Little Miss Sunshine
Opening Night: November 14, 2013
Closing: December 15, 2013
Theater: Second Stage Theatre
When the coveted title of “Little Miss Sunshine” is unexpectedly within her reach, young Olive Hoover convinces her family to make the 800-mile trek to the pre-teen pageant of her dreams. Along the way, a series of mishaps threatens to derail the group’s quest for the crown, until they realize a young girl’s far-fetched goal may actually hold the key to the family’s happiness. From the Tony Award-winning team of James Lapine and William Finn comes Little Miss Sunshine , a new musical comedy about one modern family’s unexpected route to brighter days.
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November 14, 2013
The new musical “Little Miss Sunshine” opens with an emotional cloudburst. As the fractured family at the center of the show gathers for dinner, just about everyone has a grim comment to make on the state of existence.
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November 14, 2013
Not long into their misadventurous 500-mile journey from New Mexico to California, the squabbling members of the Hoover family are forced to disembark and push their malfunctioning van until it gets moving again. The cast of Little Miss Sunshine can surely relate; yet no matter how hard the actors push—sometimes too hard—their musical vehicle stays broken. “When you have very few expectations, things that were once enormous frustrations no longer are,” sings the hapless father, Richard (Swenson), in the first number. “The key to contentment is to lower the bar.”
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November 14, 2013
Designer Beowulf Boritt’s appropriate single set for Little Miss Sunshine is a map of Interstate 40, which snakes from the lip of the stage and wraps around the playing space to extend up over the audience’s heads. But this limp musical retread of the 2006 indie comedy about a dysfunctional family’s healing road trip refuses to take us on any kind of journey. Given that composer William Finn and writer-director James Lapine previously collaborated on such oddball delights as Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, this stubbornly charmless show is a sad letdown.
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November 13, 2013
"Little Miss Sunshine," a family road movie involving an old VW bus, hardly screams out to be staged as a musical. But don’t tell composer/lyricist William Finn and writer/director James Lapine.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 14, 2013
For a story with built-in urgency — the Hoover clan simply must make it the 800 miles from New Mexico to California in time for daughter Olive to compete in a pre-teen beauty contest — remarkably little feels at stake in the hotly anticipated new musical “Little Miss Sunshine,” which has just opened at Second Stage.
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