John Lennon – The Musical
p2pnet.net OT News:- Lennon the musical? Yup. It opened last night at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre.
It’s a “blandly superficial” and “nutritionally bereft, reconstituted tribute almost entirely lacking in legitimacy,” says the Globe & Mail.
After two delays and a "slew of controversy," it finally opened last night and was "slaughtered by critics," says This is London.
"You might be forgiven for thinking that a musical about John Lennon would be a pretty safe bet," says the Telegraph. "Quite apart from the astonishing, musically revolutionary canon of songs that he left behind, he was an intriguing and complicated character, and lived a life that should offer infinitely rich pickings for any would-be dramatist.
"But Lennon, the new musical by writer and director Don Scardino that has just opened on Broadway, misses every possible trick."
But Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, "joined the cast of Lennon for the curtain call at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York," says an earlier This is London story. "The Ono tribe turned out in force, with Yoko and Lennon’s son Sean and her daughter Kyoko Chan Cox accompanying her to the theatre."
What a surprise.
Her permission was required to stage Lennon and her "loving but self-serving fingerprints are all over it," says USA Today.
And The Beatkles?
"They come off here – in that chunk of the first act that they’re acknowledged at all – as a buffoonish boy band," says the story. "Paul McCartney, whose melodic genius was as integral to The Beatles’ rise, and thus Lennon’s, as any other factor, gets even shorter shrift in Lennon than he has from snobbish rock critics.
"Ono, in contrast, is revealed as a visionary worthy of her partner. And as played by the lovely Julie Danao-Sulkin, this Yoko is so surreally virtuous, so patient and noble in the suffering heaped on her by sexist, Asian-bashing detractors – and a straying husband, at one point – you half expect her to endure that crucifixion Lennon envisioned for himself in The Ballad of John and Yoko."
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See:-
Globe & Mail – It’s a real nowhere show, August 16, 2005
This is London – Worse than you’d Imagine, August 3, 2005
Telegraph – You can’t imagine how bad it is, August 16, 2005
This is London – Yoko OK with ‘Lennon’, August 15, 2005
USA Today – Ono brings ‘Lennon’ down, August 14, 2005
August 17th, 2005 at 11:45 am
Yoko Ono is the last person you would want to be to be the custodian of John Lennon’s memory. She has never come to terms with the fact that he was famous and she was just a hanger on. Can any one name or describe a peice of “art” that she has ever produced. These days Yoko would be described as a stalker, the way she pursued John. Once she got hold of him she proceded to break up his friendships with others, how familiar this is to many men, the little woman does not approve of your friends. Yoko took this to extremes, nothing happened of importance in John’s life until she turned up, that is Yoko’s view. She is a self obsessed control freak, and this so called musical of John’s life should never have seen the light of day.
Philip Coppell Beatle Guide Liverpool (England)