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‘Opening Night’ Review: Sheridan Smith’s Turn Cannot Save Ivo Van Hove and Rufus Wainwright’s Monotonous Musical Adaptation
Ivo Van Hove and Rufus Wainwright's new West End musical lacks clarity and drama, but Smith delivers a committed performance.
Given Van Hove’s rightly garlanded “A View from the Bridge” to his more controversial “West Side Story” and a flatlined “All About Eve” in London — asking for a literal, straightforward approach from the director is, for better and worse, pointless. And though it feels literal-minded to point this out, we keep being told we’re watching previews but Van Hove bafflingly leaves the director (underused Hadley Fraser), writer and creative team sitting on the side as if in the rehearsal room. Typically writing his own excellent orchestrations, he provides effective underscoring from the Ravel-like opening strands to the punchy percussion and guitar of the desperate climactic sequence, but his meandering songs neither build nor guide the listener with any dramatic shape.
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