"Its greatest achievement is combining all these elements and transcending parody because of how openly it wears its heart on its sleeve, it’s a show by musical lovers made to please other musical lovers...A blissfully entertaining show that doesn't pretend to contain anything particularly original."
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"A delightfully irreverent mash-up of Broadway musicals and Shakespeare that should keep audiences laughing for years to come...The love stories are slight. But director Casey Nicholaw compensates. He’s an expert at staging broad comedy without letting his cast resort to hamminess…It’s the writers, all making their Broadway debuts, who emerge as the biggest stars, imbuing 'Something Rotten!' with smart-alecky glee."
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"By the end of the show, despite the cleverness of its concept, 'Something Rotten' as executed simply hasn't added up to a completely satisfying musical. Its choreography seems too repetitive, its rock score sounds too generic, its tone is confused – as often peppy or sappy as subversive or satiric – and its plot is all over the place: Too much of what unfolds during its 150-minute running time feels like filler."
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"Something's rotten on the stage of the St. James, and it smells like a hit...'Something Rotten!' is larded with overripe performances, layer upon layer of schmaltz, and everything in the kitchen sink except a battle of flying cream pies...It hits the target again and again, but as the evening progresses they serve up fewer and fewer bull's eyes."
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"Though often grossly (and unabashedly) overplayed, overall the show’s on-the-nose wit is disarmingly funny and likely to charm...Many of the musical’s basest laughs would be plainly eye-rolling (or some even more so than they already are) were it not for director Casey Nicholaw’s deft comedic hand coupled with the cast’s timing and finesse."
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"Riddled throughout with stage-related gags, the madcap 'Something Rotten!' obviously represents far too much of a good thing, but it undeniably gets mighty hilarious at times."
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""Something Rotten!" may not be the tidiest new musical of the Broadway season, but it's by far the funniest...A high-spirited, gleefully acted, past-meets-present cultural mash-up, mixing high wit with low jokes. It exists for its individual comic and musical scenes, with plot coherence discarded as excess baggage."
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"“Rotten!” paints musical theater culture in the same broad strokes that the “The Book of Mormon” used to satirize religion—everyone gets to be in on the joke. This new musical makes us do just enough work that we feel satisfied for picking up on them. Go for the production numbers and the big-hearted turns from the leads, whose enthusiasm ultimately proves even more infectious than the plague."
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