So what are you telling me here? You were expecting “Guys And Dolls” meets “The Producers” with a little “Take The Money And Run” thrown in for taste? In a year with one lousy Broadway Musical after another filling up the theater, this is one more. Just as bad as the rest. The soundtrack, hits and obscurities from the 920s are quite and the versions here lively enough, the book, wisecracking, gum smacking Broadway Woody Allen will do nicely, and the performers, headed by the estimable Marin Mazzie, top notch and the Director/Choreographer Susan Stroman a proven entity sand none of it saves “Bullets Over Broadway” from being a huge disappointment.
Based on Allen’s first rate 1994 movie, “BOB” is about David Shayne (Zach Braff) as a writer who can only get his play on Broadway if he casts a mobster (Big Pussy himself, Vincent Pastore) gal Olive (Helene Yorke). The girl isn’t working in the tole and the play sucks so the gangster Cheech (Nick Cordero) keeping an eye on Olive makes suggestions and eventually writes the play himself.
Along that main plot, there are lots of diversions but neither the plots nor the diversions are very interesting. Strohan trying to pick up where “The Producers” doesn’t have enough ideas as outrageous as the admittedly funny dancing hotdogs to stop it from boring well before it reaches the end of the first act.
There are a lot of disappointments her, Zach is a major drag: trying so hard but to no avail. Much sadder is Marin Mazzie, whom I have loved since seeing her in Sondheim’s “Passion” 20 years ago, and she just can’t play a Diva.
There are highlights, all musical: gangland assassinations to “Up A Lazy River”, a terrific “The Panic Is On” provides Zach with his best moment and “The Hot Dog Song” is very fun and the sort of imaginative stroke we don’t get enough of.
But moment for a moment it is both miles over the top and a bore
Grade: C
