AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

New York Times

Brothers in Flimflammery on a Continental Sojourn
It’s raining greenbacks in “Road Show,” the latest version of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s long-aborning, ever-evolving and eternally slender musical about curdled American dreams.

New York Daily News

Sondheim back on B'way with 'Show'
Stephen Sondheim's musical about the dreaming, scheming Mizner brothers has finally arrived in a full-scale New York production. It goes by the name "Road Show," the latest in a line of aliases

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Road Show
... “Road Show” probably is the least interesting show in the exalted Sondheim canon. Still, the Public Theater deserves much credit for producing the show.

Newsday

Review: Stephen Sondheim's 'Road Show'
...the 100-minute chamber musical is small and sweet and relatively slight. Despite the themes of greed and the betrayals and that ol' demon cocaine, "Road Show" is that rare creature from the genius who gave us, for starters, "Sweeney Todd" and "Sunday in the Park With George": a light musical comedy.

New York Post

Poor foundation for new Sondheim musical
You can't accuse Stephen Sondheim and John Weid man of having commitment issues. The composer and librettist behind "Pacific...

New York Journal-News

Sondheim returns to the 'Road'
Creating a musical from the lives of early 20th century brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner has engaged Stephen Sondheim for years. Now called "Road Show," it has been mounted at the Public Theater by no less a Sondheim interpreter than John Doyle. Yet the show seems small, oddly tentative.

Hartford Courant

Sondheim's Reworked Musical On A Long And Winding Road

Bergen Record

Sondheim's long journey steering 'Road Show' remains a bumpy ride

Philadelphia Inquirer

'Road Show': Offbeat, enjoyable Sondheim
The title suggests the wearying, shabby showbiz tour, the snake-oil carny con, the tattered vaudevillian hustle of a bygone entertainment. This is America - then and now - seen through the cynical, demanding eyes of Stephen Sondheim, who gives us in Road Show (a reworking of 2003's Bounce and 1999's Wise Guys) a thoroughly contemporary and deeply thoughtful entertainment.

Chicago Tribune Theater Loop Blog

Stephen Sondheim's 'Road Show' opens at New York Public Theatre, and Mizners have the last laugh

Los Angeles Times Culture Monster Blog

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's 'Road Show' finally hits New York
Odds are that many of the critics who went ape for "Billy Elliot: The Musical," finding it a testament "to the power of the human spirit" to such an extent that all flaws were forgiven, will approach "Road Show" with daggers drawn.

Associated Press

Two brothers are forever seeking success in musical 'Road Show'
Money showers the stage like confetti in ''Road Show,'' the exhilarating Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical that finally has surfaced in New York after a long, arduous journey that included several different titles, directors and casts.

Bloomberg.com

Con Men Mizners Scam, Sing in Sondheim's Traveling `Road Show': John Simon
"Road Show,'' the Stephen Sondheim- John Weidman musical now at New York's Public Theater, has had more titles than British royalty.

USA Today

'Road Show' is rich with despair
Feeling discouraged by the plummeting economy? Have I got a deal for you. ...
Money is literally raining on the Public Theater's stage, where Road Show (**** out of four), the taut, thrilling new musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, opened Tuesday.

Variety

Review: Road Show
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman have cooked up a strange and beguiling musical in "Road Show." "In America, the journey is the destination," says one of the enterprising early 20th century brothers whose paths are unconventionally mapped here. ... Is it a major new Sondheim work? No. But it's far from the failure its tortuous path to New York might suggest.

TheaterMania

Review: Road Show
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's long-aborning musical about two brothers in the early 20th Century is sadly deficient.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Road Show
The next-to-last thing a musical needs if it's been gestating for a decade is a different title, especially if it's already gone through three - that's enough to make you think the creators have no clue what they're writing. The last thing a musical needs if it's been gestating for 10 years is direction by John Doyle, who has yet to demonstrate with any musical he's helmed in New York that he's had any clue what their creators actually wrote. Road Show, the energetically uninvolving musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman that just opened at The Public Theater's Newman Theater, has both. .

nytheatre.com

Review: Road Show

CurtainUp

Review: Road Show
The Mizner Brothers never got their dreams quite right, but Sondheim, Weidman and Doyle have got it right--if not perfectly so, right enough .

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Back Back Back - Baseball's Steroid Scandal Revisited

New York Times

Peanuts, Cracker Jack and Some Illegal Juice
“Back Back Back,” a new play by Itamar Moses about baseball’s steroids scandal, could actually use a little juicing itself.

New York Daily News

'Back, Back, Back' puts steroids scandal onstage
Back Back Back tracks the careers and personal lives of baseball players caught up in the steroids mess, but the play could stand a little juicing of its own. ...

Associated Press

Steroid scandal rocks Itamar Moses' baseball drama

Variety

Review: Back Back Back
Although Moses tries for (and fails at) a lot of pseudo-intellectual dazzle about tradition, history and morality, his real interest is the bounds of friendship, and that's where his play shines.

TheaterMania

Review: Back Back Back
Itamar Moses' play is an intimate, well-observed take on baseball's recent steroid scandal

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Back Back Back
Changing the names to protect the innocent only works when someone, somewhere, doesn't know who's guilty. Itamar Moses's new play at Manhattan Theatre Club, Back Back Back, is a thoughtful and accomplished dissection of the drive to achieve as viewed through the lens of Major League Baseball's ongoing steroid scandal, though it's sometimes hard to hear to because of all the eggshells it walks on. . .

CurtainUp

Review: Back Back Back
Itamar Moses has created three richly delineated characters whose lives are linked by their careers in major league baseball .

With Back Back Back, Itamar Moses, the playwright who tackled the thorny question of succession among German composers at Leipzig's Thomaskirche, delves into the steroid scandal that's rocked baseball during the past few years. "Back" may seem like something of a departure for the man who penned not only the fact-based history play Bach at Leipzig, but also last season's contemporary examination of two writers' friendship, The Four of Us, but indeed in "Back," theatergoers find Moses returning to themes, such as loyalty, that have arisen in his earlier plays. Though "Back" is interesting and heartfelt, it also feels somewhat shallow as Moses doesn't provide any true answers or insights into what might make professional ballplayers turn to illegal performance enhancement drugs in a ripped-from-the-headlines play.

"Back" unfolds, appropriately enough, in nine scenes – actually Moses cheats with an un-numbered coda, bringing the play to the theatrical equivalent of extra innings, and charts the rise and fall of three players from 1984 to 2005. When the play opens, Kent (Jeremy Davidson) is facing an unseen phalanx of reporters at a press conference during the Team USA games that were marred by international boycotts. "Back" then zips forward to a weight room in a Southern California clubhouse (David Zinn's sparsely furnished, gray-carpeted playing area with an LED ticker serves the play's varied locations well). It's the first game of the World Series, and Kent, along with Raul (James Martinez) and Adam (Michael Moseley), trade pre-game banter. Adam, a rookie on the team, is a nervous wreck. Raul, something of a hothead, is aggressively pumped up. Kent, shrewdly articulate, and cool as he was under fire at the press conference, attempts to maintain a sense of equilibrium with both his teammates. When Raul starts giving Adam some advice about training and work-out regimens, though, Kent's cool exterior cracks. Audiences know what's going on well before Raul mentions the pre-game "vitamins" that he and Kent need to take.

As "Back" moves forward, Raul's erratic behavior off the field and spotty performance on results in a number of trades. Adam also experiences career ups-and-downs. Only Kent stays put with the team in California, and not surprisingly the number of balls he knocks out of the park increase each year. For the world at large, Kent's performance is explained when Raul pens a tell-all book (shades of Jose Canseco), and the two end up testifying before Congress.

Moses, as he demonstrated last season, has an ear for tart dialogue, and in "Back," audiences continue to hear his ability to capture natural speech patterns embellished with a David Mamet-like edge. More impressively, Moses captures the essence of sports-speak that ballplayers engage in when talking with reporters. Unfortunately, the plotting of "Back" doesn't have the same zing as its dialogue. After audiences have identified the real-life archetypes for Kent and Raul, in particular, interest wanes as their fates and ignominy are pretty much assured. The blandness of the play's arc is only enhanced by the glib reasons that Moses finds for Kent and Raul's use of illegal substances to improve their game. Late in the play, Kent justifies his actions by that intimating the excitement generated by his, and others', increased performance helped bring fans back to ballparks after the season-long baseball strike in 1995.

There's a sort of deliberate ease to Daniel Aukin's staging that underscores the tenuous bonhomie of the guys and the game, but this choice only means that the relative lack of tension in "Back" seems more pronounced, leaving it to the actors, who turn in charismatic and often finely crafted performances, to pump up this play that, though not a homerun, is certainly a solid double.

----- Andy Propst

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Back Back Back plays at New York City Center – Stage II (131 West 55th Street). Performance schedule varies. Tickets are $52.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-581-1212 or by visiting www.NYCityCenter.org, where a complete schedule is available. Further information is also available online at www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com

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