Creature

GRADE: B

By Heidi Schreck. Directed by Leigh Silverman. At The Ohio Theater. (CLOSED)

Acclaimed (and Obie award-winning) actress Heidi Schreck makes her New York debut as a playwright with this P73/New George's co-production. Creature, a not-really-factual take on 15th century wannabe mystic Margery Kempe, earns generally high marks from the reviewers for its blend of contemporary and classical idioms and Leigh Silverman's deftly comedic direction. Grumbling arises about the failure of the play to quite cohere at the end. Patrick Lee and David Barbour bring up the rear. Lee generally thinks the show is alright, but finds the characters hard to connect to, while Barbour (clearly a fan of the show's source material) pans the play as a messily-written disaster.

OffOffOnline A+
(William Coyle) Creature does everything right, managing to be historically fascinating, loaded with depth and entertaining, all at once. I recommend it to anyone who relishes compelling new theater.

That Sounds Cool A
(Aaron Riccio) Schreck has also done a terrific job in spinning a great deal of research on this era into comic gold. Silverman would never have been able to add so much physical comedy if it were not for the richness of the script itself, in which a drunk, worn down John can have a serious conversation with Father Thomas regarding the safety of his wife (they're burning women for heresy) one moment, and then ask whether it's true that priests have "extra large merchandise" the next. Without throwing in Margery's mood swings--particularly one where she attempts to cry, as a saint would, only to laugh at her success, working herself into a fit--we would not be able to make as much of her attempts to quote Juliana of Norwich (Marylouise Burke, commandingly dotty): "For me, Love has always been terrible and implacable, devouring and burning."

Blog Critics A
(Jon Sobel) The play belongs proudly to Margery, and we left the theater feeling that we personally knew this complex and fascinating woman. Ms. Gomez gives a suitably dangerous and sometimes screamingly funny performance. Put simply, she plays the hell out of her, and with a terrifying Hell (along with Purgatory and Heaven) ever-present in the anxieties of the age, this feels like exactly the Margery we ought to have. One can read a proto-feminist strand into this lusty and freethinking depiction of the character, but any sense of anachronism is made palatable – fun, in fact – by the script's unabashed honesty. The comic dialogue and the flow from scene to scene feel effortless.

NYTimes B+
(Rachel Saltz) Absorbing... Creature, directed simply and imaginatively by Leigh Silverman, seems at first too broad and too modern (a lot of “what the hells” and Converse high-tops). But after a while the play finds its tone, at once lighthearted and serious. Ms. Schreck uses unadorned contemporary language, and the set, by Rachel Hauck, is handsomely minimal, with deft touches (a cradle hanging near the ceiling, a window frame floating in Juliana’s room). It’s as if Ms. Schreck and Ms. Silverman were clearing away distractions, making the play like a monk’s cell: a proper space to contemplate the mysteries of faith.

The New Yorker B+
(Unsigned) Heidi Schreck’s script, directed by Leigh Silverman, though somewhat incoherent, makes religious fanaticism look like a lot of fun. Some wonderful performances, too—in particular, those of Gomez, Goldstein, and Shamos—add to the high energy.

Variety B+
(Marilyn Stasio) The superstitious fears and horrors Heidi Schreck conjures up in her offbeat historical play about the 15th century English mystic Margery Kempe are largely psychological -- and not unfamiliar to any modern woman stressed out by the demands of a new baby and a childish husband. Without denying the significance of religious faith in the intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages, scribe coyly suggests that having mystical visions was a great way for a clever woman to escape her onerous domestic duties and become a celebrity.

NYPOST B
(Frank Scheck)In a sense, playwright Heidi Schreck is somewhat like her subject. This promising author -- who's also an actress, now appearing in off-Broadway's "Circle Mirror Transformation" -- has ambitiously taken on historical and religious themes when most of her contemporaries are content to write about relationships. If she's not entirely successful, she certainly deserves points for trying ... Director Leigh Silverman isn't able to make it all coherent, but Creature certainly indicates that this talented actress is also a playwright to watch.

Village Voice B-
(James Hannaham) Schreck's juxtaposition of the modern middle class and the Middle Ages could be funnier, but in a shaky effort to acknowledge the real Kempe's humanity, the production lurches between lampooning her shallow side and sentimentally lauding her spirituality. The Winslet-like Gomez gets no blame; she whizzes through the character's inconsistencies like an Olympic luge champ. And loose-limbed Marylouise Burke's ninth-inning appearance as fellow visionary Julian of Norwich (renamed "Juliana" here to emphasize her female-ness) provides a burst of humor and balance that proves almost revelatory.

Time Out New York B-
(Helen Shaw) Schreck’s script has narrative simplicity, contemporary zing and lyrical flights of startling loveliness. Unfortunately, her hallucinatory, shimmering language desperately needs medieval murk for contrast and mood, and director Leigh Silverman—ignoring the stage’s many candles in favor of big, music-hall light cues—refuses to give it to her. The production, despite championship acting, treads too lightly, and sheds its mysteries along the way. In this sort of vision, it’s sometimes best not to see the light.

TheaterMania C-
(Patrick Lee) The characters speak in mostly contemporary idioms and move on stage with modern physicality, often costumed in sneakers in contrast to the plain garments that suggest the period. While these deliberately anachronistic choices seem intended to emphasize both the continued relevance of the theme and to draw current-day associations with our heroine's behavior, we aren't given a reason to connect emotionally with Margery. Indeed, while the themes in Creature intrigue, too often, the characters do not.

Lighting and Sound America F+
(David Barbour) When I first heard about Creature, my first thought was, I wonder why the playwright, Heidi Schreck, wants to write about a 15th-century mystic. Having seen Creature, I'm still wondering....Kempe lived a singular life of controversy and achievement, and she was actively caught up in the important spiritual dialogues of her times. She could have inspired all sorts of plays; the treatment she gets here is thin, sketch-comedy stuff, informed by a casually derisive attitude toward the Middle Ages.

OOO A+ 14; TSC A 13; BC A 13; NYT B+ 11; TNY B+ 11; V B+ 11; NYP B 10; VV B- 9; TONY B- 9; TM C- 6; LSA F+ 3 TOTAL = 110/11=10 B

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The Retributionists

GRADE: D+

By Daniel Goldfarb. Directed by Leigh Silverman. Plawrights Horizons. (CLOSED)

Critics can't help but compare (at least in passing) Daniel Goldfarb's tale of four star-crossed Jews plotting revenge against the Germans, based on a true story, to Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Most critics find the former to be melodramatic and laughable rather than insightful. Leigh Silverman gets mixed reviews for her directing, but most critics agree that the play is staged nicely, aided by Derek McLane's set. On the acting front, Margarita Levieva as Anika gets the harshest reviews for what critics call a wooden performance.

Talkin' Broadway B+
(Matthew Murray) The politics and the eroticism alternate in the first act much as the scenes set in Paris and Germany do. Goldfarb has a lot of ground to cover, and wastes little time in putting all his ideas on the table. If the first few scenes feel somewhat burdened by excessive exposition, the payoffs in the second act are ripe: When one plan fails, another is implemented, and the unions that once seemed so certain reconfigure time and time again. Silverman has directed with a sharp eye for pacing and a sharper ear for irony that elicits the maximum sexual and psychological suspense from almost every scene. (She’s defeated only by Goldfarb’s one extraneous scene, a flashback to the war that restates a lot of information from elsewhere, but doesn’t say a lot that’s new.) Even Derek McLane’s set contributes, seamlessly transforming from a shabby hotel room into an elegant train car and, eventually, the bread-packed bakery where the future of Germany may be decided. Goldfarb falters most noticeably in the weightier, more message laden sections of his dialogue; the characters’ single-minded determination makes for a lot of resonant-voiced but hollow-sounding proclamations that keep the actors from injecting it with all the portentous and pulse-racing color it needs. The most natural is Milioti (much better here than as a Fran Drescher-esque Syrian teen earlier this season in Lincoln Center Theater’s Stunning), who displays a sensitive understanding of unrequited adoration that plants Dinchka as the story’s unlikely tragic center.

CurtainUp B+
(Elyse Sommer) As promised by the advance press notices, The Retributionists is a romantic thriller, if at times leaning a bit too heavily towards soap opera. Given the limitations of a live theater piece, don't expect the kind of sturm and drang action of a film. The play's focus is on the conflicts and romances among the play's leader Dov (Adam Driver), Anika (Margarita Levieva) and Dinchka (Cristin Milioti), the two young women who became his lovers and followers during their harsh years in the forest, and the Aryan-looking Jascha (Adam Rothenberg). That said, this is a remarkably well- staged, extremely fluid production, with scenic designer Derek McLane transporting us without a lot of prop moving fuss to a Paris hotel room, a railroad train, a German bakery and, briefly, as well as to the forest where the foursome first bonded into a complicated family of sorts. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting and Tom Kitt's incidental music enhance the unsettled post-war aura. Director Leigh Silverman hand is most noticable in the way she spotlights the doors to Arika's Paris hotel rom, the train, and the bakery to perhaps symbolize their opening the way to both danger and possibility, beginnings and endings. Goldfab's script has enough little details to make the human behavior patterns and culture that developed during this foursome's years in the woods believable. The effect of the overlapping love relationships on the outcome of the thriller angle— the revenge plan, or to be specific, Plan A and Plan B — has enough surprises to hold our attention even though this hardly a gasp-inducing, finger clenching action piece.

TheaterMania B-
(Barbara and Scott Siegel) Inspired by a true story that occurred in Nuremberg, Germany in 1946 when 1,900 German prisoners of war were poisoned by arsenic-laced bread, playwright Daniel Goldfarb has spun an intriguing revenge fantasy in The Retributionists, now at Playwrights Horizons. Nonetheless, the play feels as if it needed another draft before going into production. There are great scenes, wonderful moments, and fascinating and breathtaking moral complexities that suddenly flash and then get mired in mediocre melodrama.

Time Out New York C-
(Adam Feldman) Goldfarb’s dramatic machinery is solidly built, and features interesting shifts in power among the play’s central quartet of Holocaust survivors. His language, however, moves distractingly between sepia stiffness (“You’ve always manipulated me so”) and modern lassitude (“I’m scared shitless”); and although Leigh Silverman’s staging is handsome, she elicits widely varying performances from the cast. Adam Driver and Cristin Milioti, two young actors to watch, do very fine work in demanding parts. But Margarita Levieva, in the pivotal role of Anika, gives a blank, inadequate performance—sometimes forcing the intense Adam Rothenberg into frantic spurts of compensatory acting. (He’s like a squash player returning his own shots at the wall.) Anika is meant to drive the story; Levieva never gets it out of neutral.

Lighting and Sound America C-
(David Barbour) The production's designers have conspired to give the play a voluptuous, film-noir sheen. Most of the action takes place in the train car and hotel room, both conjured up by Derek McLane with ease, using a few modular scenic pieces linked by a common door. The designer's skill at using a few telling details to create a strong sense of place has proved especially useful here. And, when the action moves to that bakery in Nuremburg, that stage is opened up to create yet another distinctively different location. Most of these locations are set against a basic set-up in which rows of black street lights run upstage to downstage, creating a kind of shadowy, back-alley look. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting endows the action with the requisite noir glamour; the hotel scenes in particular have a lovely sepia-toned quality. The forest flashback scene glitters with moonlight. Susan Hilferty's costumes include some beautifully tailored men's suits; her costumes for Dinchka are especially revealing of changes that characters life at three different points in the narrative. (I'd love to know why Anika is always barefoot, however.) Jill B. C DuBoff's sound design provides solid reinforcement for Tom Kitt's attractively melancholic piano-strings melodies; she also comes up with some extremely realistic train-station sounds. For all of this good work, however, The Retributionists remains one of those how-did-it-ever-get-on bafflers. Goldfarb's characters learn that the road to hell is paved with good intentions -- words he might well take to heart.

The Village Voice D+
(Michael Feingold) Some grudging praise should be offered to Daniel Goldfarb, for writing The Retributionists, and to Playwrights Horizons for producing it: A young writer willing to tackle a big, somber historical subject is always a sign of hope. Regrettably, the results here don't justify the praise being any more than grudging. Goldfarb's characters—four young Polish Jews who have survived extermination by escaping to the forest—scheme in 1946 to implement their personal revenge for the Nazi death camps by slaughtering an equivalent number of postwar Germans. To say that Goldfarb doesn't understand what he's talking about might itself be too generous: His people, their circumstances, their various pasts, and the chaotic postwar world around them are all so sketchily conveyed that I literally have no idea what he does or doesn't understand.

The New Yorker D
(Hilton Als) In the perhaps too orderly world of Daniel Goldfarb’s imagination, interesting things can happen, but not when the author’s in control. A literary sprinter by nature—his first acts have an almost staccato rhythm, as the absurdities pile up—Goldfarb sags when he has to go the distance. It’s as if some sense of duty were compelling him to pump his plays up, to push them through second acts and beyond the bounds of their natural, modest lives. This is a drag not only for the audience but for his characters as well. Too often, the thirty-six-year-old Goldfarb confuses the theatre with the lecture hall. This didacticism makes his new play, “The Retributionists” (at Playwrights Horizons), feel both empty and bloated; and it ends up trivializing what would have been a riveting story, trapping the actors in a narrative that doesn’t encourage freedom, artistic or otherwise.

Variety D
(David Rooney) Derek McLane's stylish, minimal sets, Peter Kaczorowski's noir-tinged lighting and Tom Kitt's fretful interstitial music combine to evoke a 1940s movie-ish atmosphere, but Silverman's direction is entirely without tension. However, the writing is mostly at fault, with dialogue that's often too contemporary ("He kills me!") and sometimes risibly melodramatic ("I want to get you pregnant on this train. This train heading into Germany. This train whose final destination is an enormous gas chamber.") All credibility is shot by the time we get to the bakery scene, in which the tone lurches into comedy with Lusia Strus and Rebecca Henderson as German workers who appear to have wandered in from a "Laverne and Shirley" rerun. But even without such head-scratching moments, this unconvincing play makes it hard to buy any of these phony characters as the impassioned would-be avengers of an attempted genocide.

Associated Press D-
(Michael Kuchwara) The dramatics are clunky — whether they are dealing with the personal lives of these four main characters or their convoluted plans to poison those German soldiers. Chronologically, the play is jagged, jumping around in time (including flashbacks) to give theatergoers a sense of what brought these conspirators to these plot. Director Leigh Silverman, aided by Tom Kitt's ominous music, keeps things at a full boil but it's an awkward kind of agitation. Tension is all. It makes for exhausting, unsatisfying theater.

The New York Times D-
(Charles Isherwood) Mr. Goldfarb seems to sense that this kernel of historical material will not suffice for a stageworthy evening. To supplement the story of the killer bread he supplies two overlapping romantic triangles. Unfortunately even this extra dose of yeast does not do much to improve the dramatic recipe of “The Retributionists.” As both a historical inquiry into the ethics of the “eye for an eye” brand of justice and a romantic melodrama, the play is a boring bust... formulaic soap opera dialogue fills far too much of Mr. Goldfarb’s play, which has been directed with minimal fuss but little apparent conviction by Leigh Silverman. “I can’t get you out of my system, Anika,” Jascha says. “I still love you.” In between the romantic tussling the characters do manage to engage in a few debates about the morality of Dov’s murderous plan. But these do not plumb any great philosophical depths and are quickly dispatched, so the heavy-breathing exchanges about who really loves whom can continue.

On Off Broadway F+
(Matt Windman) Unfortunately, Goldfarb's spends so much time dissecting the emotional love triangle among the characters that he turns what could have been an exciting, philosophic thriller into a dragging, overly complicated soap opera. The flow of the action is also interrupted by a flashback at the top of Act Two and his very awkward use of language. Director Leigh Silverman made matters worse by staging the play so slowly and using too many pauses. As a result, the production lacks the necessary momentum to carry the plot forward convincingly. Her very young cast displays a fiery amount of passion and raw sexuality, but their performances remain more melodramatic than truly convincing.

New York Post F-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Levieva, in particular, is downright unbelievable as the cunning, headstrong Anika. (She's much better in contemporary roles, as those who caught her in "Adventureland" can attest.) Granted, Anika is saddled with wince-inducing lines. "The world continues to disappoint me, Jascha," she moans. "The world continues to be unfair." This twaddle would defeat Meryl Streep, and Levieva, sounding like a petulant emo kid with posters of Theodor Herzl in her bedroom, doesn't stand a chance.

The Daily News F-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) In the press notes, the play is called "a romantic thriller." But between a B-movie script by Daniel Goldfarb ("Modern Orthodox"), tone-deaf direction by Leigh Silverman and uniformly overheated performances, it has all the tension and believability of Broadway's spy spoof "The 39 Steps." That comparison isn't made just willy-nilly. The shows echo each other in a variety of ways - the espionage plots, a scheming femme fatale, a scene on a speeding train, spooky music (Tom Kitt handles the chore here), right down to a secret agent with missing fingers.

Talkin' Broadway B+ 11; CurtainUp B+ 11; TheaterMania B- 9; TONY C- 6; Lighting & Sound America C- 6; Village Voice D+ 5; The New Yorker D 4; Variety D 4; AP D- 3; The New York Times D- 3; On Off Broadway F+ 2; New York Post F- 0; The Daily News F- 0; TOTAL: 64/13 = 4.92 (D+)

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Coraline

GRADE: B-

By David Greenspan and Stephin Merritt, based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman. Directed by Leigh Silverman. MCC at the Lucille Lortel. (CLOSED)

While this adventurous Off-Broadway musicalization of Neil Gaiman's dark fairy tale has some full-throated partisans who find it an imagination-stirring romp, most reviews are decidedly mixed on the production's seam-showing, low-tech approach. Many praise Jayne Houdyshell's unlikely turn as the show's 9-year-old heroine and librettist David Greenspan's campy take on the villainous Other Mother, but Stephin Merritt's tinkly piano score gets mostly low marks for melody and variety, and both Greenspan's book and Leigh Silverman's direction get dinged for inconsistency and cutesy knowingness. Even many who are up for the ride and see much to admire in it complain of encroaching monotony.

Village Voice A+
(Michael Feingold) The big, glossy, efficiently tidy musicals often seen uptown, with nary a hair out of place, aren't an eighth as fresh or as much fun as Coraline...An obstinate, adorable, wayward brat of a musical, Coraline is scruffiness personified. And it's the quintessence of fresh—a musical with a score, by a noted rock musician, that's squarely in the musical-theater tradition and manages to pull off the magical double feat of never sounding either like just another piece of musical theater or like another recycled rock album trying to find its place on the stage. Coraline, gratifyingly, never sounds like anything but itself, from the ear-tickling overture, plinked at you by a phalanx of toy pianos as they creep out of the shadows, to the goofball finale, its moral warbled and tootled by the cast as they impersonate a marching band of trained circus mice. Scruffy never had it so good...Leigh Silverman's production not only enhances the work but fulfills it thematically.

Variety A
(David Rooney) Hand-tooled, proudly low-tech and endearingly mad...Whether or not the musical theater crowd warms to this wildly unconventional piece, it succeeds fully in harnessing the essence of three distinctive talents. It has Gaiman's magical blend of old-fashioned storytelling, modern fantasy, tight plotting and sly humor. It furthers the fascination with theatrical illusion that runs through Greenspan's work. And the voice of Merritt's music as frontman for bands including the Magnetic Fields and the 6ths comes through loud and clear in the droll lyrics and atonal melodies...Leigh Silverman's production is a bizarre but devilishly funny pantomime, its presentational style recalling John Doyle's stagings of "Sweeney Todd" and "Road Show." Design elements of the latter are echoed in Christine Jones' marvelous bric-a-brac-choked set, with the mountain of suitcases here replaced by a jumble of pianos and doors, doused in Ben Stanton's eerie lights...Even when it borders on the precious, the show is mesmerizing and original.

Backstage A
(Adam R. Perlman) A polished work of theater that feels marvelously like a bit of child's play. The production, presented by MCC Theater, hasn't been lavished with expensive special effects but with that special brand of make-believe that can turn a dreary afternoon magical...Age, gender, and race are like the bricked-up door in Coraline's flat—no obstacle for an imaginative young girl. Like her, you embrace the players and their game. The story they enact—a ghoulish tale of faded thespians, childless parents, and parentless children—seems ripe for musical treatment...Merritt's songs are like the spontaneous ditties you might have made up in your childhood backyard: singsongy, lilting, and sometimes taking unexpected turns...The stakes can feel a bit lightweight if you step back, but there are usually more than enough theatrical pleasures to keep you firmly invested in the present...Adults will find much to love in this child's entertainment, and, unlike in most overblown efforts, they'll be responding to the same things their kids do. There are no winking double-entendres, no references lobbed over the kids' heads. The joy of this family entertainment is seeing a superb group of theater artists exercising their imagination—and getting you to do the same.

The New York Times B
(Ben Brantley) Droll, dry and very cerebral...Less like a full-bodied show than the idea of one. It’s an intricately articulated skeleton to which flesh only occasionally adheres...A grown-up exercise in story theater that asks its audience to take a childlike leap of faith into fantasy. But the invitation is couched with such self-conscious craftsmanship that you wind up frozen in admiration of its elegance and inventiveness instead of taking that necessary step into make-believe. Though steeped in off-kilter charm, Coraline is too cool to be truly seductive...For me the most completely drawn character is a cat. Portrayed by Mr. Fleisher, who isn’t remotely feline-looking, this yawning, stretching Cat...has all the compelling self-containment and capriciousness of his species.

Theatermania B
(Dan Balcazo) Stephin Merritt's charming score to the new musical Coraline, presented by MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel, is played largely on toy piano. That's just one of many bold choices in this adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel, featuring a book by David Greenspan and stylish direction by Leigh Silverman. While not every choice works, enough of them do to make the show a memorable and worthwhile experience...Christine Jones' set calls to mind a cluttered backstage, and indeed the production emphasizes its reliance on stage conventions...Greenspan's book is quite faithful to Gaiman's plot, but occasionally gets too bogged down in expository narration...It's easier to suspend your disbelief about some details more than others. The gender-bending done by Jue and Greenspan are easy enough to buy into -- particularly as both actors have such an overwhelming stage presence, and play their parts with panache...However, it's much more difficult to accept the central conceit that veteran actress Houdyshell is a small little girl. She pushes too hard, particularly towards the beginning of the piece, indicating her girlishness in too forced a fashion.

The Daily News B-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Offbeat and partially intriguing...Greenspan's story faithfully follows Neil Gaiman's best-selling novel and has written himself the juiciest role as the sinister Other Mother who terrorizes Coraline. Her/his defeat is a hoot, if not a yodel. Merritt, of the Magnetic Fields, is known for his quirky style and has come up with clever lyrics and an interesting plinkety-plinking piano score (including a toy spinet) that fits the kooky, spooky story...For all its virtues, the MCC presentation has issues. It's naggingly repetitive and, at 90 minutes, long outstays its welcome. This Coraline is wise, brave and tricky, yes. By the end, though, it's become trying.

The Wall Street Journal B-
(Terry Teachout) Previews generated so much buzz that the show’s limited run has already been extended for two weeks. Whether the musical version has any future beyond its current run is another matter. I think it does—but only if future productions slice away the obscuring coyness that keeps this exceptionally promising show from living up to its full potential...Stephin Merritt...has written a self-assured score that is easily the best thing about the show...David Greenspan’s book is for the most part equally effective, a few overcompressed transitional passages notwithstanding...So far, so good—so what’s wrong? The biggest problem with “Coraline” is that the title role is being played not by a girl but by a 56-year-old woman, Jayne Houdyshell, a talented actress whose performance here is inexplicably, exasperatingly twee...I had so much difficulty with the way “Coraline” was performed that I’m not absolutely sure how good the show really is. Even so, I think it more than likely that it will be taken up by regional theaters looking for a small-scale children’s musical that appeals no less strongly to adults, and I offer two pieces of advice to the directors of these companies: (1) Cast a child as Coraline; (2) cut back sharply on the archness.

Bergen Record B-
(Robert Feldberg) Fascinating in its attempt to find a theatrical equivalent to the imaginative experience of reading the story...The songs, written by Stephin Merritt, are small and strange and often quite clever. They complement a book by David Greenspan that sticks closely to Gaiman’s account of the adventures of Coraline, a young English girl who passes through a corridor in her apartment to an evil parallel universe, and must struggle to return to her real parents. The story, full of psychological excursions into the meanings of home, family, independence and need, will reverberate with children of all ages. Most magically, there’s the remarkable portrayal of Coraline by Jayne Houdyshell, a plump actress in her 50s. From the moment she first appears, we unquestioningly accept Houdyshell as a young English girl..Coraline, however, doesn’t sustain its early promise. Alongside some murky storytelling, whimsy creeps in and becomes the tiresome monster that takes over the show. There’s also the feeling that a self-conscious devotion to process becomes more important than communicating with the audience.

The Hollywood Reporter B-
(Frank Scheck) Although this version of Coraline is unlikely to have the widespread appeal of the recent hit 3-D animated film, those with a taste for the decidedly offbeat could well turn it into a theatrical cult hit...Book writer David Greenspan's adaptation is choppy and disjointed, failing to compellingly capture the source material's narrative tension and making the evening feel much longer than the 100-minute running time. Merritt's score is equally problematic. Although the musical numbers demonstrate the prolific composer's ability to craft endless catchy melodies, many of the brief songs fail to cohere. And the fact that they're played mainly on such instruments as toy piano and "prepared" piano tend to give them a monotonous sameness...Director Leigh Silverman has staged the proceedings in an imaginatively low-tech fashion, with Christine Jones' abstract set design consisting of numerous pianos of different shapes and sizes, several doors and various pieces of antique bric-a-brac. The performers do well by their multiple roles, and Houdyshell is utterly winning as the vulnerable Coraline. For all the musical's inventiveness, however, audience members might ultimately relate all too well to the title character's growing unease with her bizarre surroundings.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) Lights up the Lucille Lortel Theatre with invention but, like its heroine, proves that not all adventures have entirely happy endings...Rather than writing a spiritless point-for-point adaptation like those so frequently seen on Broadway these days, or radically rethinking the style or locale for easier assimilation on these shores...Greenspan and director Leigh Silverman have mined the novel for the quirky and unpredictable spirit that so artfully captures imagination, elation, and terror as only children can experience them...Each of the seven performers in the production's nonstop cavalcade of an acting troupe are terrific...The only thing Coraline lacks - and it's unfortunately a biggie - is musical necessity...It's not just that the songs give you nothing to take away, it's that they take in nothing to give you...Coraline obviously isn't trying to be a conventional musical - and how could it ever be one? - but it still has the obligation to be listenable rather than merely bearable.

New York C+
(Stephanie Zacharek) The set, by Christine Jones, is a pleasing jumble of steampunky Victoriana, stocked with a selection of tired old pianos of all sizes and colors, which make a smart visual counterpart to Merritt’s eerie, plinky prepared-piano melodies...But the show’s modest, clever touches work only part of the time. Elsewhere, they have the DIY quality of a crude Christmas pantomime, winsome only to a point. As Coraline, Jayne Houdyshell (a 2006 Tony Award nominee for her role in Well) relies too much on that shoulder-shrugging, toe-stubbing “I don’t wanna grow up” affectation adopted by adults when they’re trying to act like little kids. Greenspan himself appears as Coraline’s “other” mother, flouncing about like a nightmare June Cleaver whose hair is inexplicbly done up in dreadlocks bedecked with tinsel. Campy touches like that only dilute the material’s delectably creepy undertones, an instance of fanciful vision giving way to button-eyed shortsightedness.

Time Out NY C+
(Adam Feldman) Given the dim-wittedness of so many modern musicals, it may seem churlish to find fault with this one for overthinking itself. But watching Coraline is a frustrating experience, precisely because a good deal of it is quite wonderful. Faithfully adapted by David Greenspan from Neil Gaiman’s delightful book, the show has a witty, elegantly evocative score by Stephin Merritt...Christine Jones’s set has an appealing antique junkiness, and much of the stage imagery is memorable. But Silverman can’t leave quirky enough alone. Treated more or less straight—as the National Theatre of Scotland did in its superb adaptation of Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls—this might have been an oddball triumph. Here, however, it’s hobbled by a deliberately poor choice of actors, almost across the board, to suit a fussy-cute conception of the material.

Just Shows To Go You C+
(Patrick Lee) You think of words like “uncompromising” and “integrity” as you watch Stephen Merritt’s musical of the enormously popular children’s tale. The score’s strange, angular melodies as primarily played on a single tinkling keyboard, the casting of mature Jane Houdyshell as the adventure-seeking nine year old heroine, the avoidance of anything that smacks of gratuitous crowd-pleasing: a unique artistic vision has been rigorously followed and realized. But it’s hard to feel anything besides detached appreciation for the show’s uniqueness: despite a uniformly wonderful cast and many isolated performance moments that tempt the imagination, the production is curiously remote and short on the inventive theatricality that would showcase the very special material to advantage.

CurtainUp C+
(Simon Saltzman) As the titular character, the courageous Houdyshell is not only totally believable in a role significantly far from her own age but also delightful...She is the heart and soul of a musical that unfortunately is constructed around too many incredulously conceived and performed characters...If [Silverman] has purposely blurred the boundary that separates a dream from reality, she has succeeded. Where her direction falters is in not keeping a tighter rein on the essential group of supporting actors who unfortunately drift in their portrayals between the amateurish and the acquiescent...There is evidence that Greenspan has labored rigorously to grace the short novel (first published in 2002) with a conspicuously audacious sense of theatricality. Much of it, however, falls as flat as the singing, with Houdyshell the notable exception...Set Designer Christine Jones and lighting designer Ben Stanton have done a super job creating a basic environment of musty fixtures and relics that transposes itself from the mundane to the mysterious and foreboding with a minimum of ado and fuss...In considering Merritt's score, in which the soured notes follow one another gainfully and mercifully without bumping into each other, there is occasionally something to admire in the lyrics.

AM New York C+
(Matt Windman) Rather than turn “Coraline” into a conventional children’s musical, rock singer-songwriter Stephen Merritt and downtown playwright-performer David Greenspan have opted for a decidedly off-kilter, otherworldly and openly theatrical production that resembles John Doyle’s creepy actor-musician revival of “Sweeney Todd” more than perhaps “Shrek"...While the score itself is not enjoyable and tends to slow down the story rather than build upon it, it at least manages to be unique...Houdyshell, who is a wonderful actress, captures Coraline’s plucky youthful spirit, but it makes no sense for the actress playing Coraline to be as big as everyone else. Meanwhile, Greenspan is awkward and unthreatening as Coraline’s nemesis. The rest of the small ensemble – which plays multiple roles including mice and ghosts – keeps the production grounded in a spirit of theatrical ingenuity. Regardless of whether they agree with its artistic choices, fans of the story will probably get a kick out of this unconventional musical treatment.

Entertainment Weekly C
(Jeremy Medina) Something got lost in translation: The characters and plot might be the same, but the tone is inconsistent and off. Thanks to the sharp but distinctly exaggerated performances — particularly Greenspan as the Other Mother, whose bizarre affectations are grandiosely over-the-top — this version has much more humor. The humor lends the production its own identity, but it does not capture the spirit of Gaiman's work...The serviceable music by Stephin Merritt, best known as the frontman for avant-garde indie rock group The Magnetic Fields, is well integrated into the story, but ultimately lacks punch. The lone element that's truly memorable is the haunting toy piano score used throughout. As the play advances toward its anti-climactic finale, the songs are tossed aside in favor of far too much exposition. Much is told, and too little is shown. For a story that celebrates imagination, that's a serious shortcoming.

New York Post D+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) The single greatest idea in Coraline was to cast middle-age Jayne Houdyshell in the title role, a 9-year-old girl...Her characterization of a bold, resourceful little heroine is spot-on...Aside from that coup, however, Coraline is surprisingly unimaginative. With David Greenspan penning the book and the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt in charge of the score, this musical had an intriguing creative team. That the show turns out so flat and timid is a crushing letdown...Gaiman's droll, matter-of-fact creepiness is completely lost in this diffident translation. Despite occasionally clever rhyming schemes, Merritt's songs aren't all that interesting melodically, a problem compounded by their being played exclusively (by Phyllis Chen) on various pianos. This burdens the tunes with a monochromatic sonic palette they just aren't strong enough to overcome. Director Leigh Silverman only makes things worse. It boggles the mind that such a project would be entrusted to someone with zero visual sense. Her staging of the various worlds is completely confusing, and she can't even render the novel's best, most macabre invention (the Other denizens have buttons for eyes). Silverman also shows little control over the supporting cast, which flails in a variety of roles.

VV A+ 14; Variety A 13; Backstage A 13; The New York Times B 10; Theatermania B 10; The Daily News B- 9; WSJ B- 9; Bergen Record B- 9; The Hollywood Reporter B- 9; Talkin' Broadway B- 9; New York C+ 8; TONY C+ 8; JSTGY C+ 8; CurtainUp C+ 8; AM New York C+ 8; Entertainment Weekly C 7; New York Post D+ 5; TOTAL: 157 / 17 = 9.24 (B-)

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