"Directed by John Rando, with a choice cast of singing shtick artists, 'The New Yorkers' makes the most puerile silliness seem deeply sophisticated and high sophistication look sublimely silly...This blithe and boozy production is a product of painstaking theater archaeology...Porter’s impeccable tongue-twisting lyrics have been mastered with style by all involved."
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"Don’t let the lovely silvery MGM draperies fool you, nor the silky gorgeousness of the orchestrations: 'The New Yorkers' is a clumsy, instructive, disorganized, high-tone, low-tone, witty, ridiculous mess...What 'The New Yorkers' is really about is seeing what, if anything, will stick. Not much really does...The pacing and stage pictures by director John Rando and choreographer Chris Bailey are as leaden and clumsy as the vocal arrangements by Rob Berman are featherweight."
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"It’s an eyeful and an earful, a total delight...Freed from their usual commitment to restoring forgotten musicals to their original form, Viertel, along with director John Rando, music director Rob Berman, choreographer Chris Bailey and a design team run riot get larcenous not only with the Porter catalogue but with the jokester’s playbook as well."
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"The resulting product — made up mostly of second-tier selections from the Porter catalog, sprightly dance sequences, ancient jokes and a dragging, labored, outright idiotic book — was probably not worth the effort, especially since all of the songs can easily be enjoyed outside the context of the show in revue, a nightclub format or on audio...The production also exhibits a roughness and aimlessness that is rare for anything from the characteristically polished Encores! series."
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"The series' weakest offering in several seasons. It falls flat as a pancake when it really needs to bubble like champagne...The plot is only barely decipherable at best, and Fields' original book, with hoary old 'New Yorker'-style bon mots and sexual innuendo up the wazoo, hasn't aged well even a little bit...Rando's production is unusually slow-moving and far too reliant on props...Only supporting players Burton and Chamberlin really managed to fire on all cylinders."
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"Even the best attempt at reconstructing 'The New Yorkers' from what's left leaves holes to be filled...So while director John Rando's giddy and effervescent new mounting is an adaptation by artistic director Viertel that sports some new dialogue and additional Cole Porter numbers from the era, there's no attempt to make any sense of the proceedings. The new 'The New Yorkers' is just as delightfully flimsy and nonsensical as the original surely was."
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“A long, two and half hours that’s strictly for hardcore musical theater devotees curious about Cole Porter’s ‘lost’ 1930 show. It’s a fossil of its time that has been poorly revised…Stale, musty and flat…Director John Rando’s polished staging injects as much flashiness and fun as possible. Mr. Rando commendably strives to elevate the arch material...This Encores! reconstruction has not unearthed a forgotten masterpiece, or an entertaining trifle, but reveals a dated curio of mild interest."
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"Essentially a highly polished cubic zirconia...But not even their A-plus efforts can really transform this silly and overlong piece into a must-see musical...The odds that you’ll actually care what happens to any of the characters is probably 100 to 1. What counts here, naturally, is the score, which is primarily comprised of unknown Porter songs—here augmented by some of his biggest hits...'The New Yorkers' only intermittently really takes off."
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