Urban Cowboy
particularly fond of screen-to-stage adaptations For every acclaimed Hairspray, there are a hundred critical duds like Footloose and Saturday Night Fever. So, what did they think this time around?
Here is a sampling of what the critics had to say:
Ken Mandelbaum in his Broadway.com Review: “The show begins on an inappropriate note of upbeat cheeriness. Thereafter, the scenes range from the baldly expository to the blunt, with themes like what it means to be a real cowboy hammered home endlessly. The second act follows the screenplay more closely, but it's too late to make us care about anything that's happening in the squirm-inducing proceedings… One has to give Urban Cowboy credit for managing to open. But this dismal mistake of a show hardly seems worth all the trouble.”
Ben Brantley of The New York Times: “Broadway disaster cultists may be disappointed to learn that Urban Cowboy, directed with a hand of lead by Lonny Price, does not eclipse the now departed Dance of the Vampires as the season's worst musical. Featuring a rote book by Aaron Latham and Phillip Oesterman and a patchwork of new and recycled country-and-western songs, Urban Cowboy doesn't have the imagination to be so extravagantly bad. Instead, it exudes the mechanical air of a show dutifully assembled according to a low and specific assessment of audience expectations. The jokes are sub-sitcom. The songs are mostly delivered in a shiny, anonymous twang that might be heard in a Texas-themed pavilion in Disney World. And the young, bottom-twitching ensemble members, attractive in a Baywatch sort of way, have little in the way of personalities to call their own.”
Clive Barnes of The New York Post: “No one can accuse the new musical Urban Cowboy, which rode into town last night at the Broadhurst Theatre, of having an original story to tell. But the musical is certainly better than you might have feared, and in most ways is surprisingly enjoyable. Choreographer Melinda Roy is probably the unluckiest woman on Broadway. In any normal year, this newcomer's inventively boisterous and bouncy choreography would have carried off the Tony Award on a mustang—but this is the Year of Tharp, and Twyla Tharp's musical Movin' Out very properly has a lock on that particular item. Cavenaugh makes a splendid Bud, whose charm is as impressive as his abs—and he can sing, too—while Colella is a zippy, feminist and sexy Sissy. Other very good showings come from Chait as the glowering, confident bad guy; Stevens as the slinky rich girl, and a dazzling duo, Leo Burmester and Sally Mayes, as cute as well-worn buttons as Bud's uncle and aunt. This ain't the greatest show Broadway has ever seen, but it's worth your time.”
Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: “The thinking must've been that the hinterlands would like it. The mediocre musical versions of Footloose and Saturday Night Fever have apparently cleaned up on the road. The book, by Aaron Latham, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Phillip Oesterman, never makes the characters more than types. What it lacks in depth, it makes up for in coarseness. Saddled with a thin score and a thinner book, the cast works hard, but to little avail. Newcomers Matt Cavenaugh and Jenn Colella are very appealing as Bud and Sissy. Sally Mayes and Leo Burmester are especially strong as Bud's tough aunt and uncle. Marcus Chait and Jodi Stevens are powerful as the pair who temporarily split the young couple, and Rozz Morehead is winning as the hostess at Gilley's. A team of topnotch dancers goes through Melinda Roy's cliched choreography with gusto…. Lonny Price has directed the show efficiently, but the whole thing is as mechanical as the bull.
Charles Isherwood of Variety: “You might have thought there was enough mechanical bull on Broadway already. Apparently you'd be wrong. The producers of Urban Cowboy have now put an actual one centerstage at the Broadhurst Theater, where it serves as an uncomfortably apt symbol for the musical itself, which expends a whole lot of energy but never seems to go anywhere. It's gonna be last call at this hoedown pretty darn quick.”
Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: “Durn and double dang. A lot of energy and considerable talent was spent on Urban Cowboy, the new country musical based on the John Travolta-Debra Winger movie in which boy gets girl, boy loses girl to mechanical bull and boy gets girl—again. Whether that energy and talent were used wisely is another thing. The production, which opened Thursday at the Broadhurst Theatre, has more grits than grit, an often simplistic and cartoonish Southern-fried sensibility that flattens the characters as well as a story that's already skimpy at best.”
Linda Winer of Newsday: “Clearly, lessons were not learned from the last misbegotten musical liaison with a John Travolta vehicle, Saturday Night Fever. Now we have Urban Cowboy: The Musical, which opened last night at the Broadhurst Theatre with more sexual energy from the mechanical bull than from the romance between Bud and Sissy. He's the lonesome cowboy who dreams of his own “little piece of dirt,” and she's the earthy Houston wild thing Debra Winger in the movie with a romantic streak as wide as, you know, the great outdoors. Bored yet? You bet. It is impossible to know what this adaptation of the 1980 film might have been if Aaron Latham's co-author, Phillip Oesterman, had not died before getting to direct their long-aborning project. But it's almost as hard to imagine that, given the schlocky story, the cornball dialogue and the ragtag collection of vintage and ersatz country-western songs, life at Gilley's roadhouse would have turned out appreciably better.”
