“Like the poor, the jukebox musical is always with us, but when one comes along displaying real ambition and a distinctive point of view, attention must be paid. I won't pretend that The Greatest Hits Down Route 66 is a musical chartbuster, but it puts its found musical goods to unusual use and it has something to say about America's tarnished melting pot. That's not nothing.”
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"...too much and not enough of a trip down the pot-holed highways and byways of life."
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"The show creatively explores personal dynamics...and cultural origins."
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The title of Michael Aguirre’s "The Greatest Hits Down Route 66," the story of the Franco family’s summer road trip in 1999, refers to Carl Sandburg’s 1927 "The American Songbag," a best-selling collection of early folksongs. Aguirre tells us that “the goal is to use music as a memory, an imprint, incidental. It should carry emotional weight but don’t depend on it to move the plot forward.” And that is the problem with the show: the songs are extraneous to the plot and have little impact as most of the 13 songs are so familiar, in the musical arrangements of Grace Yukich and Jennifer C. Dauphinais. There are no surprises in the music played by a three piece band and a lead vocalist, Hannah-Kathryn “HK” Wall.
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"...I assure you the 105-minute project is possibly more than you bargained for!"
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"...finds itself short on songs, long on family dysfunction, and scattered on Americana."
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"...mingles beauty and melancholy in its reflection of life"
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"The music seeps into the whole production"
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