“Freed was an interesting fellow, and his life was plenty rock ’n’ roll. ...The storytelling is especially haphazard when dealing with his family life.”
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“ ‘Rock & Roll Man’ gets rough around the edges when it comes to its original songs. Gary Kupper’s compositions turn up as garden-variety ballads and place-fillers instead of driving the story. They’re no match for the oldies but still goodies.”
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“If you’re an older theatergoer, you pay the price of admission in hopes of recapturing a little bit of your youth through the staged presentation of the songs that underscored it. In that way, ‘Rock and Roll Man’ serves the same purpose as...any number of boomer nostalgia acts that have come and gone over the past two decades. By no means the worst of these jukebox musicals, it nevertheless fails to distinguish itself.”
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"It's putting it mildly that Freed worked on a sliding moral scale, which is the main reason that Rock & Roll Man never knows what to make of him. If it can't endow him with a rogue's charm, it also fails at the tougher analysis that might have allowed him both his considerable flaws and his place in rock history."
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“The joy of the show–the chance to hear classic rock and roll–is also the source of its greatest frustration...The glossy and glossed over production doesn't do the man justice. Freed was by all accounts a pioneering rebel under his clean-cut demeanor, but this ‘Rock & Roll Man’ is a real square.”
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“Many, if not all, the songs made famous by these players are featured, not always in full versions. Nevertheless, enough are sung and played to keep rock-and-rollers of a certain 1950s-60s age happy...Younger audience members are likely to wig out as well.”
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“This is a show that attempts to cover so many bases it winds up missing the ball entirely."
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Rock & Roll Man, the new Jukebox/Biographical musical at the New World Stages has a great deal going for it. The story of legendary Rock & Roll impresario Alan Freed is told in a series of delicious period songs with a few original works (by Gary Kupper who also cowrote the libretto with Larry Marshak and Rose Caiola) thrown in. The show is basically factual, although a tad exaggerated, and doesn’t shy away from Freed’s well-known issues such as his alcoholism and taking payola. Best of all, the cast is led by Constantine Maroulis in a complicated, fine-tuned and, for him, subdued performance.
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