' as the number begins...At the end...hundreds of beach balls are dumped on the audience...It was the only thing all afternoon in the Marquis Theatre that I didn't see coming."
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