"Unchecked enthusiasm is not always an asset in musical comedy, despite the genre’s reputation for wholesale peppiness. “Something Rotten!,” the rambunctious new show that opened on Wednesday night, dances dangerously on the line between tireless and tedious, and winds up collapsing into the second camp."
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"Something Rotten is a big splashy puffball of a musical that has been way over-thought, over written and over-worked. There is not room for one more note, one more reference to a Broadway musical, one more historical factoid, one more nod to Shakespeare, one more word or gesture or even breath. We waddle out of the theatre stuffed, but not satiated."
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"'Something Rotten' is simply false advertising. Something Absolutely Brilliant would be closer to the mark, but I imagine modesty prevented those involved from telling the truth about this parody. It is, quite simply, the best musical I have seen in ages."
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"Nicholaw’s genius for reducing an audience to helpless giggles is on blazing display in Something Rotten! — a new show so steeped in the tradition that it often seems like a concordance. Anything you’ve ever liked in a musical comedy (and a few things you haven’t) are here, just waiting to sing-and-dance you into submission...It’s total silliness, of course; Nicholaw keeps the lights bright, the sound loud, and the plot moving at a furious boil. (That’s part of why it evaporates so quickly.)"
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"The cast is resolutely lively, and “Something Rotten!” has enough punch to partially conceal the thinness of the material. Nevertheless, this one’s for backward sophomores only."
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"Supremely silly...the musical love child of “The Carol Burnett Show” and “Forbidden Broadway.” In other words, this showbiz offspring has some darn fine DNA. And a terrific core idea...And the formula works — mostly. Some tunes and dance pieces recur. So laughs dry up as “Something Rotten!” becomes a deju vu-sical. There’s compensation, though, including a mouthwatering production that looks like more than a million bucks."
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"Shamelessly silly parody of Broadway musicals — an outrageous spoof of all things Shakespeare...Although comic desperation descends on the second act, it’s still a deliriously funny show."
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"Smells like a hit, a very palpable hit...This is a big, brash meta-musical studiously fashioned in the mold of Monty Python's Spamalot, The Producers and The Book of Mormon, loaded with crowd-pleasing showstoppers, deliciously puerile gags and an infectious love of the form it so playfully skewers...Even if the show doesn't finish as strongly as it starts, its giddy high spirits prevail."
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