Margaritaville

[edjames]

Despite many, many, many visits to Key West, I cannot recall ever hearing any Jimmy Buffet songs. The reviews are terrible...I'll post the NYTimes review separately. This one, from the NYPost is slightly kinder however when a reviewer says "You could do worse.." it doesn't;t exactly make me want to run out and see it. Sure to be on TKTS and other discounted online sites.

 

 

‘Margaritaville’ musical is a paradise for Parrotheads — and no one else

By Barbara Hoffman

 

March 15, 2018

"Margaritaville" may not be top-shelf, but it still has a nice buzz.Matthew Murphy

 

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes, one intermission.

Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 212-382-0100

 

Cheaper than a week at Club Med and just as mentally stimulating, “Escape to Margaritaville” opened Thursday on Broadway to a sea of Jimmy Buffett fans and a few souls who never guessed cheeseburgers could spark such rapture.

 

This all-you-can-eat Buffett bounced around the country before docking at the Marquis Theatre, which dressed down for the occasion: Adirondack chairs and Tiki-tacky signs fill the lobby while the frozen concoction of the title churns away at the bars. A sippy cup-full costs $16. Go on and get one: It helps set the mood, which is so laid-back, it’s nearly horizontal. When the Hawaiian-shirted usher hands you a Playbill, you half expect a tube of tanning oil to come with it.

 

Speaking of Playbills, this is the rare time a show’s songs — all 26 of them, brilliantly arranged by Christopher Jahnke — have been listed alphabetically, from “A Pirate Looks at 40” to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.” So while you know your favorite Buffett song is in there, you never quite know when it will pop up. Hence the ripple of excitement that greeted the tower of cheeseburgers (cue up “Cheeseburger in Paradise”) that rolled onto the stage at a recent matinee, which contained more middle-aged straight men than Broadway’s seen since “Rock of Ages.”

 

TV writers Greg Garcia (“My Name Is Earl”) and Mike O’Malley (“Shameless”) have strung together this flimsy hammock of a story, set at an island hotel that an uncharitable Yelper calls “the pimple of the sea.” It’s here, where the cocktail hour never ends, that we meet Tully (Paul Alexander Nolan). He’s a guitar-strumming slacker who plays with the band and beds a bevy of guests before being brought to his tanned knees by an environmental scientist from Cincinnati.

 

That would be Rachel (Alison Luff), who’s come not for fun, but for soil samples — and to keep her BFF, Tammy, from marrying her despicable fiancé.

 

Love rears its head, not only between Rachel and Tully but Tammy and the hotel’s bartender. Even a grizzled, one-eyed barfly gets some action, after popping a Viagra or two. (There’s a vibrator joke in here as well.)

 

It’s all peppered with Buffett’s hits, a few of which he’s tweaked to suit the plot and the times, like the reference to Mar-a-Lago that bubbles up in “Volcano.” Some of his new songs fall flat, including one thankless number that’s the first, and hopefully last, to name-check Sheryl Sandberg.

 

Directed by Christopher Ashley, hot off a Tony for “Come From Away,” “Escape to Margaritaville” meanders along pleasantly enough. Its appeal may last only as long as there are Parrotheads around to see it, but it helps that the show’s so well cast and sung. Nolan, who made a fine son of God in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” is a lovely leading man. (“I think he should take his shirt off more often,” one theatergoer murmured.) André Ward brings a Harry Belafonte-esque lilt and ukulele to “Volcano,” while Don Sparks, with his warm chuckle of a voice, makes the barfly come alive, even as he spends Act 1 searching for his lost shaker of salt: Never has a Broadway song been given such a buildup — nor closed with as many beach balls.

 

You could do worse than waste away a couple of hours in “Margaritaville.”

[edjames]

NYTimes hated it!

 

Review: ‘Escape to Margaritaville,’ Where Work Is a Dirty Word

By JESSE GREEN. MARCH 15, 2018

Paul Alexander Nolan, center, as Tully, a resort-island singer with a passing resemblance to Jimmy Buffett, in the jukebox musical “Escape to Margaritaville.”

 

If ever there were a time to be drunk in the theater, this is it.

And the good news is that “Escape to Margaritaville,” the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical that opened on Thursday, makes getting sloshed on Broadway easier than ever. The lobby at the Marquis Theater has been kitted out as an island-style thatched-hut alcohol fueling station, complete with margaritas for $12 (on the rocks) or $16 (frozen), as well as bottle openers, koozies and other drink-oriented paraphernalia.

 

The bad news is that you still have to see the show.

 

Or at least that was bad news for me, stone cold sober and with enough functioning brain cells to recall the past glory of musicals. If my twentysomething nephew liked “Escape to Margaritaville” better than I did, perhaps that’s because he had two drinks and no historical horror.

 

But if you’re not drunk or a Parrothead, as Mr. Buffett’s fans are called, you’re in trouble. Mr. Buffett’s denatured country-calypso ditties and horndog smarm seem awfully lowbrow, even in a Broadway environment debased for decades by singing cats and candlesticks. It’s quite a comedown in the sing-to-me-of-romance department from “

” to “

.”

 

That charmer, along with Buffett hits like “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” and “License to Chill,” form the show’s spine and its ethos, in which rhymes are approximate and sophistication is suspect. Dopey fun is one thing, but “Escape to Margaritaville,” a paean to the pleasures of zipless debauchery, is pitched so low it will temporarily extinguish your IQ.

 

• 
  Lisa Howard, left, as Tammy and Eric Petersen as Brick pay tribute to the joys of a “Cheeseburger in Paradise” in the musical.
  That may be its aim. The story, concocted from clichés that were already droopy when they appeared in almost every other jukebox musical ever written, does not require you to put your thinking cap on. Mostly it asks that you notice the winking way it sets up situations that will later make Mr. Buffett’s lyrics seem as if they were custom fitted to the yarn rather than the other way around.
   
  So if the title song (“
  ,” a hit in 1977) refers to sponge cake, lost saltshakers and a brand new tattoo, you can be sure that those items will force their way into the plot, the more bizarrely the better.
  

For the record, that plot goes like this: Rachel (Alison Luff) is an uptight environmental scientist; her BFF Tammy (Lisa Howard) is engaged to a jerk. Together, they take a one-week vacation to a rundown, Yelp-disapproved Caribbean hotel called Margaritaville. There, they meet Tully Mars (Paul Alexander Nolan), the laid-back, guitar-strumming on-site entertainer, and Brick (Eric Petersen), the dim but sweet bartender. Do you see where this is going?

• That theme could make for an amusing scene or two, but Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley, the authors of the musical’s book, have two hours and 20 minutes to fill. They are clever enough with the punch lines, but twists involving a volcano eruption, a buried treasure and a tap-dancing chorus of zombie insurance agents smell of general despair.
   
  Worse, because even vapid jukebox musicals apparently require a moral these days, this one forces Tully to give up his toxic bachelor ways in favor of his singing career, which instantly takes off. And Rachel must realize that being ambitious about her work doesn’t mean she can’t have a man, especially one who has now become a star.
   
  Did I mention that her work has something to do with potato power?
   
  The story, too, seems to be powered by a tuber. How else to explain why a plot that spends most of its time selling the anti-establishment, no-strings lifestyle concludes like any old-fashioned musical with an island wedding and everyone ecstatically paired? Even the hotel’s tart proprietor (Rema Webb) and resident dirty old man (Don Sparks) are required to hook up. And though “Escape to Margaritaville” means to be feminist — Rachel name-drops Sheryl Sandberg as a hero — it’s a skimpy feminism at best. It utterly fails the Bechdel Test, no doubt thanks to a hangover.
   
  
  With a “Volcano” about to blow, Andre Ward, airborne, as Jamal, leads tourists off the island.
  As a matter of corporate promotion, though, the musical is totally on point. Tully is the perfect ambassador for the Margaritaville brand, which is built on the idea that you can rent hedonism by the week at a namesake resort or bring it home nightly in a can of LandShark Lager without working a day in your life.
   
  Like all such branding, it’s a con, of course; no one but pirates can sustain that lifestyle. And no one with any ambition wants to. Mr. Buffett, Margaritaville’s prototype and mastermind, has a wife and family and 5,000 employees; he works nonstop.
   
  That makes “Escape to Margaritaville” even more cynical than the usual jukebox musical, which merely promotes a catalog of songs, not an alcohol-based empire. The director Christopher Ashley’s lumpy, garish production can’t disguise that agenda; nothing could. If the show nevertheless feels basically genial, it’s a tribute to the cast, which is scarily comfortable selling this hooey. Is there nothing Broadway performers can’t do? Or won’t do?
   
  Certainly the score is beautifully sung. Mr. Nolan
  than Mr. Buffett ever did, and Ms. Howard is, as always,
  .
   
  It’s the songs themselves that are problematic. They may work well enough on the radio or in concert but, conscripted for theatrical service, grow quickly monotonous. Reverse engineered from a marketing concept, they seem catchy yet catch nothing; like the show itself, they’re all hooks, no fish.
   
  

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I hate seeing talented performers in total crap: Lisa Howard deserves better than this, but a job is a job... I get that.

 

Having spent a ton of time in Key West, I too have steered clear of JB's music and fandom. To the conchs, he's a poacher and quite the jerk. I don't have a lot of respect for the guy.

 

This kind of show is the new normal for Broadway. I'm just happy to see theatre goers able to wash this (dis)taste out of their mouth with previews of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center.

[bostonman]

I'm not sure it's really a "new" normal - jukebox shows have been around for a while now, and haven't ever truly dominated the Broadway scene, IMO. And most of them tend to disappear pretty quickly - only a few like Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys (and the more recent Beautiful) have really stood the test of time. And I just read that Smokey Joe's Cafe, one of the originals in the genre, and one of the most successful, is coming back this summer in an off-Broadway venue.

 

But for every well-crafted show like Jersey Boys, which IMO deserves its long run, there's a Margaritaville which surely won't be around very long, and most probably won't get much attention at the Tonys. Sure, they'll try to tour it...and then it will just sail away into oblivion...

 

Lisa Howard also got a wonderful lucky break in a show that most people dismissed outright - I'd say the one big song that really got noticed in It Shoulda Been You was her showstopping "Jenny's Blues." I never saw the show, but just in hearing the score, I do tend to think the show shoulda been received much better than it was. Fun stuff.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Lisa Howard also got a wonderful lucky break in a show that most people dismissed outright - I'd say the one big song that really got noticed in It Shoulda Been You was her showstopping "Jenny's Blues." I never saw the show, but just in hearing the score, I do tend to think the show shoulda been received much better than it was. Fun stuff.

 

She'll always be Rona Lisa Peretti to me... And she sang that show beautifully

[bostonman]

She'll always be Rona Lisa Peretti to me... And she sang that show beautifully

 

I don't disagree on her performance - but I feel like that score didn't really give her a true breakout number (even "The I Love You Song" really ultimately belongs to Celia Keenan-Bolger's Olive). But "Jenny's Blues" really gave her some "somethin' somethin'" to shine with, lol.