Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (NYC)
Closed 1h 45m
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (NYC)
76

Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (NYC) NYC Reviews and Tickets

76%
(580 Reviews)
Positive
78%
Mixed
15%
Negative
7%
Members say
Great singing, Entertaining, Delightful, Disappointing, Great staging

About the Show

After an extended run in La Jolla, the new musical about the 70s disco queen hits Broadway with a score featuring more than 20 of Summer’s classic hits including “Love to Love You, Baby,” “Bad Girls,” and “Hot Stuff."

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Member Reviews (580)

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913 Reviews | 929 Followers
83
Fun!, Entertaining, Great singing, Great music

See it if you like Donna Summer and want to know a bit more about her. Great talent! Fun!

Don't see it if you want a lavish polished production. This is for joyful entertainment, not thought-provoking "art".

1085 Reviews | 265 Followers
70
Great acting, Great singing, Great staging, Fluffy, Disappointing

See it if Very good singing and staging. The queen of discos songs are very good.

Don't see it if Should have had one plot and stayed with it. Show was all over the place.

1015 Reviews | 420 Followers
35
Excruciating, Cliched, Banal, Disappointing, Awful!

See it if You like Lifetime movies that gloss over all facts that ever show the star in any kind of unflattering way. See this for the pretty lights.

Don't see it if You want to hear Summers music or see her story. Both are butchered. Bits of songs poorly strung together to make up an unbearable story.

891 Reviews | 259 Followers
80
Great singing, Great staging, Entertaining, Delightful, Music that makes you move

See it if you enjoy the disco music era and this diva - it's her biographical story, the good and the bad, and her music. Great cast and non-stop fun.

Don't see it if you don't like disco and are not interested in her biography. You don't enjoy entertainment that let's you escape to a previous time.

546 Reviews | 1879 Followers
79
Fun, Entertaining, Great singing, Fluffy

See it if You want to see DeBose and LaChanze completely crush it. Not much of a story, but fun nonetheless. Embrace the audience fever.

Don't see it if You don’t like Donna Summer or are expecting a moving experience.

650 Reviews | 284 Followers
73
Got the audience on its feet: better than typical bio-pic juke box musical

See it if good renditions of Summer's hits by 3 different actresses playing young, adult, diva Summer; flashes of wit; dynamic dancing; slick set

Don't see it if biopic predictable/romanticized; Summer celebrated as key women's rts advocate/please!; singing not close 2 Summer in her prime; who is?

715 Reviews | 108 Followers
81
Entertaining, Great singing, Great staging, Banal, Delightful

See it if you liked Donna Summer, this show is a must. Her songs are used to tell her life story. Singing and staging great.

Don't see it if you did not like Donna Summers or disco music or you like a musical with a plot. Read more

655 Reviews | 129 Followers
89
Great singing, Entertaining, Great music, Funny

See it if If you like make the music, tells alittle about her.

Don't see it if If you don't like the music. Read more

Critic Reviews (49)

The New York Times
April 23rd, 2018

"Despite the exciting vocalism of a cast led by the formidable LaChanze, it reduces the late Queen of Disco and pioneer of electronica to a few factoids and song samples that make her seem profoundly inconsequential...I found myself asking throughout the show’s intermission-less 100 minutes: Can’t they do any better than this?...The show over all skitters away from almost everything even slightly awkward or troubling — and thus interesting — about Ms. Summer’s life and career."
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Time Out New York
April 23rd, 2018

"Three talented and blameless women play the late Donna Summer in a tacky, sub-Vegas jukebox biomusical...At its most watchable, the show plays like a barely dramatized adaptation of Summer’s Spotify and Wikipedia pages. But when it’s bad, it’s so, so bad...The general level of befuddled kitsch is raised by the bizarre background presence of a nearly all-female ensemble which spends much of the show in boxy drag-king suits and clumpy short wigs."
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New York Magazine / Vulture
April 23rd, 2018

"Thanks to the swift, smart construction of 'Summer,' which neither overburdens its material nor overstays its welcome, it’s a pretty damn good time. 'Summer’s' book is sometimes predictable, sometimes sentimental, and every so often pushes unsubtly on its central image. But it’s also uptempo, fluently interwoven with the show’s songs, and often genuinely funny...Has its dips...All in all, though, 'Summer' does well at moving us through both the bright and dark spots in its hero’s life."
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The Hollywood Reporter
April 23rd, 2018

"A feebly dramatized Wikipedia page with lackluster covers...This dramaturgically inept show either short-changes or outright massacres Summer's music; undervalues her achievements...completely fails to contextualize her legacy; glosses over her massive gay fan base; and rams its female-empowerment message down your throat...More like a 'Saturday Night Live' parody of a jukebox musical...The hack-job direction is matched by Sergio Trujillo's bland choreography."
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Entertainment Weekly
April 23rd, 2018

"Delivers the seasonal sunshine. It just doesn’t also bring a whole lotta depth...Of course, the music is terrific; Donna Summer isn’t the undisputed Queen of Disco for nothing. But this production lives or dies on the shoulders of its three Donnas — and they are incredible...Toe-tappingly familiar songs, stellar performances, shiny costumes, and a reminder of the impact of its subject on the music industry at large. It’s also a little thin on story."
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Variety
April 24th, 2018

"A narrow-minded jukebox musical that views its titular heroine in a vacuum. The great songs are pretty much all here...LaChanze is here, too, and in glorious voice, along with a thin biographical book that hardly does justice to Summer's life or her music...Despite some good songs and uplifting vocals from her backup singers, LaChanze is pressed to carry the whole show on her back...Laughs are few and far between...The song lyrics, not the spoken dialogue, are what matter in this show."
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The Wall Street Journal
May 6th, 2018

"A comic book set to top-40 tunes...So vacuous that I was reduced to helpless giggling almost before I got settled...On the other hand, the band is hot, the sets are slick, Trujillo’s dances are super-smooth, and you get to spend pretty much the whole evening listening to and looking at LaChanze to which there is no downside. Best of all, 'Summer' runs for an hour and 40 minutes with no intermission, meaning that you’ll be out the door almost before you lose your patience—but not quite."
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Deadline
April 23rd, 2018

"As unimaginative as its title...Cooks up some excitement during the musical performances of hits, but mostly the songs come off as well-delivered covers, evoking little of the subversive, decadent ecstasy of the Studio 54 era...The book’s shallow treatment of even the most serious events – is one-upped by the distraction of having many of the minor (and a few not so minor) male characters played by the female chorus ensemble, in campy, sketch-comedy drag."
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