Groundhog Day
Opening Night: April 17, 2017
Closing: September 17, 2017
Theater: August Wilson Theatre
Groundhog Day follows TV weather man Phil, who reluctantly goes to cover the story of Punxsutawney Phil for the third year in a row. Making no effort to hide his frustration, he covers the story and moves on, expecting his job to be finished. However, he awakes the “following” day and discovers that it’s Groundhog Day again, and the fun happens again and again and again. He soon realizes he must take advantage of it in order to secure the love of a coworker.
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April 17, 2017
Repetition is an art of infinite variety as it’s practiced by Andy Karl in “Groundhog Day,” the dizzyingly witty new musical from the creators of “Matilda.” Portraying a man doomed to relive a single day over and over and over again in a small town that becomes his custom-fitted purgatory, Mr. Karl is so outrageously inventive in ringing changes on the same old, same old, that you can’t wait for another (almost identical) day to dawn.
READ THE REVIEWApril 17, 2017
Over the past 24 years, Groundhog Day has proven itself to have a surprisingly long tail. When the film was released on Feb. 12, 1993, it was regarded as little more than a better-than-average Bill Murray comedy about an arrogant TV weatherman forced by the cosmos to relive the same day over and over…and over again. Since then, however, the film has taken on a strange (and I’d argue well-deserved) second life as a deceptively deep philosophical meditation on the meaning of life — a high-brow statement hidden in a low-brow wrapper. It may be the closest thing the 20th century gave us to A Christmas Carol and the myth of Sisyphus.
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April 17, 2017
When it comes to credible depictions of small-town Pennsylvania, “Groundhog Day the Musical” is about as veracious as a woodchuck named Phil is a qualified rodent meteorologist. This British import to Broadway — staged by people for whom small-town America is a typology, rather than a collection of souls — is more Whoville than Punxsutawney.
READ THE REVIEWApril 17, 2017
The creators of “Matilda” have worked their magic all over again. And again. “Groundhog Day,” now open at the August Wilson Theatre, is a textured, twisted and ticklish comic musical from composer Tim Minchin and director Matthew Warchus. The book is by Danny Rubin, who also co-wrote the screenplay to the 1993 film starring Bill Murray.
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April 17, 2017
The meta way to review Groundhog Day would be to repeat the same sarcastic, nit-picking paragraph three or four times before softening up and saying aw, heckfire, it’s great!—thus breaking the spell of grouchy repetition. And while there are likeable, inspired elements in this musical adaptation of the great Bill Murray movie, time crawls as you wait for boorish weatherman Phil Connors to surrender to human kindness and true romance.
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