Today's Thursday, March 21, marking the official opening night for HANDS ON A HARDBODY. Playing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on W. 47th Street. Please, post reviews here!
(Apologies for missing BREAKFAST last night, was in rehearsal...)
Even if the reviews are good, it could end up going the way of Lysistrata Jones if they don't ramp up the marketing NOW having to compete with the business of Cinderella, Lucky Guy, Annie and Matilda in addition to the box office behemoths of Spider-Man, Book of Mormon, Wicked and Lion King.
Just for comparison with what's to come later on tonight, here's Christopher (oops, I mean Charles!) Isherwood's New York Times review of the show at LaJolla, June 2012.
I honestly did not enjoy the show at all! It was very boring for me and the audience didn't seem to enjoy it either. Maybe it wasn't good the night I saw it. I hope they get good reviews and get people in those seats though :)
First 2 are in...I can't believe how mixed to positive they are! I disagree with most of Kennedy's assertions, but Im glad he liked it! BWW Review Roundup
amNY is mostly positive as well (3 stars) but is one of the worst written reviews I've ever read:
The musical, which has an underwhelming but heartfelt country-rock score by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green and a penetrating book by Pulitzer-winning playwright Doug Wright, creates an environment where nearly all the participants are suffering economically and are in desperate need of a financial windfall.
Neil Pepe's production is quite gripping - most impressive is how the actors manipulate the vehicle and perform dance choreography while their hands are still attached to it.
I liked many moments in the show. Keala Settle is incredible. I was pleasantly surprised by it.
But if it were not for a friend forcing me to go with her, I would never have gone to the show. Not even for free. It just has no appeal to me.
Even if they get good reviews across the board, it's still going to take some strategic marketing and advertising to get people interested in this show.
I hope it finds an audience and at least runs through the summer. I applaud the efforts of the creative team of this challenging work.
“Hands on a Hardbody,” an odd but tuneful new musical based on a 1997 documentary film about a sadistic endurance contest to win a pickup truck in Texas, might as well be called “American Idle,” or “They Shoot Horsepower, Don’t They?” or “A Chorus Line, SUV.”.... as it turns out, it’s the people who are holding onto that truck who carry the show — the cast of “Hands on a Hardbody” is graced with well-known favorites and startling discoveries. Hands on a Hardbody Review
After watching S.R. Bindler’s 1997 documentary “Hands on a Hard Body”—about a 1994 Texas contest in which people stand around a Nissan truck while always keeping one hand on it, and the last left upright wins the vehicle—I shook my head and thought, “I just don’t see it.” Nevertheless, many a good musical has been born out of apparently unpromising material. Now that I’ve experienced “Hands on a Hardbody”—book by Doug Wright, lyrics by Amanda Green, music by Trey Anastasio and Green—I still haven’t seen it. The tuner coarsens its self-effacing, quietly observant source with cheesy soap-opera backstories, forced Lifetime-movie subplotting, and self-righteous hot-button-issue pressing in an obviously manipulative attempt to stir our emotions. Padded out with an unnecessary intermission and extraneous songs to nearly two-and-a-half hours, the proceedings rarely come to life.
I'm loving the restrained positivity in these reviews; if the show's marketing team (if they are paying attention) can pick up on the "a Broadway show for the rest of us" theme running through these, that should be more than enough to at least work with. They're getting some good quotes to pull.
Here's hoping those folks do their job. Far worse has been sold to Broadway audiences with far less material to work with.
For godssakes. Does Isherwood have an editor? Why would anybody let him go on like this?
“Hands on a Hardbody” simply sings forth a story of endurance, hardship and the dimming American dream, which increasingly seems to hover on the distant horizon like some last-ditch motel whose neon lights are blinking out one by one.
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joined:6/21/06
Posted: 3/21/13 at 03:21pm