She was a girl from Boston with a voice from heaven, who shot through the stars from gospel choir to dance floor diva. But what the world didn't know was how Donna Summer risked it all to break through barriers, becoming the icon of an era and the inspiration for every music diva who followed.
Tony Award winner LaChanze (The Color Purple), Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, A Bronx Tale) and newcomer Storm Lever play Donna Summer, taking us through her tumultuous life, tempestuous loves and mega-watt musical hits. Spend the night in her electrifying universe.
They've come for the music - and perhaps theatergoers like me have our own cynicism to reckon with in the face of a fan's earnest euphoria. Whatever your personal taste, being surrounded by genuine excitement-by middle-aged women wearing sequined blouses actually standing up in a Broadway theater and joyfully shaking their booties during multiple slinky disco numbers-does a body good. That's what's currently happening in the Lunt-Fontanne, and thanks to the swift, smart construction of Summer, which neither overburdens its material nor overstays its welcome, it's a pretty damn good time.
Even by that standard, 'Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,' which opened on Monday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, is a blight. Despite the exciting vocalism of a cast led by the formidable LaChanze, it reduces the late Queen of Disco and pioneer of electronica to a few factoids and song samples that make her seem profoundly inconsequential. You could learn more (and more authentically) by reading a thoughtful obituary while listening to her hits - 'Hot Stuff,' 'Last Dance,' 'She Works Hard for the Money,' among many others - online.
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