Kander, Ebb and Miranda musical ”New York, New York” opens on Broadway – here’s what our critic thinks

Boasting a creative team that most producers would bet their bottom dollars on, with Susan Stroman (The Scottsboro Boys, The Producers) serving as both director and choreographer for a new musical that features a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago) and new songs by Kander with lyrics by one Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In the Heights), how could it possibly misfire?

According to TheaterMania critic Kenji Fujishima, however, an “overstuffed misfire” it is.

Writers David Thompson and Sharon Washington have adapted the 1977 Martin Scorsese film of the same name (itself a box office failure which garnered mixed reviews despite a show-stopping turn by Liza Minnelli and a memorable performance by Robert De Niro) for the stage. They have reconceived the source material with “a panoramic approach” in the form of “a love letter to the cultural melting pot that is New York City”.

The result, however, is that the musical is layered with “one-dimensional supporting characters” who are “defined by their race and social class,” according to Fujishima.

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Alongside our two principals who forge a troubled relationship – Jimmy Doyle (played by Colton Ryan in an “embarrassingly mannered performance”) and Francine Evans (Anna Uzele, confirming “the talent she showed as Catherine Parr in Six“) – supporting characters get lost in the shuffle and disappear from the narrative for overlong stretches of time. These include a Black Army vet named Jesse Webb (John Clay III), who dreams of success as a trumpeter, a Polish teen Alex Mann (Oliver Prose), who longs to improve his violin skills, and a Cuban immigrant drummer called Mateo Diaz (Angel Sigala), who yearns to bring the music of his home country to the US, despite the struggles of a dead-end line-cook job and an abusive father.

Although the musical is set in 1946 and ’47, it feels “ahistorical, positing a culturally inclusive milieu that must have been less overtly utopian than this show suggests,” says Fujishima.