"Perhaps it is doable to respect the politics around these issues and the immigrants trying to build a life in the United States in this format, but it’s tough. Which is why the new musical “The Visitor” feels so obtuse and helplessly dated...The ensemble, however, often upstages the main cast members, etching small but remarkable performance moments, even in the background and during the fleeting transitional numbers."
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"Watching the production, one gets the sense of talented artists who have dragged themselves to the finish line with whatever they could salvage from a misbegotten project. In retrospect, perhaps those weren’t red flags after all, but white ones of surrender."
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"The Visitor expects white rage and white awareness to be worth applauding. But we’ve gone past the time when awareness and rage is a milestone. The U.S. has kept migrant children in cages, Syrian refugees drowned at sea trying to escape war: The time has passed for raising awareness. It is time to take that rage and put it into action. That is not to say The Visitor needs to include a call-to-action for fixing America’s broken immigration system. But the musical’s narrow focus just shows how ill equipped it is for meeting the current moment."
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"When the number is over, however, the audience is quickly thrust back into the world of white-savior Walter. The creators seem to have been generously aiming to create a sympathetic portrait of a privileged man’s performative activism. But by centering Walter rather than Tarek and Zainab, the show ends up highlighting the privileged folks who are already coddled more than enough."
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"The musical is fuzzier in its storytelling. And even in its blurriness, that story feels mismatched with its form. Kitt and Yorkey seem to want to write the next The Band's Visit, translating the subtle seduction of independent cinema into musical theater. Unfortunately, they do nothing to retrofit their overwrought emotive style to this task. The result is a soaring and forgettable score that regularly finds the story paralyzed in the path of an oncoming glory note."
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"The Visitor is a highly unusual case, a musical that seems to be constantly questioning its right to exist…When it sticks to examining its characters' broken hearts, it is compelling, less so in numbers that sounds like op-eds set to music. Indeed, it stumbles most when it loses confidence, turning to loudly trumpeting its good intentions."
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"Emotional repression is in Pierce’s wheelhouse, so it’s no surprise that he delivers an affecting performance as the sad sack professor who finds his passion for justice reawakened. Maksoud (who replaced Ari’el Stachel in previews) makes Tarek appealingly charismatic, Deslorieux provides the evening’s most powerful vocals as Zainab, and stage veteran Antaramian proves so luminous as Mouna that you long for her character to rescue Walter from his loneliness. But their strong contributions are not enough to lift The Visitor from its doldrums."
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"3 stars...It’s easy to write off The Visitor as a white savior story. (Though technically, no one is saved; considering that we’re talking about 14-year-old movie source material, it’s not a spoiler to say there are no happy endings for anyone.) Beyond that, considering the team involved—including director Daniel Sullivan—it’s simply a letdown."
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