Rocktopia NYC Reviews and Tickets

"About two hours in, the touring concert...had settled into a benign, dull groove. Then the slide show, which until then had been mostly sunsets and rolling clouds, jolted me awake...The vocalists generally acquit themselves well enough...Ultimately, the real problem is the set list's utter blandness...Taken individually, these songs are in the canon for a reason, of course; one after another, their effect is numbing."
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"A misguided attempt to combine two musical forms...The musical mishmashes on display rarely come off effectively, more often feeling like gimmickry...The snippets from well-known classical pieces followed by bombastic renditions of overly familiar rock songs prove novel for the first few minutes...Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, it becomes a punishing exercise...A few of the numbers work thanks to the sometimes clever arrangements by Fleischer."
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"Heads bob. Arms sway. Hands clap. And, frequently, eyes roll - at least mine did...Blurs the lines between famous rock hits and classical ones...Gets old fast because a sameness sets in...Too much lung-busting, facial-distorting 'American Idol' -style singing and a Celtic violin overload...Clearly co-creators Evan, who also sings, and conductor Fleischer like to think big. But they don't always think coherently...Weirder still is the who's who projected on stage."
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"Turns out to be far more on the rock side of the concept than on the classical side...The result is thoroughly half-baked...Even when the mash-ups sounds more or less smooth there's nothing new to be gained...More invested in pandering to baby boomer nostalgia...Whatever crumbs of pleasure are to be found...come solely from the singers...Considering how unevenly balanced the acoustic is, one can't help but wonder if it was even worth bringing in the orchestral elements."
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"A huge problem with the classical moments is that though were composed to be performed without amplification, 'Rocktopia' blasts them through the sound system with the same lack of finesse used for hits by Elton John and Styx. Perhaps if they pulled a full switcheroo, having the classics performed in rock style with the newer stuff unplugged and given the longhair treatment, 'Rocktopia' would have a little more bite to it."
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"A big, loud, in-your-face, knock-down-drag-out evening of very well-known classical melodies, very-well known classic rock tunes...A lot of the mash ups were less than graceful. Yes, the setlist was all arena rock anthems. Yes it caters to baby-boomer nostalgia. Yes, some of the projections were just silly...It is, however, a hell of a lot of fun! What it may lack in sophistication, it makes up for in pure exuberance. It is two plus hours of loud, ruckus, joyful noise."
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"The monumentally silly idea-and not a new one, either is mashing up...rock warhorses with classical music warhorses...The result is both are coarsely cheapened...Most of the blame has to be placed on Fleischer, who carpentered the bloated arrangements and who conducts them for maximum deafening results...Everything is amplified, including, the assaulted arias...Everything from start to finish is obstreperous."
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"The earnest spectacle, the overstated reverence...It knows its audience, and it serves them honestly and without cynicism...Co-creators Evan and Fleischer, respectively featured onstage as vocalist and 'maestro', have not cooked up some cockeyed plot or artist hagiography as an excuse to string together a series of familiar tunes. This is not a jukebox musical but a concert, and as such it can cater unabashedly to baby-boomer nostalgia."
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