Honeymoon in Vegas
Opening Night: January 15, 2015
Closing: April 5, 2015
Theater: Nederlander Theatre
Honeymoon in Vegas tells the story of Jack Singer, a commitment-phobe who finally proposes to his girlfriend Betsy. The couple heads to Vegas to get hitched, but when the smooth talking gambler Tommy Korman falls head over heels for Betsy, he arranges for Jack to lose big in a poker game so he can claim the bride-to-be as his own girlfriend.
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January 15, 2015
Wake up and smell the mai tais, New York. Las Vegas has come calling on you. And it’s on such good behavior, you’d be a churl not to embrace it as if it were a long-lost sibling. As embodied by the bright and bouncy new musical Honeymoon in Vegas, which opened on Thursday night at the Nederlander Theater, the world capital of gambling and neon is everything you want it to be. That means a little hip, a little square, a little dangerous, a little kitschy and a whole lotta delicioussh fun. (Oh dear, am I slurring? Sorry.) But here’s the bonus, in which East (Coast) meets West: This production is also a real-live, old-fashioned, deeply satisfying Broadway musical in a way few new shows are anymore. Adapted by Andrew Bergman from his 1992 movie, with a swinging score by Jason Robert Brown and a smooth-as-Ultrasuede star turn by Tony Danza, this show offers the perfect sunny holiday for frozen Eastern city dwellers. Honeymoon in Vegas, which also felicitously stars Rob McClure and Brynn O’Malley as wide-eyed Brooklynites in Sin City and is directed with exactly the right synthetic-satin touch by Gary Griffin, was first staged more than a year ago at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. It generated great buzz and reviews to match.
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January 15, 2015
In the 1992 screen comedy Honeymoon in Vegas, Nicolas Cage gets over his prolonged wedding jitters and flies exasperated fiancée Sarah Jessica Parker to Nevada to tie the knot, only to risk losing her to shady professional gambler James Caan, who sees her as a dead ringer for his dear departed wife. It’s the kind of innocuous fluff you more likely saw as an in-flight movie or cable rerun than in a theater, if at all. Certainly, the feeble business through two months of previews for this stage musical adaptation — including the lucrative holiday period — indicates that it’s on few folks’ favorite movie lists. The good news is that the musical is a lot better than its commercial struggle suggests. It’s breezy and fun, full of toe-tapping numbers, witty design touches and frequent bursts of irreverent comic inspiration. But it sputters after a tremendously entertaining first act. Despite the effusive reviews that greeted its tryout run at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse in fall 2013, encouraging producers to make the move to Manhattan, this is a 2½-hour musical with maybe 90 minutes’ worth of decent material. Its frothiness is initially enjoyable until it becomes silly and then tiresome, before sparking back to life toward the end. Ultimately, the show feels slight.
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January 15, 2015
Honeymoon In Vegas answers gloomy Gotham’s crying need for some good old lowbrow farce — the kind of show with silly songs, mindless physical comedy and towering showgirls in feather headdresses. Scribe Andrew Bergman has turned his not-quite-cult 1992 movie (with James Caan, Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker) into a not-quite-knockout Broadway musical. But with catchy tunes and clever lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, sweet comic turns from Rob McClure and Tony Danza, and a bevy of Elvis impersonators, this brassy little show might brighten up this town over the winter. That eloquent master of face-comedy, McClure (Chaplin), is terrific as sad-sack Jack Singer, a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn who’s keen to marry his girlfriend Betsy (Brynn O’Malley) but hasn’t the guts to defy the dying curse (“Never get married!”) of his mother, a tyrannical monster in Nancy Opel’s flame-thrower of a performance. After Jack works up the courage to pop the question, the lovebirds wing it to Las Vegas to get hitched. Helmer Gary Griffin (who also held the directorial reins during the show’s gestation at the Paper Mill Playhouse) and his savvy design team seem to have envisioned Las Vegas in its glory days as Sin City, when Frank and Deano were crooning at the Sands and Frank Costello was the silent boss of the Tropicana. That vibe doesn’t compute with the contemporary text, but it does make for some fun visuals.
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 15, 2015
Would you bet against Tony Danza? I sure wouldn’t, certainly not in a vehicle as full of cheesy goodness as Honeymoon in Vegas, which just opened at the Nederlander Theatre following a well-received world premiere at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. All the leads are back for the Broadway run. Adapted from the 1992 film, which it occasionally turns on its head, Vegas tells the story of Jack Singer (Rob McClure of Chaplin), a Brooklyn fella afraid his marriage will disappoint his mother even though she’s been dead for 10 years. Jack summons the nerve to propose to girlfriend Betsy (Brynn O’Malley, last seen as Grace Farrell in Annie), but his plans are interrupted on a visit to Sin City, when smooth-talking gambler Tommy Korman (Tony Danza) decides the pretty schoolteacher should be his. The musical has a book by Andrew Bergman, who also wrote and directed the movie, and a — ka-ching — jackpot-winning score by Bridges and Last Five Years composer Jason Robert Brown.
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January 15, 2015
How to answer snobs who denounce Broadway as a cultural wasteland of gaudy lights, musical cheese and tacky titillation, a place where suckers from around the world flock to get fleeced? You could say at least it’s not…Las Vegas? Well, the Great White Way has now become Sodom of the Southwest, and whatever happens there is definitely not staying there: Honeymoon in Vegas is too damn fun to keep secret. Jason Robert Brown’s big and brassy score borrows gleefully from the obvious sources—Sinatra, Mancini and Liberace—and splices that swingin’ lounge vibe with his own bouncy, wryly neurotic voice. For those who loved and mourned The Bridges of Madison County last season, they know Brown as a serious composer-lyricist who writes keenly about passion and loneliness. So it’s a thrill to see his musical craft and depth in the service of so much splendid silliness.
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