"Carmel Dean’s melodies, passionately sung, make the poems soar. But what does it mean that I came out of the show liking Millay’s poetry a lot less than when I went into it?...The show made me wonder why we’re still so hungry for artist biographies and what it is we want from them...Centering the work around lightly sketched love affairs feels prurient and cheap....As the evening wore on, I began to wish the piece had been reconceived as a concert, with no mortifying book scenes."
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“The last 20 minutes of ‘Renascence’ give themselves over completely to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s titular masterpiece, as the six-person cast sings and dances to her lyric poem...It’s the high point of this evocative but overly ambitious new musical...The characters never quite coalesce, and Vincent sometimes seems like a supporting figure in the story. Although it’s a pleasure to hear Millay’s soulful poems in song, the voice behind them remains something of a mystery."
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"The Transport Group is currently presenting 'Renascence,' a musical about Edna St. Vincent Millay, and I can't imagine why. The show certainly doesn't provide any clues...Most of the time it fails to make a case for dramatizing the life of the poet, who should by all rights make a rip-roaring musical-theatre heroine...This is largely the fault of Scanlan's book, which employs a story theatre methodology that never shies away from cutesiness."
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"Carmel Dean has done Edna St. Vincent Millay an extremely generous favor. She has set the revered poet’s 'Renascence' to glorious, moody, insistent music. Doing that, she has also given audiences an equally uplifting gift...Other Millay works are regularly inserted, and Dean treats them with the same fervor...Crystalline singing delivered by every member of the cast. Singling out any one of them for special praise isn’t necessary."
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"Some of the talented and valiant cast cannot help but be defeated by roles for which they are unsuited, while others make their characters self-important and overbearing. The music seems at war with the style and subject matter of Millay's lyrics. And worst of all Edna St Vincent Millay, rather than being the heroine of her own story, comes off as extremely opinionated, pompous and unsympathetic. One wonders what she would have said about being depicted this way."
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"Dean’s music is, at times, lush and powerful and the six-person cast is exquisitely voiced, but as a whole, the enterprise has a confused dramatic perspective...The payoff is worthwhile, though nothing before quite lives up to this final section or justifies the lengthy run time to get to it...This musical may have its peaks and valleys in its first production, but between Dean’s unique compositional voice and the intricate syntax of Millay’s 'lyrics' lies the promise of something remarkable."
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"The new musical with a lush score...But much like Ms. Millay’s poetry, the payoff has to be earned...Dean’s score features sweeping melodic passages, further strengthened by Michael Starobin’s rich orchestrations...For the most part, though, the company’s over-earnestness feels unnecessarily wrought. Ms. Millay’s work as reimagined by Ms. Dean stands on its own merit and a sense of simplicity might further serve the piece."
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"Rather than a bio-musical, the show, with a score that fits Millay’s poetry to lush and invigorating music, is more an evocation of a personality...No fourth wall here. When they aren’t singing or speaking intently to each other, they’re doing so to the audience. And the singing is indeed prodigious, often gorgeous...It’s hard to believe that the inventive theatricality of the show, the music, and the majestic talents of the performers won’t win you over."
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