Sheridan Smith-led Opening Night musical divides the critics

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage

★★

“Smith battles gamely, singing well, but struggling to gain much purchase on the character. In some ways, her casting must have seemed like another piece of meta-theatre – Myrtle’s complaints about intrusion and fear of failure appear to mirror Smith’s own challenges. But she struggles to make a mark with the dislocations in script and character… It’s not the least engaging evening of musical theatre I’ve ever sat through, but it is one of the most baffling wastes of talent.”

Arifa Akbar, Guardian

★★★★

“John Cassavetes’ 1977 film about a Broadway star in crisis might seem a natural fit for a stage adaptation… To throw songs into the mix – composed by Rufus Wainwright in his first foray into musical theatre – and swap the glacial queenliness of Gena Rowlands, who played troubled superstar Myrtle in the film, for the insuppressibly likable Sheridan Smith, might have been a step too far… Yet here is an extravagantly original production, every bit as eccentric as the film but also its own alchemical creation, more vivacious in this musical incarnation.”

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out

★★★★

“There are no dance numbers, power ballads, lavish sets, or cute romantic storylines. By entering the West End, Opening Night is almost inevitably inviting an audience that will be confused by it. And yet: there’s a palpable warmth to it. Maybe it’s a musical, maybe it isn’t, but under all the avant-garde bells and whistles, it unquestionably has a heart – a buoyancy and belief in humanity that’s lacking in the original film.”

Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail

★★★★

“Thank God also for Rufus Wainwright’s music. True, it sometimes dwindles into semi-tonal burbling. But it also explodes with the singer-songwriter’s gift for doomed glory. A spectacular duet with Nicola Hughes as an exasperated writer character even brought to mind the brassy swagger of All That Jazz, the 1979 film starring Roy Scheider. More than anything though, it’s thanks to the emotional wattage of Smith’s voice that the show really soars. To quote the lyrics of one of her early numbers, she makes ‘magic out of tragic’.”

Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph

★★

“How one envies those outside, though, as the evening lurches from one so-so number to the next, Wainwright’s score stylistically all over the place and many lyrics lacking rhyme or reason. A few songs, above all the ‘Strike Up the Band’ opener, ‘Magic’, and rousing finale ‘Ready for Battle’, properly showcase his gifts and display the star at her lung-busting best. As for the supporting cast, whether they’re playing exasperated director, interfering producer, slighted author, vexed leading man or twitchy teen revenant, they give it their all.”

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times

★★

“As a story about the blurring of public and private worlds and the fragility of mental wellbeing, it now has wider resonance in an age where social media amplifies those issues. Van Hove accordingly blurs the edges, delivering it as a multi-layered, intricately interwoven collage of live-action, film footage and documentary video… It’s a show that suggests the overwhelming, quite terrifying nature of breakdown and the need for connection — and yet, strangely, it fails to connect, emotionally.”

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard

★

“This dismally muddled, self-important, furtively misogynist musical about an actress going to pieces squanders the talents of everyone involved, even breaking Sheridan Smith’s unique ability to connect with an audience… Wainwright contributes his first-ever musical score, a hodgepodge of genre pastiche and schoolboy rhyme so lame I hope it will also be his last… After disastrous previews, some changes have apparently been made, including the removal of a prolonged vacuuming scene (yes, really). But the show remains a hot mess, unsalvageable.”

Fiona Mountford, iNews

★

“Oh dear. Just occasionally a new West End show is so bewilderingly terrible that one can only gasp in quiet amazement at the fact that it has made it before paying audiences in the first place. A customarily effervescent and full-hearted performance from leading lady Sheridan Smith can do nothing to salvage this mess, through which a nasty vein of misogyny pumps insistently, and sections of which are devoid of even basic narrative sense.”