The Total Bent NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (102)
See it if you want to hear some incredible voices.
Don't see it if you require a coherent plot.
See it if you are a fan of Stew & Heidi, want to hear a great musical score, great singing, love gospel and blues, don't care about a strong book
Don't see it if you want a strong coherent story. Touches on several themes without fully exploring any. It frequently seemed more like a great concert.
See it if You liked Passing Strange. If you consider music and performance more important than plot. You want to see some great performances
Don't see it if You like to understand the show (I have no idea what this was about. Lazarus was easier to follow).
See it if you love gospel music and enjoy concerts over book musicals. The score is fantastic and the performers give it their all.
Don't see it if you prefer musicals with a plot or if you are averse to songs about Jesus.
See it if you love Stew
Don't see it if there are other shows on your list - this is well done but not absorbing
See it if Like 60's soul music, intimate staging, interest in civil rights and south
Don't see it if Want an intricate plot or any real plot
See it if you're jazzed by a scorching score, performed w soul & staged w precision, & the evolution of Stew, whose vision & voice r epically alive.
Don't see it if something intriguingly bent but not totally successful is something broken to you. Closer to a concert, w a schematic plot, than a musical.
See it if you enjoy shows that address issues with race and religion. A few great musical numbers and some stellar acting scenes. Still some work tho.
Don't see it if you don't want to see an in-progress musical about race and religion and family feuds.
Critic Reviews (28)
"'The Total Bent' is well worth seeing for its dynamic music, the star-making performance of Ato Blankson-Wood, who is filled to the brim with talent, and the great band. Everyone in this all-male cast is excellent. The production is more staged concert than full production, which doesn't help the muddle of the ending. Stew's attempt at rhymed dialogue and his lyrics are best when they are taking a humorous view toward a very serious topic."
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"Director Joanna Settle keeps up the pace and holds things together as much as possible in this soulful, nonlinear, and humorously serious work. But the music-driven trajectory with scattered story fragments floating in and out seems more like separate bents than a total bent...Toward the end the convoluted narrative arc bends, and the musical becomes a rock concert. The music is so entertaining that you almost don’t care that the text is a bit of a rambling mess."
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"'The Total Bent' has left us rocking and rolling to just about every genre of music including gospel, jazz, rock, blues, and rap...In the midst of all the joke telling, at times it is a bit difficult to determine what is needed to propel the story...'The Total Bent' will leave you laughing uncontrollably, and with visions of yourself dancing on stage with the actors. This musical is an unapologetically honest portrayal of such heavy conflicts of race, gender, and politics in the most fun way."
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"It's the classic and all too familiar 'forbidden fruit' story. However, it's rendered agreeably through a flavorsome mixture of rock ’n’ roll, show tunes and gospel that the play's creators have fused rhythmically into the narrative...'The Total Bent' takes us into familiar territory, but it does so with an artsy sensation and musical arrangements that not only had the audience in standing ovation mode by the play's end, but demanding the release of the soundtrack before leaving the theater."
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