"A blazingly entertaining new musical...'The Total Bent' can get a little fuzzy when it comes to the details of its story. Stew’s book is not always cogent, although it’s consistently funny...Even if you may scratch your head at a few points, 'The Total Bent' keeps you hooked through the surging power of its sensational score...At its best, 'The Total Bent' feels more like an ecstatic combination of revival meeting and rock concert."
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"'Total Bent' is a daring and overreaching sophomore musical…It’s a shaggy, idiosyncratic patchwork…Director Joanna Settle’s great achievement is crafting a physical production that looks like it sprang organically from a jam session…At close to two intermission-free hours it has its repetitive and dull stretches. However, the music is funky, fierce and sticky-sweet and you might get burned from the heat coming off the performers."
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"You could call 'The Total Bent' a mess of a musical — or you could look at it, as it evidently means to look at itself, as a different sort of entertainment. Certainly it is compelling as a performance piece; the songs are mostly terrific, and are sung with immense panache and authority. But then why does the director Joanna Settle attempt to place it in a physical reality? Why bother with the ridiculous gay subplot? Why juggle ten balls when seven of them always fall? "
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"The newest great musical to launch at the Public Theater...A bit more ramshackle than 'Passing Strange,' 'The Total Bent' is no less thrilling...If you’re at all familiar with the Stew/Rodewald collaboration, you know it produces wildly pleasing music across pretty much every contemporary genre. 'The Total Bent' is no exception and, as always, this one is just packed with heart."
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"Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s new musical is sometimes thrilling. It’s also sometimes snoozy, without much to say — or at least to say clearly...At the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, sexually adventuresome Marty (Ato Blankson-Wood, magnetic) must break away from his gospel-singing father (Vondie Curtis-Hall, supercool) to make his own mark. That’s pretty much it. But when there’s music, 'Total Bent' grooves with bluesy, funky urgency."
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"As theater, the hopelessly muddled 'The Total Bent' makes a great concert...I was hard-pressed to figure out exactly what was going on in the narratively confused proceedings whose plot elements include a seemingly haunted microphone. Fortunately, the rousing score — played by a terrific seven-piece onstage band including Stew and Rodewald — provides ample compensation for the befuddling storyline."
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“A lofty jumble of a show that deals with God, the civil rights movement, the music industry, sexuality, and a haunted microphone, ‘The Total Bent’ only intermittently makes sense. But when the spitfire cast and outrageously phenomenal band burst into song, it's a religious experience of the highest caliber…A thrilling new score...Lyrically, the songs are sharp and often bitingly funny...At once messy and transportive, and thoroughly mesmerizing from start to finish.”
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"The terrific Vondie Curtis Hall plays the seductively slithering gospel singing preacher and faith healer Papa Joe Roy...The story gets fuzzy in this one, which, after establishing its themes, evolves into more of a concert with a thin narrative. As directed by Joanna Settle, this keenly-performed premiere production displays the piece as an enjoyable work in progress with high potential."
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