Good Vibrations blows, as expected...

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Good Vibrations

From the "I told you so" department. How about that...Good Vibrations is having problems... well, gosh, it's not like I might have posted something along those lines already. Isn't Blogway Baby great? It shows the wisdom of Suzy Conn, over and over again ;-) All bow to the power of Blogway Baby...

"Good Vibrations, the new Beach Boys musical at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, ends a fraught and lengthy preview period on Feb. 2, when the John Carrafa-directed production officially opens.

The new show, which arrives on Broadway without the luxury of an out-of-town tryout, offered its first performance back on Dec. 20. It was to have premiered on Jan. 27 (and indeed, the opening night party remained on that date), but the unveiling was pushed back to Feb. 2 while the creative team honed their work.

In early January, experienced New York director David Warren was brought in to assist in the staging. Warren reportedly began work at the O'Neill on Jan. 6. John Carrafa, however, remains the official director and choreographer on the project.

Good Vibrations uses more than 30 songs written by Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys -- some heard in their entirety, some in snippets. The plot is not a biographical tale of the blond-mopped California band that celebrated cars, girls and surfing in the 1960s. Instead, it follows a group of high school pals desperate to escape their one-factory, New England town and drive to California."
I don't want to say I told you so, but omigosh, I TOLD YOU SO...

"NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) -- The burgeoning genre of Broadway shows trafficking in vintage pop musical catalogs has probably already reached its nadir with this misbegotten show featuring the classic songs of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

The far too inaccurately titled "Good Vibrations," featuring about three dozen of those great songs, is clearly trying to tap into the baby boomer nostalgia that has made hits out of such disparate shows as "Movin' Out" and "Mamma Mia." But this effort, about which bad rumors began brewing almost immediately, is likely to last as long as a single wave.

The book by Richard Dresser, a not untalented playwright with some decent off-Broadway plays to his credit ("Below the Belt," "Rounding Third"), is not a history of the legendarily troubled band. Rather, it tells an insipid story about a group of restless teens who travel from their drab East Coast town in search of the fun, sun and beautiful blondes of Southern California. Normally, more plot information would be provided here, but the coma that set in almost immediately after the opening number prevents memory of further details.

The show attempts to shoehorn in as many musical numbers as possible into its two-hour running time, and indeed hearing such wonderful songs as "The Warmth of the Sun," "California Girls," "Surfer Girl," "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows" does have its nostalgic pleasures. But the insipid dialogue and cartoonish characterizations, which makes even "Mamma Mia" and "We Will Rock You" look like Shakespeare, gives the production the feel of a subpar sitcom. Choreographer John Carrafa, making his directorial debut, is clearly in over his hand, failing to infuse any of the musical numbers with any remote degree of originality or creativity."
By Suzy Conn on February 2, 2005 9:13 PM | | Comments (0) Good Vibrations blows, as expected...<\/a>')" onmouseout="addthis_close()" onclick="return addthis_sendto()">


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