"The play seems more like a forgotten bottom-drawer comedy from the 1930s, the kind that occasionally resurfaces at suburban dinner theaters...everybody in 'Living on Love' appears to be having a fairly good time. Whether audiences will share their joy is debatable."
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"The canned corn of DiPietro’s writing is pressed into mush by Kathleen Marshall’s clunky direction; the younger actors, who spend most of the play in a panic, are nearly unwatchable. 'Living on Love' is meant to be hammy, but it’s not even that. It’s a bland, synthetic dud: a ham-flavored turkey."
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"Plenty of punch lines, but the audience’s response to them seemed as canned as the material. This is only in part because the play is set in 1957 and feels as if it were written then too. 'Living on Love' is tacky and weirdly downmarket, as if divas and maestros could only be made palatable to contemporary audiences by turning them into buffoons."
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"It isn’t funny. Not even slightly so. Indeed, it’s so unfunny as to make the viewer despair of ever laughing again, much as a starving man might despair of ever eating again. 'Living on Love' originated at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, whose directors really should have known better than to send it to Broadway to die. "
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"DiPietro’s script is so inside in its opera jokes that you may find yourself gasping for air, though probably not from the laughs that director Kathleen Marshall works overtime extracting. It’s possible to imagine this as the perfect diversion for a summer evening. But on Broadway, it’s piffle, forgotten by the time you reach the corner."
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"Mixed-up romantic couples and larger-than-life eccentrics are meant to ignite bright comic fireworks. But too many lame jokes and broad-as-a-barn performances extinguish any chance of that. I laughed twice. That’s not much for two hours at Broadway prices."
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"Joe DiPietro’s comedy is an airy spoof of a famed soprano and her temperamental husband...It’s all very charming until the ill-advised saccharine payoff which has half the audience cheering and the other half wondering how long we have to put up with yet more shameless pandering to the social zeitgeist."
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"There's nothing contemporary and too little that's consistently funny about playwright Joe DiPietro's refried serving of 'Peccadillo,' a minor Garson Kanin comedy from 1985. The new version does have the sporting turn of celebrated lyric soprano Renee Fleming. But when she is not onstage, the fizz quickly evaporates."
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