"May be the biggest lulu of all...Wanders so badly, sometimes from line to line, that you can get fixated, wondering what everyone involved thinks he or she is doing...Whole sections of 'Come Light My Cigarette' sound exactly like something Allen Ginsberg threw up after a bad LSD trip...'Come Light My Cigarette' is a classic hot-August special, the kind of entertainment that is all but guaranteed to vanish by Labor Day, when the professionals come back."
Read more

“But Cohen the composer is another matter entirely--his jazz-inflected songs make ‘Come Light My Cigarette’ a gem of a chamber musical. As more and more of the songs are revealed, time and again one is reminded of ‘Trouble in Tahiti.’ And like that classical Leonard Bernstein musical, ‘Come Light My Cigarette’ appears to be set in the 1950's, which the music evokes. So do the busy but impressive set and costumes, both designed by Craig Napoliello.”
Read more

"Just as Vikki gets no respite from her suffering, neither do we—the performance isn’t interrupted by intermission, and Cohen doesn’t divert us with any lighter side stories...The songs...cast a sleepy spell over the production and seem to drift into each other, leaving the detached and ghostly feel of early black-and-white cinema. There’s a certain feeling of numbness and lack of direction, and we feel lost along with Vikki—wondering if a resolution is possible at all."
Read more

"It fails to conjure up any connection to the magical sensual style of the classic cinematic Hollywood crime dramas from the 1940s. It falls in on itself as it tries to blend artificiality and melodrama with realism and authenticity, only to land in a confusing pile of implausibility...What this show needs more than anything is an alternate vision from a strong-minded director who is able to craft this show into something that is cohesive and musically interesting with some wild creativity."
Read more

"So appallingly bad that it’s difficult to know where to begin with its excoriation...Discussions of rape and incest are glossed over by uninspired songs that feel unbearably endless...What is most troubling about the show is writer and director Arnold L. Cohen’s tone deafness. Within the show’s first 15 minutes, he manages to offend every social group possible...Cohen’s attempt at hard-boiled murder mystery dialogue never takes off...I think it’s time to put this cigarette out."
Read more

"The three performers have pleasant voices and sufficient technique to ensure that the show is more tolerable when they’re singing than when they’re not...The turgid libretto never gains much velocity...Sitting among spectators who were drop-jawed at the vulgarity and structural messiness of this musical...Isn’t good enough to be categorized as bad...It’s one of those disasters that the truest theater aficionados pride themselves on catching just in the nick of time."
Read more

“There are countless reasons to place a red circle with a diagonal slash over this crushingly banal, dramatically inept, dully plotted, musically bland attempt at a noirish, three-character musical...Cohen often provides exposition through monologues spoken to no one in particular rather than in dialogue between characters; just as bad, his sentences are larded with pseudo-poetic claptrap in place of believable language…Cohen's direction fails to inspire any sense of conflict or suspense.”
Read more