It pains me to report that in a London theatre, “a work of art is being desecrated”, said Houman Barekat in The New York Times.
Opening Night is a stage musical adaptation of John Cassavetes’ “stylish” 1977 film, a psychological drama about a troubled Broadway actress – and it is a travesty. The production, from the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, with songs by Rufus Wainwright, is a confusing, meta-mess that is at points “so schlocky, that it almost feels like a send-up”. Alas, it’s true, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. What we have here is a “muddled, self-important, furtively misogynist” production that squanders the talents of all concerned. Wainwright’s first-ever musical score is a lame “hodgepodge of genre pastiche and schoolboy rhyme”, and the “use of live video adds another tiresome layer of introspection to a project wedged firmly up its own fundament”. It’s an “unsalvageable” disaster.
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