"Despite the exciting vocalism of a cast led by the formidable LaChanze, it reduces the late Queen of Disco and pioneer of electronica to a few factoids and song samples that make her seem profoundly inconsequential...I found myself asking throughout the show’s intermission-less 100 minutes: Can’t they do any better than this?...The show over all skitters away from almost everything even slightly awkward or troubling — and thus interesting — about Ms. Summer’s life and career."
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"Three talented and blameless women play the late Donna Summer in a tacky, sub-Vegas jukebox biomusical...At its most watchable, the show plays like a barely dramatized adaptation of Summer’s Spotify and Wikipedia pages. But when it’s bad, it’s so, so bad...The general level of befuddled kitsch is raised by the bizarre background presence of a nearly all-female ensemble which spends much of the show in boxy drag-king suits and clumpy short wigs."
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"Thanks to the swift, smart construction of 'Summer,' which neither overburdens its material nor overstays its welcome, it’s a pretty damn good time. 'Summer’s' book is sometimes predictable, sometimes sentimental, and every so often pushes unsubtly on its central image. But it’s also uptempo, fluently interwoven with the show’s songs, and often genuinely funny...Has its dips...All in all, though, 'Summer' does well at moving us through both the bright and dark spots in its hero’s life."
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"A comic book set to top-40 tunes...So vacuous that I was reduced to helpless giggling almost before I got settled...On the other hand, the band is hot, the sets are slick, Trujillo’s dances are super-smooth, and you get to spend pretty much the whole evening listening to and looking at LaChanze to which there is no downside. Best of all, 'Summer' runs for an hour and 40 minutes with no intermission, meaning that you’ll be out the door almost before you lose your patience—but not quite."
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"As unimaginative as its title...Cooks up some excitement during the musical performances of hits, but mostly the songs come off as well-delivered covers, evoking little of the subversive, decadent ecstasy of the Studio 54 era...The book’s shallow treatment of even the most serious events – is one-upped by the distraction of having many of the minor (and a few not so minor) male characters played by the female chorus ensemble, in campy, sketch-comedy drag."
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"It took three writers for the bummer of a script for this show at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Fortunately, Summer's numerous dance-o-licious high-energy hits are still as contagious and irresistible as ever...The show actually gets off to a groovy start in every sense...But 'Summer' soon gives off a chill with its formulaic, finesse-free stream of trauma, triumph, tragedy — repeat...McAnuff's staging, meanwhile, is superslick but miscalibrated."
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"A narrow-minded jukebox musical that views its titular heroine in a vacuum. The great songs are pretty much all here...LaChanze is here, too, and in glorious voice, along with a thin biographical book that hardly does justice to Summer's life or her music...Despite some good songs and uplifting vocals from her backup singers, LaChanze is pressed to carry the whole show on her back...Laughs are few and far between...The song lyrics, not the spoken dialogue, are what matter in this show."
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"A feebly dramatized Wikipedia page with lackluster covers...This dramaturgically inept show either short-changes or outright massacres Summer's music; undervalues her achievements...completely fails to contextualize her legacy; glosses over her massive gay fan base; and rams its female-empowerment message down your throat...More like a 'Saturday Night Live' parody of a jukebox musical...The hack-job direction is matched by Sergio Trujillo's bland choreography."
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