Yes, it’s a bad show. But the real surprise here is the grating dullness. Hammy Disney concoctions can be harmless enough, but this one might leave you in a mood so foul, you’ll want to punch something afterwards. The premise: Singers at a recording studio create a best-of album, which means they blow through a good chunk of the Disney songbook, from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to “The Little Mermaid” to “Beauty and the Beast.” The music is not the problem, the faux storyline setup is. A straight-ahead, cheesy musical revue would have been better than this forced, quasi-earnest scenario—truly the dumbest approximation of a recording session. Ever. Then again, the couple in front of me stood up at the end and actually said “Bravo,” so perhaps there’s an audience out there for this kind of thing. For the masochistic, ticket prices top out at $82. (Nina Metz)
Russian Dressing: A Review of Anastasia at Broadway in Chicago The real magic of this show are the songs by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens. Terrence McNally (book), Flaherty and Ahrens are the same triptych that gave us “Ragtime,” and there is a similar feel here, albeit with a distinctively Russian flavor.
