Road Show (musical) - Critical Response

Critical Response

Referring to the 2003 Bounce productions, theatertermania.com wrote, "A brace of mixed-to-negative reviews has all but assured that this production of Bounce will not be coming to New York." The New York Times noted in an article in November 2003 that "the show, which received lukewarm reviews in two tryout runs, is not coming to Broadway anytime soon."

Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review of the 2003 Kennedy Center production, said " never seems to leave its starting point...Mr. Kind and Mr. McGillin execute this self-introduction charmingly, translating wryness and ruefulness into a breezy soft-shoe sensibility. But in a sense, when they have finished the song they have already delivered the whole show...Bounce, which features the vibrant Michele Pawk as a zestful gold digger (of both Klondike and jazz-age varieties) and Jane Powell as the Mizners' mother, only rarely kicks into a higher gear than the one that gently propels the opening duet...their trajectory feels as straight and flat as a time line in a history book. The bounce in Bounce is never very high...Much of the music, while whispering of earlier, more flashily complex Sondheim scores, has a conventional surface perkiness that suggests a more old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing kind of show than is this composer's wont. But his extraordinary gift for stealthily weaving dark motifs into a brighter musical fabric is definitely in evidence, mellifluously rendered in the peerless Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations."

Brantley in his review of the 2008 production, praised Ceveris and Gemignani, but declares that, "The problem is that this musical’s travelogue structure precludes its digging deep. It hints at dark and shimmering glories beneath the surface that it never fully mines. Like its leading characters, 'Road Show' doesn’t quite know what to do with the riches at its disposal."