See it if you enjoy a slight farce on the old timey musical plots. Plus tap dancing that is out of this world!
Don't see it if you don't enjoy campy, fluffy, over the top classic Broadway romance stories.
See it if you like musicals made in the old-fashioned way with love intrigue, good story line, fabulous singing small casts
Don't see it if you want drama and not a lot of singing
See it if you love tap dancing and perfect couples!
Don't see it if you don't like cliche love stories and big dances.
See it if so much fun! Lesli Margherita is hilarious! Great classic musical
Don't see it if you don't like tap dancing. Many jokes are outdated and about people from the early 20th century
See it if you enjoy campy, fun, sweet, silliness.
Don't see it if you don't like campy, fun, sweet, silliness.
See it if You can appreciate a spoof of 1930's movie musicals, like those with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, you love tap dancing and ensemble work
Don't see it if You don't like musicals
See it if You enjoy parodies
Don't see it if You don't like parodies and want original classical musicals
See it if You love tap dancing and the classic 1940's type musical.
Don't see it if You hate dancing and a light and airy show.
"The way the book merrily hopscotches from cliché to cliché can still raise smiles. But 'Dames' ultimately founders on our familiarity, not with the genre it plays with like a cat’s toy, but with the long history, since its creation, of similar simulations of old-school entertainments. Even housed in Broadway’s smallest theater, this miniature musical, with a cast you could fit in a dinghy, seems just a little, well, at sea."
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"It lands like a harmless piece of wet fluff. The first 20 minutes of wide-eyed antics are cute; then your mind starts to wander. 'Dames at Sea's' mild pastiche is passable but passé—imagine a revival, half a century from now, of a Fringe show about the ’80s—and it’s presented with tongue so far in cheek that it can’t say much at all."
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"Instead of sticking close to the presentational style of Busby Berkeley spectaculars, 'Dames' literally belittled itself, making do with a cast of six and an orchestra of three on a stage barely big enough to contain Bernadette Peters. It would seem to be a category error to bring material so conceived to Broadway, and the production that just opened at the Helen Hayes, much as you root for it, fails to argue otherwise."
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"'Dames at Sea' reinvents one of those big-screen spectacles as a shrunken stage musical — a baby Busby Berkeley if you will — with an appealing cast of six that makes its featherweight pleasures infectious...A sweet candy morsel serving unapologetically empty calories."
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"'Dames' is a perfectly happy theatrical entry, but perhaps it has spent fifty years off Broadway for a reason: its satire does not bite so much as nibble. This production could have benefitted from a larger cast, a larger theater, or a larger reason to exist — something that turns it from nice to necessary. As this very solid production stands, it’s not particularly nautical and not particularly naughty, either."
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"The new leading lady of 'Dames at Sea' is no Bernadette Peters. There’s nothing wrong with this revival that Peters, who played the role of Ruby in the original, couldn’t fix. But musical theater stars of her caliber don’t grow on trees, and although newcomer Eloise Kropp is a power tapper par excellence, she hasn’t the saucy charm of a Broadway Baby like Ruby — or the magnetic appeal of a star like Peters."
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"What’s not to like? Nothing whatsoever—but there isn’t enough to love about 'Dames at Sea,' which may have seemed sufficiently witty a half-century ago but has long since been outclassed by the encyclopedically knowing musical-comedy spoofery of 'The Drowsy Chaperone.' Compared with that big-brain homage, 'Dames' isn’t much more clever than a college show, and its parodies steer too close to their models to be other than mildly amusing."
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"‘Dames At Sea’ is a lot of fun and a tribute to the city’s inexhaustible pool of inexhaustible talent, if not actual stars…Broadway today is awash in nostalgia in the form of revivals, reboots and parodies, all done on a far larger scale and offering considerably more bang, or tap, for the buck. And good as they are, the dancers never let us forget just how hard they’re working to please us."
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