The long awaited Broadway musical “Lennon” debuted in New York…a musical in which his widow Yoko Ono reportedly had a (heavy) hand in the production. So how did it do?
Let’s just say it was panned so much it could supply a Home Shopping Network infomercial with enough cooking ware to sell for a full year.
From all accounts, the musical celebrates the courage, wisdom, talent and influence of a well-known rock personality — and her late husband, John Lennon, too. The Guardian notes:
“I think he would be jumping up and down,” said Ono, 72, “I think he would have loved it.”
The critics were jumping, too. Mainly out of their seats for the exits:
The New York Daily news described Lennon as “so goofy that someone arriving late might imagine he had stumbled into [Monty Python’s] Spamalot next door. The New York Times bemoaned its “fortune-cookie wisdom” which produced a “drippy version of [Lennon’s] life, written and directed with equal clunkiness.” Variety said the score sounded “unfinished in a sad and rather ghoulish way”.
The discrepancy in views is hardly surprising given one critic’s belief that a key flaw in the production is that it is “Ono-centric”. Passing quickly over Lennon’s career in the Beatles, it gives little time to his first marriage, or to the son he fathered before he met the Japanese artist. It also omits his affair that forced the couple apart for more than a year.
Meanwhile, phrases like “We’re all one”, “Love is the answer”, and “Be real” are repeatedly projected on to the stage.
“Imagine there’s no Beatles, imagine no iconic movies, no White Album, no poetry books, no drawings,” wrote Linda Winer for Newsday. “Then imagine there’s no son before Sean, no mistress named May Pang, no deep depression, nothing really serious with drugs.”
People involved with the production disagree. Still, the message that’s getting out is: hold your nose if you go to see it.
The New York Daily News, clearly in pain, writes:
Jukebox musicals — shows based on the songs of a popular entertainer — always raise one big question: Should you plop down $100 for a theater ticket or just stay home and listen to your old records?
In the case of “Lennon,” the answer is easy: Light one up and put on the stereo.
The musical, directed and conceived by Don Scardino, not only adds nothing to your appreciation or understanding of John Lennon. If anything, its listless presentation of the events of his life will diminish your sense of who he was.
The “text” consists of memoirs by Lennon himself, some reminiscences by his widow, Yoko Ono, and comments from other public figures. The result is a collage without any focus.
At the very least, for example, a theatrical piece about Lennon should give you the visceral experience of his death.
This one opts instead for a kind of journalistic presentation, as we hear the recollection of a policeman who arrived on the scene shortly after the murder. I’m afraid that falls under the heading of Cop-Out.
Was USA Today a bit more enthusiastic? Welllllll…:
Compared with the other lavishly produced karaoke contests luring middle-aged rock fans to Broadway, Lennon (* * out of four) would seem to have a higher purpose. This musical tribute to John Lennon, which opened Sunday at the Broadhurst Theatre, aims to celebrate the personal and creative integrity of an artist whose brilliance and sheer goodness were never fully appreciated by those who misunderstood her.
That’s right, “her.” Oh, sorry — you didn’t think I was referring to old John, did you? I meant his widow, Yoko Ono, whose permission was required to stage this production, and whose loving but self-serving fingerprints are all over it.
It would be ridiculous, of course, to try to tell John Lennon’s story without including key roles both on stage and behind it for the woman he considered his soul mate. And I don’t doubt that Ono, who licensed the producers and librettist/director Don Scardino rights to her late husband’s songs, wanted to honor its subject, who wouldn’t have wanted his legacy to be dominated by his role in that seminal supergroup The Beatles.
But suggesting that the Fab Four was some inconsequential pop act that provided Lennon a stepping stone to his true calling is as unfair to him as it is to the other Beatles. They come off here — in that chunk of the first act that they’re acknowledged at all — as a buffoonish boy band. Paul McCartney, whose melodic genius was as integral to The Beatles’ rise, and thus Lennon’s, as any other factor, gets even shorter shrift in Lennon than he has from snobbish rock critics.
Then, what about the Boston Globe?
NEW YORK — The answer is: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
The question is: What were they thinking?
As you may have heard by now, the Broadway musical ”Lennon” features nine different people of both genders and at least three races playing the greatest of all Beatles and the most fascinating of all fab four alumni. The idea, presumably, is that John Lennon argued that we are all one so, goo goo goo joob, we all have the spirit of John Lennon within us.
The result is only half as bad as it could have been. The musical — conceived by theater, film, and television director Don Scardino — played to such disastrous reviews in San Francisco that the Boston pre-Broadway run was canceled in order to retool the piece. It opened in New York last night following another week of postponements.
Having all nine actors playing Lennon, the three other Beatles, and a variety of other characters, is a double-edged sword. The dull part of the blade flattens him into a kind of politically correct messiah of nonviolence and feminism. There was always, though, a bad boy on the verge of breaking out, even when he was preaching peace and love. That’s what made him always intriguing. ”Lennon,” which has had the blessing (if not more active involvement) of his widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, only lets the bad boy out to give him a scolding, as in his drunken behavior at a Smothers Brothers performance.
Not all Lennons are created equal here. Will Chase narrates most of this biographical retrospective against a backdrop of photos and drawings of and by Lennon. He and Chad Kimball get the most stage time as Lennon. They’re the two who look and try to sound the most like Lennon, though as in other biographical treatments of charismatic contemporary figures, imitation is the surest form of foolishness. Chase comes off more like the smirky Peter Krause in ”Six Feet Under” than the mischievous commentator on life in the ’60s and ’70s. Kimball is more reminiscent of Robin Williams’s crazed photographer in ”One Hour Photo” than the inspired songwriter of ”A Day in the Life.”
It sounds like people coming out of the theater weren’t singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” but “I Want To Hold My Refund.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.