Off-Broadway Musical Shout! is Heard by Critics

Previously seen in New York at the cabaret spot the Duplex, Shout! The Mod Musical has become legit with a run at the Julia Miles Theatre that opened on July 27. Created by Philip George and David Lowenstein, the show features five performers identified only be the color of their outfits singing such classic tunes as "Downtown," "To Sir With Love," "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," "Don't Sleep in the Subway" and many more. Did critics want to shout about how great the piece was?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

David Barbour in his Broadway.com Review: "Nobody onboard this rickety revue seems to have the faintest idea of what made these songs the soundtrack of a generation... As performed live by a quintet of professional but not-very-distinguished musical theatre types backed up by a tiny, three-man combo, the songs are stripped of the energy and fizz that made them so memorable. Shout! would have been a vastly more entertaining evening if it had occurred to anyone involved to treat these songs with the care and respect that they deserve... My advice is to pack the whole thing up and cart it off to Atlantic City, where, after a couple of good-sized martinis, it might not seem such a bad idea, after all."

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times: "If the musical performances were more compelling, it might be possible to overlook the cringy humor, Mr. Lowenstein's robotically retro choreography and the threadbare cultural references to Twiggy and pot and the Pill. But the orchestrations by Bradley Vieth are thin and bland the onstage band consists of two keyboardists and a drummer, and the performers' strong but undistinctive voices are naturally unable to compete with cherished memories of the originals."

Frank Scheck of The New York Post: "Little about the singing or the arrangements is infused with any freshness, and Lowenstein's choreography, incorporating a number of '60s-era dance steps, isn't much better. As for the framework, which purports to track the women's passage into adult maturity, well, to call it slight is an understatement. Typical of its broadness is a segment where the women mime smoking pot, resulting in behavior that would have seemed over-the-top in Reefer Madness. Fortunately, we get to look at Philip Heckman's outrageous costumes beautifully filled out by the performers and David Gallo's psychedelic, flower-power set design. Without them, Shout! would register with little more than a whimper."

Joe Dziemianowicz of The New York Daily News: "No amount of frugging, Mary Quant-ish miniskirts or plus-size plastic petals on the walls obscures what you're left with—a cumulative blur of song after song what is this, another London blitz?. While the cast works hard, no one hue really pops from the pack. What Shout! does do is leave you wishin' and hopin' for the originals."

Marilyn Stasio of Variety: "Shout! is an apt title for this jukebox revue, conveying as it does the ear-splitting, mind-numbing and otherwise fatiguing production style of what might have been a cute little show about the go-go spirit that swept through London in the swinging '60s. Garish musical slaps a hard-gloss finish onto every production element, from the giant lacquered flowers popping out from the set to the rocket-blast amplification of the over-miked voices. For all its shouting, show has a teeny-tiny musical soul, drawing on lightweight pop tunes that would be drowned out in a flash by one Beatles song."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "Linking the musical numbers are lame dialogue and some rather bad jokes… Fortunately, the conversational part of the 90-minute evening is kept to a minimum… All the women work very hard. Erin Crosby, she's the one in yellow, has the gutsiest voice… The costumes by Philip Heckman are as effective as the songs in recalling the era when fashion priestess Mary Quant ruled. And designer David Gallo's red, shag-covered carpeting and setting, featuring colorful puffy plastic designs, would have looked right at home on that late '60s TV series Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. But Shout! is an odd, high-decibel piece of nostalgia with superficial serious intentions lightly sprinkled into the entertainment. It's not just the minis that come up short."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "Lest we are lulled into believing that Jersey Boys made the world safe for the jukebox musical, here comes Shout! The Mod Musical. As unappealing as its cringe of a title and far more annoying, the '60s Brit-girl pop revue that opened last night at the Julia Miles Theatre is conceptually confused, culturally bogus and politically bubble-headed."