"But the director Jerry Zaks’s ambivalent production tries to have it both ways: The story of a playful man-child with whom we empathize but whose good intentions can’t excuse his machinations. The film pulled it off at the time, primarily thanks to Williams’s charms. McClure’s Daniel, though, is more irritating than entertaining, and his antics — which include hacking into his wife’s email account to sabotage her nanny search — are more creepy than kooky."
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"Have I seen the new Broadway musical Mrs. Doubtfire? At this point, I am fairly confident that I have; ask me in three months, and I’m not sure what I’ll tell you. This pleasant and forgettable show at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre is the epitome of what Sondheim (citing his friend Mary Rodgers) called a “Why” musical: “a perfectly respectable show, based on a perfectly respectable source, that has no reason for being.” Mrs. Doubtfire hopes to draw on audiences’ residual affection for the 1993 Robin Williams film comedy, in which a divorced dad named Daniel disguises himself as a hearty old Scottish nanny so he can spend time with his kids. We’ve already had musical versions of Tootsie and Mary Poppins; now we have the hybrid we never knew we needed and, as it turns out, we don’t."
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"What it lacks in fresh laugh-out-loud moments, honest-to-goodness heart, and sonic earworms you can’t wait to hear again, the new Broadway musical Mrs. Doubtfire tries hard to make up for with cranked-up performances and a busy, busy, busy tone. No such luck. For all of the calories burned, it’s still low-impact."
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"So the show’s pleasures ebb and flow. I will say, I assumed that I’d find Mrs. Doubtfire dated and passé. Yet there’s a central proposal in it that is still radical. If you’ve read anything about the numbers of women leaving the workforce, the uneven burden placed on mothers, the crisis of underpaid child care and unpaid domestic labor, you know that Mrs. Doubtfire is still a utopian dream."
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"The amount of talent behind the high-spirited, very sporadically fun Mrs. Doubtfire is undeniable, from the creators of the low-key brilliant Something’s Rotten!, the legendary director Jerry Zaks, and MVP star Rob McClure, whose quicksilver vocal impressions and comedic shape-shifting more than rival the same attributes that made the movie’s Robin Williams a comedy icon. Yet all of that combined know-how can only serve to shine and polish a creaky machine that probably should have been junked and sold for parts well before its arrival on Broadway."
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"A good time for all ages, despite our beloved, battered Broadway, is exactly what the audience-friendly, warm-centered, modestly scaled “Mrs. Doubtfire” delivers. In other seasons, this show might have looked like more of the same. Fair enough. It’s retro. It’s old-school musical comedy. It’s no font of formative innovation. But this year, the breadth of its target demographic stands out. Certainly, it’s the best current choice for families visiting the city and looking for a fresh show to see together. This superbly cast musical has been given a whiz-bang farcical staging by the wily old maestro Jerry Zaks, who has installed more physical shtick, especially from the droll ensemble, in almost any show since “The Producers.”"
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"But even in the belabored tradition of screen-to-stage musical adaptations, “Mrs. Doubtfire” is doggedly risk-averse, opting for handsomely outfitted, faithful simulacrum over reinvention or surprise. “Hairspray” it is not."
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"But McClure’s gifts — robustly on display in the musical that marks its official opening Dec. 5 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre — don’t include a radiant star element. It’s a wholly admirable, workmanlike performance: technically impressive if not charismatically embraceable. “Mrs. Doubtfire,” then, directed by Jerry Zaks — a pro with an innate sense of farcical mechanics — feels like an erratic musical-theater equivalent of a tribute band."
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