Broadway Review Roundup: BABY IT'S YOU - All the Reviews!

Baby It's You! is choreographed by Birgitte Mutrux, with musical supervision and arrangements by Rahn Coleman, Orchestrations by Don Sebesky, musical direction/conducted by Shelton Becton, scenic design by two time Tony nominee Anna Louizos, costume design by Lizz Wolf, lighting design by Tony Award winner Howell Binkley, sound design by Carl Casella, projection design by Jason H. Thompson, hair and wig design by David Lawrence, with legendary music producer Richard Perry as consulting producer. Baby It's You! is produced by Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and American Pop Anthology.

Let's see what the critics thought...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: Mama said there'll be shows like this. But she didn't tell me there would be quite so many, or that any one of them could be this dismal. Invitations to sing along are flung at the audience regularly, as if they were life preservers. Further inducements to wallow in visions of happy yesterdays are provided by the slide shows of drive-ins and diners and other cultural markers of the period, accompanied by the silky narration of Geno Henderson, playing a sort of cosmic D.J. who registers the passing years with material cut and pasted from Wikipedia.

Steven Suskin, Variety: Imagine "Jersey Boys" without the carefully integrated character development of Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio, and with a tunestack only one quarter as imperishable. You needn't imagine it; just wander to the Broadhurst for "Baby It's You!," the new jukeboxer outlining the rise and demise of the Shirelles...Leavel ("Drowsy Chaperone") does all she can with the leading role, but the authors make impossible demands.

Scott Brown, New York Magazine: Flo herself is a Strong Sassy Lady so plainly traced from type, you can practically see the outline perforations. Leavel bears up and sings well, but there's little to rescue here. The real Flo Greenberg was, in her own words, "a white woman who was in a black business and who couldn't carry a tune." Whereas the stage version sings her heart out - only, whoops! There's nothing in it.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press: It becomes clear by the second act that Greenberg's story - or the acts she discovered - cannot sustain this musical....An actress portraying Leslie Gore makes an appearance singing "It's My Party" but it's not clear why. Toward the end, it really has become a jukebox musical, adding songs for atmosphere rather than consistency.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: A Tony winner for The Drowsy Chaperone, Leavel is a fine singer and gifted musical-comedy performer who deserves better than this stereotypical cutout. For a show about a woman who carved her career on having a great ear for a crisp, catchy hit, it grates that the songs are so carelessly handled...Through his American Pop Anthology production banner, Mutrux is developing other jukebox shows. But on the basis of Baby It's You, artists who care about the way their back-catalogs are represented might want to run and hide.

Philip Boroff, Bloomberg: The "Baby" players make the most of their threadbare parts. Leavel elevates the enterprise with pitch-perfect singing, acting and bouffant, her Florence blowzy and vulnerable. Near the end, Greenberg concedes that the Shirelles sound needs updating. The women record the resplendent title number, co-written by the then-up-and-coming Burt Bacharach. For a fleeting instant, the first major girl group of the rock era and the show about them seem to be going somewhere new.

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: The show opened Wednesday night at the Broadhurst and boasts nearly three dozen hit songs. Among them, "I Met Him on a Sunday," "He's So Fine," "Dedicated to the One I Love" and "Walk on By." The title of that last hit is my advice for this production, considering that the songs are so blandly performed they don't make an impression.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: Mutrux and Sheldon Epps' in-and-out staging is like a glorified revue, an impression reinforced by the book's bullet-point approach. The biographical elements dig barely deeper than the superfluous historical markers ("As 1960 passes, 'Bonanza' is TV's best"). With more ambition and focus, "Baby It's You!" could have been "Jersey Girls" -- the female answer to the juggernaut musical about the Four Seasons.

David Sheward, Backstage: If your show is in trouble, be sure to get Beth Leavel in your cast...With subtle humor, expert timing, and knockout pipes, Leavel strives mightily to bring this mishmash of a rock tuner up to her level, but she can't perform miracles.  There is an audience for this kind of show...but if you crave a well-written story with your nostalgic score, walk on by.

Clark Collis, Entertainment Weekly: The subjects of race, female empowerment, and the fleeting nature of fame are all touched upon, but often glancingly, and fleshed-out characters are thin on the ground...If you are looking for a night out that is easy on the ear and the brain then, baby, Baby It's You is for you. (B-)