Broadway Blog - Double Review Roundup: 9 to 5 and Waiting for Godot

Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "Durn. You kinda want "9 to 5: The Musical" to be better than it is. Not that you won't have fun at this stage version of the 1980 feminist revenge comedy that was a hit movie with an impossibly catchy title tune. It's a certified crowd-pleaser."

Elysa Gardner, USA Today: "At a recent preview, Block nearly stopped the show with a song called Get Out and Stay Out- directed at her ex, though she would have pleased the crowd equally belting it out to Hart. If seeing Y-chromosome-addled cartoon characters get their due is your idea of an empowering experience, or at least a good time, 9 to 5 has your number."

Linda Winer, Newsday: "'9 to 5" is a female-empowerment theme-park musical - complete with a spunky Dolly Parton impersonator and lots of faceless scenery that might as well have been moving animatronics. The lavish and harmless entertainment, which opened last night with a shiny-colored and efficient score by Parton, is mostly a tracing-paper adaptation of the popular secretary-revenge movie - which, you may have noticed, was dated when it starred Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in 1980."

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: "Is "9 to 5" as hip as TV's "The Office" or as joyously hit-filled as "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"? No, but if you're looking for a little diversion, it will do the trick from 8 to 10:15."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: "Yes, a pair of X chromosomes may well help you enjoy this show. Then again, women buy 66 percent of Broadway tickets. And it's "9 to 5" that gets the last laugh."

Two-time Tony Award® winner Nathan Lane, Tony Award® winner Bill Irwin, Golden Globe® winner John Goodman and Tony Award® winner John Glover star in Samuel Beckett's cryptic and comical play, Waiting for Godot, directed by Tony Award® winner Anthony Page.

David Rooney, Variety: "Aside from its title, there's no more perfect summation of "Waiting for Godot" than Estragon's complaint "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful." But there's no trace of that monotony in the perversely gripping non-drama and fine-grained emotional textures of this haunting revival. Samuel Beckett's 1953 play has been absent from Broadway for more than 50 years, and the current climate of pervasive anxiety makes the timing ideal for a comedy of existential despair -- even better when it comes wrapped in Anthony Page's transcendent production, showcasing four distinctive actors at the top of their game."

Ben Brantley, New York Times: "As a profound comedy, this "Godot" is deeply satisfying. As an emotionally moving work, it is less so, except when Mr. Goodman and Mr. Glover are onstage. That's because while Mr. Irwin and Mr. Lane have each mapped credible paths to their roles, mostly the paths are parallel and rarely intersect."

Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "It's not easy handling the comic absurdity and terrifying despair that snake hand-in-hand throughout "Waiting for Godot," but the Roundabout Theatre Company's striking revival does justice to both."

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: "This two-man dream team is wonderfully crabby and cozy together, exactly right for a couple who've spent ages together waiting and waiting and waiting for the mysterious no-show Godot."

Linda Winer, Newsday: "The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Waiting for Godot," which opened Thursday at Studio 54, is the one against which others will be measured for a long time. This is bliss - seriously - theatrical and existential bliss."

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: "Veteran theatergoers usually don't have to wait long for another production of the oft-performed "Godot." But one as special as this doesn't come along that often."

Elysa Gardner, USA Today: "In the new Roundabout Theatre Company production (* * * ½ out of four) at Studio 54, Beckett's hobos Estragon and Vladimir - Gogo and Didi, as they call each other - are played by Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, with John Goodman in a supporting role. But like the current revival of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King, this Godot is noteworthy less for its cast members' marquee value than their ability to make the existential, universal questions posed by the text accessible to a mass audience.."

Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly: "In the end, as in the beginning, the show rightly revolves around Gogo and Didi. And Lane and Irwin are more than up to the task of capturing their characters' mutual friendship, antipathy, and befuddlement at their fate in life - as they ponder their circumstances with regard to an absent and seemingly indifferent Godot. B+"

Robert Feldberg, Bergen Record: "But Beckett's great work, ranging through most human emotions, and with lines and scenes open to multiple interpretations, allows for many choices. The ones in this presentation work very well for me."

Matt Windman, AM New York: "We can't promise that you will understand "Waiting for Godot." But so far as Beckett revivals go, this "Godot" really reaches the top of the class."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: "The most potent aspect of "Godot," after all, is that you can project almost any meaning onto it. Right now, there couldn't be a more provocative text for a culture such as ours, built on a need for instant gratification, a pathological fear of boredom and the seeming inability to learn from the past. It's all funny, yes, until someone gets hurt."

David Sheward, Backstage: "In the current Roundabout Theatre Company production at Studio 54-the former disco is an ironic location for this desolate comedy-drama-director Anthony Page and his brilliant cast neatly sidestep that pitfall and dance a merry gig around it. Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, two of our most skilled stage clowns, find the zestful comic joy and soul-crushing despair in Beckett's sorrowful everymen. Dressed in rags by costume designer Jane Greenwood and covered with dirt, wounds, and scars, they look as if they've been through hell-in most productions, these facial details are overlooked, and the tramps appear to be neatly shaved actors in funny clothes."

More Reviews to Come in the AM!