A playwright who needs someone to back his next show. A mobster who needs some way to please his showgirl girlfriend.
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship - or a brand new musical comedy!
Based on the screenplay of the acclaimed film, Bullets Over Broadway brings the talents of Woody Allen and Susan Stroman together for the first time.
Loaded with big laughs, colorful characters, and the songs that made the 20s roar, Bullets Over Broadway is ready to bring musical comedy back with a bang.
The last times Woody Allen wrote plays for Broadway, his single drama suggested he hadn't seen one since middle-period Arthur Miller and his comedies were a tired throwback to Neil Simon. But with 'Bullets Over Broadway,' his first Broadway musical, Allen has created an old-fashioned, madcap lark of a show that seems precisely where it belongs. Director-choreographer Susan Stroman is back in idea-crazy form in Allen's adaptation of his 1994 backstage-Broadway movie about gangsters and tootsies and self-serious thespians in the '20s. The show takes a while to hit its stride, feeling competent but mechanical at first, as if the job could only get done if everyone bellows and hard-sells the lamest jokes. But once inspiration strikes -- and it eventually does -- the smartly cast, good-looking production relaxes into the confidence of its own gleeful, high-gloss ridiculousness.
The cardinal sin in adapting a Woody Allen film comedy for the stage is forcing the funny. So the creators of 'Bullets Over Broadway the Musical,' the sledgehammering act of period-tune-driven desperation that opened Thursday night at the St. James Theatre, have a whole lot to answer for. The sinners include Allen himself... and Susan Stroman, the Tony-winning director-choreographer ('The Producers') who amps up the material in uncomfortably vulgar fashion. (Yard-long phallus, anyone, for 'The Hot Dog Song?') Except for the heretofore unheralded Nick Cordero, who plays Cheech, the goodfella with the soul of Euripides, no one emerges with a feather in their fedora. Not the hard-working Zach Braff, mugging his way through the ill-fitting role of handwringing nebbish; not the cartoonish Helene Yorke, overplaying the stock-variety floozy; not even the musical veteran Marin Mazzie, in a scenery-chewing turn as an operatically needy stage diva...
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2015 | US Tour |
Non-Equity National Tour US Tour |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Choreography | Susan Stroman |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Costume Design | William Ivey Long |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Director of a Musical | Susan Stroman |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Nick Cordero |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Set Design | Santo Loquasto |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical | Peter Hylenski |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Nick Cordero |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Zach Braff |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical | Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Choreographer | Susan Stroman |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Costume Design (Play or Musical) | William Ivey Long |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Nick Cordero |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Marin Mazzie |
2014 | Theatre World Awards | Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance | Nick Cordero |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Book of a Musical | Woody Allen |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Choreography | Susan Stroman |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Musical | William Ivey Long |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Jeremiah J. Harris |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Orchestrations | Doug Besterman |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical | Nick Cordero |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Musical | Santo Loquasto |
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