The Robber Bridegroom NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (472)
See it if you are entertained by fluff. Fun songs, well performed. Very handsome, talented leads. I enjoyed it, but I'm not proud of myself.
Don't see it if mugging annoys you. This show demands the audience laugh at stupidity. Less would have been more; this production tried too hard.
See it if Your looking for a fun, funny light night of theatre. Original and great music.
Don't see it if You're looking for a serious show.
See it if You live revivals. It's a fresh take but not a great show.
Don't see it if It costs you more than $5 to see it.
See it if you enjoy an opportunity for a good giggle with some foot tapping tunes. This is fun evening.
Don't see it if you are looking for deep meanings or complex truths.
See it if you want to see some fine performers working very hard (sometimes effectively) to make this schtick-filled southern-fried musical work.
Don't see it if you like your musicals to be a little more intellectually advanced than "Hee Haw".
See it if you're a fan of Steven Pasquale or Leslie Kritzer who are terrific, you enjoy zany plots cleverly staged with a fine, twangy score
Don't see it if you don't like crazy farces or musicals made just for entertainment, old sight gags, and actors playing multiple roles with some confusion
See it if /since show is cleverly hokey and "low tech"; employs fine bluegrass band and ebullient ensemble/outstanding Steven Pasquale
Don't see it if you are not a fan of "farmer's daughter" jokes, Dukes of Hazzard hijinks or dumb sight gags (head in a box anyone?), all played 4 laughs
See it if for those who are ready to welcome some country fun into NYC Pasquale does it again but this time with a laid back approach
Don't see it if you just cannot accept something different for a NY audience
Critic Reviews (40)
"Alex Timbers’s exceedingly high-spirited revival of this 1975 musical will not be to everyone’s liking. But even those allergic to Southern-fried shtick are unlikely to go away feeling entirely empty. Mr. Timbers uses visual wit and gleefully macabre gags to provide awakening jolts during this sustained singing hayride...'The Robber Bridegroom' is not asking you to think deep. Mostly, it just clomps, two-steps and square dances along its relentlessly exuberant way."
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"There’s nary a lull in Alex Timbers’s exuberant revival of 'The Robber Bridegroom', a raucous hootenanny set in a fanciful version of 18th-century Mississippi...It is a delightfully inventive reimagining of Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman’s 1975 musical...Like many of Timbers’s previous projects, including 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' and 'Peter and the Starcatcher', 'The Robber Bridegroom' loves putting on a show."
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"Timbers draws from his usual bag of magic tricks, prop jokes, and winking meta-theatricality to keep the eye and attention engaged at all times. Even so, the story, having been pulled away from any real engagement with its dark fundamentals, now seems like an excuse instead of the point. That inversion makes for some very uncomfortable juxtapositions...I’m not sure that story should have been made into musical comedy in 1975; making it a better one now only makes it worse."
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"Combining hyperkinetic rowdiness and spirited self-mockery with the larkish low-tech Story Theater tricks, the production imposes the director's signature wink-wink style on the material to a suffocating degree. The show boasts a hardworking cast, a rousing five-piece band and gorgeous design elements. But this twangy 1975 bluegrass musical comedy works way too hard at stealing hearts."
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"Roundabout has produced a 'Robber Bridegroom' that is totally stylish, deeply entertaining, and almost vanishingly slight. That’s not a criticism, entirely...Timbers has made this musical a rollicking good time, a goofy, high-spirited hootenanny. It’s a mighty Mississippi of fun...But Timbers has also stripped out whatever darkness and complexity Uhry’s script once contained...It doesn’t make much of a case for why 'The Robber Bridegroom,' a forgotten musical, deserves to be remembered."
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"Having fun shouldn’t be as exhausting as director Alex Timbers makes it out to be in his overly antic production of 'The Robber Bridegroom'...The show is so overdirected, the unassuming charm of the humble material is crushed like a bug...Having started from the premise that more is more, Timbers won’t stop with anything less than comic overkill. The characters gain nothing, however, and actually squander their appeal when overplayed in a style so broad it becomes total caricature."
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"The Roundabout’s exceptionally charming revival of 'The Robber Bridegroom' is exactly the kind of intimate extravaganza you would expect from Alex Timbers, among the most inventive young directors working today...'The Robber Bridegroom' is a highlight of a season that’s fast becoming a landmark for musicals...The score is fun if not exactly memorable. The show rests on committed performances and an atmosphere that inches up to cute without diving into it whole hog."
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"Set to a wonderfully catchy country-bluegrass score this 'Mississippi fairy tale' is the kind of show where a talking head is kept in a box...[Director] Timbers goes to town, piling up the gags, and setting a breakneck pace — while giving the slower, more serious songs space to breathe...The cast rises to the challenge, including Pasquale. But even he’s eclipsed by Leslie Kritzer’s gold-tooth-flashing wicked stepmother. She gleefully goes over the top, and then over the top of the top."
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