Shuffle Along NYC Reviews and Tickets

“The Broadway season ends with a theatrical explosion from George C. Wolfe and Savion Glover...Add in a half-dozen stellar performances, a sterling production, and an astoundingly talented ensemble and you have a musical that moves in a manner we haven’t seen since ‘Dreamgirls’...It is the combination of Wolfe and Glover that makes ‘Shuffle Along’ a veritable explosion of theatricality, an unorthodox and vital new-style Broadway feast.”
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"Wolfe keeps the show moving energetically. It is the book, also by Wolfe, that I found wanting. The story of mounting a show against all obstacles seems clichéd...With five main protagonists, there is too little time to develop any of them very deeply…Nevertheless, you won’t find more talent on one stage anywhere else on Broadway. With all the book’s flaws, the story represents an important piece of theater history and black history that should not be forgotten."
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“Wolfe brilliantly explores important questions about race, power, and representation...While it’s easy to invest in the talented stars and the history they’re unearthing, ‘Shuffle’ is not necessarily character-driven, so when their personal fates become the focus, the results are somewhat less compelling. All the same…‘Shuffle’ itself feels like a long-overdue celebration — of Black artists and Black Broadway history.”
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“In this season of ‘Hamilton,’ it's been a tall order for any new Broadway production to rise to the level of an event. But ‘Shuffle Along’ qualifies...The stars, all excellent, provide portraits that are at once recognizably human and lavishly entertaining...The new ‘Shuffle Along’ also benefits, greatly, from the exuberant gifts of choreographer Savion Glover...Exhilarating.”
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“A bold and wistful, playful and important musical-about-a-musical. It is overstuffed with ambition and talent, sure, but why shouldn’t it be?...There is a lot of exposition, a few too many back stories and, every so often, the narrative inertia of an illustrated history. But what illustrations these are, choreographed for the terrific dancing chorus by Glover with both a combination of the dazzling, syncopated black-tapping tradition and his own special full-footed, stomping identity.”
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“This astonishing musical is part thrilling re-construction and part vivid deconstruction of the process of putting on a 1921 Broadway show that had a seismic impact on the art form...The drive and passion of George C Wolfe's utterly gorgeously executed musical is the percussive tap dancing of choreographer Savion Glover. It propels the stage in a symphony of movement...This is an important musical, in more ways than one, but it’s also fantastic entertainment."
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"Mitchell, Porter, Dixon and Henry are all top-rung Broadway performers, and invest their characters with distinctive personalities, as well as singing in their own special styles...But as in every show in which she appears, McDonald stands out...She's proved that she can do anything, superbly...You leave 'Shuffle Along' with the feeling that if everyone tap-danced, the world would be a much happier place."
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"The Pirandellian meta-musical is at once an old-fashioned all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza and a thoughtful meditation on the history of race relations…The real star power comes from Audra McDonald, a Broadway legend playing a 1920s version of herself with infectious exuberance and sass…Wolfe lays on the exposition a little thick at times. But his 'Shuffle' is a courageous work on many levels...Their story reminds us that, once the music stops, life does just shuffle along."
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