A musical based on the movie Tootsie opened on Broadway last night and it got the kind of reviews that suggest it'll be there for a long time. Almost all the critics called it hilarious and crowd-pleasing…and an even better indicator is that Rex Reed said it was a mess. It would not necessarily be a foolish policy to make your theatergoing selections by going to everything Rex Reed said was bad and avoiding the shows he's liked.
Anyway, here's a page with links to many of the reviews of Tootsie. I wonder how many (if any) of the lines they said were so wonderful were written by Larry Gelbart.
I have three days in New York coming up and I've got to figure out what I'm going to see while I'm there. I kinda want to see the King Kong musical. I've heard mixed things about the plot/music part but everyone's saying the 20-foot King Kong puppet alone is worth the price of admission. I'm also spending way too much time wondering what's going to become of that massive monkey marionette when this show closes. It weighs a ton (literally)…so where do you put it? Do you store it? If so, why and where and for what future usage?
For that matter, might this be the only opportunity ever to see this show? I mean, it's not like they can do a national tour with a star who takes weeks to set up and take down. And the little 99 and 300 seat theaters around are unlikely to do this musical. They could just put a guy in some costume that's not being used for National Gorilla Suit Day.
I'm going to guess they're going to try and find a permanent home for this show and its title star, perhaps at a theme park or someplace. Las Vegas is probably out. It hasn't had much luck with musicals.
I'd just hate to see Kong wind up with a talk show on basic cable or sitting behind a table at an autograph show. Maybe he can go on Jeopardy! He could win easily. All he has to do is step on James Holzhauer