I had a peculiar experience recently. I watched a WNET/Channel 13 rebroadcast of the stage adaptation of Irving Berlin’s film musical Holiday Inn with a new book by Gordon Greenberg (b. 1969; revisions of Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s Working and Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris) and Chad Hodge (b. 1977; The Darkest Minds [film], Runaway and Good Behavior [both TV series]) as a matrix for the score by Berlin (1888-1989). It aired on the Public Broadcasting System’s Great Performances on Friday evening, 30 November, and then about a week later, Turner Classic Movies aired the original 1942 Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire film on Saturday evening, 8 December. I didn’t think all that much of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s stage adaptation and I thought I saw why while I was watching, but seeing the movie so soon afterwards confirmed it for me. (By the way, the TCM host, Ben Mankiewicz, said that Berlin first intended Holiday Inn to be a stage show, but he couldn’t find a producer. IMDb noted the same thing.)
For the record, the film of Holiday Inn was directed by Mark Sandrich (1900-45; The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat), who also produced the movie, for Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was written by Claude Binyon (1995-78)
from an adaptation by playwright Elmer Rice (1892-1967; The Adding Machine, Street
Scene [both stage plays]) from Berlin’s original idea. The motion picture was filmed in black and
white (even though popular and successful color films had been produced since
1939: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz); the spin-off, White Christmas, was filmed in
Technicolor in 1954. (Computer-colored
versions of Holiday Inn are
available, but TCM doesn’t air edited or altered films.) The film,
which runs one hour and 40 minutes, was released on 4 August 1942.
Holiday Inn was number eight on the 1942 list of
top-grossing films. Berlin was nominated
for the 1943 Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story, and musical
director Robert Emmett Dolan was nominated for the Best Music, Scoring of a
Musical Picture Oscar. Berlin won the Best
Music, Original Song award for “White Christmas.” (No one, including Berlin, thought very
highly of “White Christmas,” but it became the number one-selling song ever
recorded until 1997—55 years—when Elton John’s revised version of “Candle in
the Wind” for Princess Diana’s death overtook it. “White Christmas” is
still number two.)
The Greenberg-Hodge Holiday
Inn stage adaptation began at the 200-seat Goodspeed Opera House in East
Haddam, Connecticut, in 2014 with co-librettist Greenberg directing (Guys And Dolls in West End, Working in
Chicago and Off-Broadway). In 2015,
still under Greenberg’s direction, the play opened with a substantially new
cast at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre (The Muny), an outdoor
amphitheater that seats 11,000 patrons.
Roundabout staged the Broadway début of Holiday Inn at Studio 54 (capacity, about 1006), the former Theatre
District night club, opening the production with the cast that appeared in the Great Performances broadcast on 6
October 2016; it ran for 117 regular performances and 38 previews, closing on
15 January 2017. Greenberg directed once
more, and Dennis Jones, the choreographer, was nominated for both the 2017 Tony
and Drama Desk Awards. (The movie was
filmed in 1941 and 1942, so it’s safe to assume that it’s set in and around
those years, right when the U.S. was entering World War II; the Pearl Harbor
attack occurred during the filming. The
play is set in 1946, the year after the war ended.) The live stage performance of Holiday Inn ran two hours and 15 minutes
with an intermission (which was cut for the TV broadcast, which consequently
ran two hours).
Roundabout live-streamed the performance of 14 January
2017 on BroadwayHD.com and it was
recorded. PBS originally aired the
performance on Great Performances on
25 November 2017 in New York City. The
television production was directed for the cameras by David Horn.
The movie is notoriously slim on plot. It’s really
an excuse—a pretty good one, to be sure—to film some Irving Berlin songs and
showcase Crosby’s singing and Astaire’s dancing. If it had been a stage
production it would have been a Berlin revue.
Crooner Jim Hardy (Crosby) and hoofer Ted Hanover (Astaire) have been cabaret
partners for many years but when Jim announces that he and his girlfriend, dancer
Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale), the third member of their act, are going to leave
show business, get married, and live on a farm he’s just bought in Connecticut,
Ted counters that he and Lila are going out on their own as a duo. Jim decides the time has come to retire and
moves to his farmhouse and tries to settle into the country life. He soon realizes that he’s not cut out to be a
farmer and sees an opportunity to do something special. He decides to open his farmhouse to the public
as an inn with New York-quality entertainment, but only on major holidays. Each holiday will have its own, elaborate, original
production number. (It seems that the
farmhouse has an entrance hall as wide and deep as the stage at Radio City! And as many empty rooms as . . . well, a
vacant Holiday Inn.) By happenstance, he
meets Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds), a stage-struck wannabe singer and dancer
and she joins him at Holiday Inn as a member of his troupe. Things go well until Ted shows up after Lila
has left him for a millionaire, and he sets his sights on Linda as his new
partner. Ted’s manager tells him of a
potential offer from Hollywood—if he can seal the deal with Linda to join
him. The movie’s so well-known that most
people know the ending, but just in case, I won’t let that kitty out of the
poke.
The problem with the stage version is that, while it
still has the Berlin score (augmented with some additional Berlin tunes from
other sources; there are now 20 songs, plus reprises and a finale), the
Roundabout didn’t have anyone matching the star quality of a Crosby (1903-77) and
an Astaire (1899-1987). (I don’t know who they could have cast—there are
plenty of great male singers to choose from but I can’t think of a dancer of a
Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly stature.) The performers Roundabout cast—Bryce
Pinkham (b. 1982; A Gentleman’s Guide to
Love and Murder; Tony Award nominee;
see my Rick On Theater report, posted on 16 October 2014) as
Jim Hardy, the Crosby role, and Corbin Bleu (b. 1989; In the Heights, Godspell;
competed on Dancing with the Stars) as
Ted Hanover, the Astaire part—were both competent, even good, musical actors,
but not stars—which is what drove the movie (along with Berlin’s songs, which
were then mostly new and he was at the top of the heap in ‘42—no longer a
consideration in 2016).
The clearest example of this is the play’s and the movie’s
opening song, a cabaret number meant to show off Bing’s crooning and Fred’s
hoofing (while introducing the romantic triangle that’s a Leitmotif for
the “plot”). “I’ll Capture Your Heart” (or “I’ll Capture Your Heart Singing,”
as it’s titled in the movie) is a musical duel between the singer Jim and the
dancer Ted for the love of Lila. (Both of the women in the movie, Dale, 1917-94,
as Lila and Reynolds, 1917-97, as Linda Mason—dubbed by Martha Mears—were
virtual unknowns. The producers nixed the idea of casting Ginger
Rogers and Rita Hayworth because
they didn’t want two more astronomical salaries on top of Crosby’s and Astaire’s.
For that reason, the problem with the casting of the play is confined to the
men. The leading ladies on the stage
were Megan Sikora as Lila and Lora Lee Gayer as Linda.) The song, “I’ll
Capture Your Heart,” isn’t that great—but the song-and-dance duel makes it work.
On stage, neither Pinkham nor Bleu was dazzling enough to animate the number—or
the characters.
With a middling plot (Greenberg and Hodge made a few
small changes, but nothing substantial), that leaves the Berlin score as the
prop to hold the show up. The original songs, however, were all (there
were 14 of them) production numbers—there are no character songs (with one possible
exception) and no narrative/plot songs in the whole score. Jim sings “White
Christmas” sitting at the piano for Linda, with whom he’s falling in love, but
he wrote it “years ago” as a potential performance number “and stuck it in a
drawer.” Only the Valentine’s Day song, “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” (the
song everyone, including Berlin, expected to be the hit from the movie—not “White
Christmas”!) could be seen as a character number because Jim sings it as a love
song to the girl. But Cosby’s sitting at the piano with his back to
the stage and Astaire enters above him and whisks Linda into a Ginger
Rogers-ish lavish dance routine that ends with the two of them bursting through
a paper heart in the finale—turning the song into another production number.
Greenberg and Hodge dropped some of the holiday songs and
slipped in some other Berlin songs (“Blue Skies,” “Heat Wave”) to create some
musical character and plot moments, but they barely work. The result it a
wan musical (which has never been restaged here since 2016-17 even though it’s
essentially a Christmas season story that by rights ought to be a holiday
family show). Oddly, the adapters made two changes in the script, one of
which complicates a small bit of the movie’s logic. In the movie, the
character of Linda, the girl with whom Jim falls in love in Connecticut, is a would-be
singer-dancer. She gets the gig at Holiday Inn after meeting Jim at a
night club in New York where he’d gone to see his old partner, Ted, and his
earlier love interest, Lila. The Leitmotif I mentioned earlier is that
Jim falls in love with the female performer in their act, then Ted steals her
and whisks her off away. So Ted
sees Linda at the inn (Lila’s left him by now) and wants her as his new dancing
partner. When a potential Hollywood gig comes up, Linda’s tempted and
leaves Jim for Ted and the movies. Okay, it’s a cliché, but movie-Linda’s
wanted to be a performer since her character was introduced in the first couple
of scenes, so it’s moderately believable—at least for Holiday Inn.
In the stage version, Linda’s the daughter of the original
owner of the farm Jim buys in Connecticut She plays the piano a little,
but she’s not headed for a performing career until she starts doing Jim’s
holiday shows. She teaches fifth grade in
the local school. It strains the play’s already tenuous rationale for stage
play-Linda to be enticed to go off to Hollywood with Ted—whom she’s barely just
met—instead of staying home at the farm/inn she loves. (She shows up on
the day Jim moves in ostensibly to pick up some family mementoes left behind. It’s clear, though, that she really just
wants to meet the man who bought her home.)
You just have to overlook this logical glitch so that the plot can move
on!
(Ironically, the other change provided the play’s best performance—by
a 13-year-old actor playing precocious, 10-year-old Charlie Winslow, one of Linda’s pupils.
The role doesn’t exist in the film: he’s the son of the banker who holds the
mortgage on the farm and serves as the messenger between the bank and Jim—always
with dire news about notes being due and such.
Later there’s a lame joke about his being let go at the bank because of
child-labor laws. The kid actor, Morgan Gao, was a little too “professional
children’s school” slick, but he had more personality and energy than all the
grown-ups in the cast!)
The critical reception for the movie
was nearly universally effusive. The
following’s a sampling of reviews from across the country as the picture opened
in various cities. In Variety, Abel Green dubbed the movie “a
standout film” and added, “With those Berlin tunes, a strong story content and
Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire for the marquee its an undeniable box office
parlay, a winner all the way.” He
continued, “Loaded with a wealth of songs, it’s meaty, not too kaleidoscopic
and yet closely knit for . . . tiptop filmusical entertainment.” Green observed that “Mark Sandrich’s
production and direction are more than half of the success of the
picture.” The director has helmed Berlin’s
idea “with understanding and feeling . . . and consummate showmanship, verve
and tempo.”
The New York Times film reviewer, Theodore Strauss, labeling Holiday Inn a “light-heartedly patriotic
musical,” announced that “Mr. Berlin still has created several of the most
effortless melodies of the season—the sort that folks begin humming in the
middle of a conversation for days afterward.”
He added, “Mark Sandrich, director and producer, has taken the
inevitable melange of plot and production numbers and so deftly pulled them
together that one hardly knows where the story ends and a song begins.” Strauss asserted that all this success is “largely
due to the casual performances of Bing Crosby, who can . . . turn an ordinary
line into sly humor without seeming to try, and Fred Astaire, who still owns
perhaps the most sophisticated pair of toes in Christendom.” The Times
reviewer caviled that “Mainly ‘Holiday Inn’ is a series of musical episodes”
strung on the romantic triangles of Astaire, Crosby, Reynolds, and Dale. He concludes, “It is all very easy and
graceful; it never tries too hard to dazzle.”
Strauss concluded that "‘Holiday Inn’ offers a reason for celebration
not printed in red ink on the calendar.”
The New York Herald Tribune’s Howard Barnes called the film “a
tour-de-force” and observed, “It was first conceived as a stage revue and it
betrays that fact on more than one occasion.”
Barnes added, “Without the peculiar conventions of the theater, from
curtains to the physical presence of performers, the material has a tendency to
become episodic and repetitious.” He
affirmed, “The music is what gives ‘Holiday Inn’ a solid fabric of
entertainment. The treatment puts over a
musical show form which I thought was doomed to constant failure on the
screen.” It’s the score, asserted
Barnes, that “establish whatever loose continuity the show boasts,” observing,
“The wisps of plot are scarcely likely to keep you enthralled.” The Trib
reviewer felt:
Even the
adroit scenario which Claude Binyon has dreamed up to inter-relate a series of
musical numbers . . . has little sustaining dramatic interest. That wouldn’t have mattered behind
footlights. That it matters little in
this screen show is a tribute to fine craftsmanship in every department of the
production.
In a notice signed only “R. F. W.” (I
haven’t been able to identify the writer), the Wall Street Journal dubbed Holiday
Inn “a sure-fire hit” for which Berlin “has written a magnificent score.” The WSJ
reviewer added that Crosby and Astaire “make this new picture one of the year’s
finest entertainment treats.” The Journalist concluded, “All in all, this
is one of Hollywood’s finest offerings, and it may well deserve a place among
1942’s best.”
Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times characterized Holiday Inn as “an easy-going sort of
opus” and a “divertissement.” The L.A. Times reviewer went on, “Decidedly
on the up-beat is this ensemble of talents,” adding, “It can’t be said that ‘Holiday
Inn’ overdoes itself in the plot department”; the screenplay’s plot and
situations “may be tabulated as diverting enough,” while “[s]ongs and dancing
do the most to entertain.” Schallert
asserted, “Behavior of the characters is not above reproach,” caviling about
some of
Astaire’s and Crosby’s seemingly
unjustified actions, but continued that “if they’d been left out there wouldn’t
have been any plot at all.”
The uncredited review in the Christian Science Monitor called Holiday Inn “a carefree musical film”
and Berlin succeeded “partly because it is probably easier to write a tune
around a holiday than to write a whole story around several holidays.” The CSM
reviewer complained that “the dialogue cannot be described as sparkling” and
Berlin’s “tunes are pleasant without being particularly impressive.” She or he also found “this association of
Messrs. Crosby and Astaire seems less successful than the Crosby-Hope team [of
the comic Road pictures].”
In another review identified only with
initials, “M. L. A.” said in the Boston
Daily Globe when the movie finally arrived in Boston (in September), Crosby
and Astaire “fans are doing everything but tearing up the seats in their
enthusiasm.” The reviewer declared,
“There have been better musical pictures, there have been far better dramatic
plots, but there has seldom been a picture which seemed to hit public taste
more accurately.” The Globe writer pointed out that the film
“is pure and undiluted entertainment. It
requires no mental processes for its enjoyment.” He or she affirmed, “Labelled ‘escapist’ in
these times of stress [i.e., World War II, among other problems], it would be
excellent fun and frolic no matter in what period of history we were
living.” The review-writer labeled Holiday Inn “lively, beautiful and
sparkling” that’s also “carefree and gay.”
The Boston reviewer stated, “There’s youth and zest and grace about
‘Holiday Inn’ and all its players and it deserves the praise it gets from the
obviously pleased patrons.”
In the Chicago Daily Tribune, May Tinée declared, “‘Holiday Inn’ is like a
clean, fresh, sweet scented wind, blowing away stale doldrums caused by a
session [sic] of rum movies.” She labeled the “concoction” of Crosby’s
singing, Astaire’s dancing, a pair of “luscious . . . singing and dancing
girls, . . . a bright and unusual story, gay tunes, fascinating dancing . . .
why you have a dish guaranteed to tickle the movie palate of ANY film fan.” Nelson B. Bell in the Washington Post characterized Holiday Inn as “gay
and galloping entertainment,” for which the Post reviewer acknowledged
“the picture’s lighthearted embellishments and musical embroideries” and “a
well-defined, if tenuous, ‘plot.’” “Out
of this simple premise emerges something pretty elegant.”
Show-Score,
the theater-review survey website, calculated the critical record of
Roundabout’s Holiday Inn based on 59
notices, but some were for previous stagings.
Based on only the New York reviews, I recalculated the average rating as
71 with a high score of 90 (Deadline,
Edge New York) backed up by seven
85’s (including Broadway World, New
York Daily News, Variety); the site’s lowest score was a 20 for the Wall Street Journal below a 30 for Upstage-Downstage. The
review ratings for the Broadway production broke down to 72% positive, 17%
mixed, and 11% negative. My round-up
will cover 19 reviews.
In Long Island’s Newsday, Linda Winer’s “Bottom Line” was “Predictable and perky
holiday fare with some first-rate actors.”
She characterized the adaptation as having “the feel of a holiday
perennial that has been returning from storage or been on the road for years,”
which the Newsday reviewer deemed an indication that the adaptors “are professional about coloring within the lines
of expectations.” Winer felt, however, “For
those hoping that the Roundabout Theatre Company had ambitions more challenging
than perky audience bait to compete with the other moneymaking holiday
offerings, well, hope elsewhere.” In her
conclusion, the Long Island review-writer wondered, “If walls had ears, what
would Studio 54, disco home of ’70s debauchery, make of this hokey, wholesome
new occupant? If the walls had eyes, I
suspect they would roll.”
Matt Windman of amNew York labeled the show “essentially a remake of a remake of a
remake.” (He’s counting the 1954 movie White Christmas—which had its own Broadway adaptation back in 2008—as one remake, plus previous stage versions of Holiday Inn from 2008 and 2009.) While parceling out faint praise for the plot
(“sentimental, old-fashioned”), setting (“cozy”), songs (“lovely”),
performances (“decent”), Windman found the show “only occasionally springs to
life . . . and too often feels like another generic jukebox musical or holiday
attraction.” He added, “Its attempts to
add comedy by mocking the innocence of the genre reek of desperation.”
Alexis Soloski dubbed Holiday Inn “a wan jukebox musical” in
the U.S. edition of The Guardian (while
punning that Roundabout “has entered hostel territory”), and she pointed out, “The
story has an old-timey predictability that may delight those with more
conservative tastes.” Soloski warned,
however, that “no real effort has been made to differentiate this show from the
other recent Berlin offering, White Christmas, or to integrate the songs into
the show.” She also advised, “You can
check out anytime you like, and chances are that one will—and quite often—as
the leaden dialogue trudges to its close.”
Though “the Berlin tunes” are “a treat,” “[s]everal of the production
numbers are lackluster.” Partly “because
the book is so thin,” Soloski found the acting “variable.” She also judged that “Greenberg’s direction
doesn’t veer from the expected.” The Guardian reviewer concluded, “It’s too
much to expect a musical to provide maid service or a mint on every seat, but
if a new musical ever needed fresh linens, it’s this one.”
In the Wall Street Journal (which received Show-Score’s lowest rating), Terry Teachout dismissed the production
in a single paragraph (under 200 words).
Holiday Inn “is less a show
than a cash machine, a cynical repurposing of the beloved 1942 Bing Crosby-Fred
Astaire film that exists solely to make as much money as possible.” Teachout scolded, “It’s slick, synthetic and
soulless, a musical full of robotic jokes and devoid of genuine romance.” He labeled Pinkham and Bleu “uncharismatic” and
said that they “are to Crosby and Astaire what a Whopper is to a New York
strip.” In the New York Daily News, Joe Dziemianowicz advised
his readers, “If you’re in the mood for show that’s light-on-its-feet and
wall-to-wall Irving Berlin, check into Broadway’s “Holiday Inn.’” The “airy tale,” he reported, is “familiar
and vanilla-flavored fluff, but with tasty sprinkles.” (Dziemianowicz was even more parsimonious
than Teachout; he expended fewer than 125 words!)
Making the frequent observation that
the “Christmas season seems to start earlier every year,” Charles Isherwood noted
in the New York Times, “This year,
the Roundabout Theater Company has obliged all whose hearts are already pining
for candy canes and mistletoe by presenting ‘Holiday Inn,’ a perky but bland
stage adaptation of the 1942 movie.” Asserting
that the original songs from the film are “mostly not top-drawer Berlin,”
Isherwood found, “The interpolated songs are integrated into the plot smoothly
enough, without lifting the show’s mild temperature or bringing new definition
to the characters.” The Timesman also reported that the
choreography was “more workmanlike than inspired.” The reviewer’s conclusion was:
Actually,
“Holiday Inn” wore out its welcome for me well before the inevitable reprise of
“White Christmas” that comes toward the close. As a familiar Broadway exercise in nostalgia—or
a familiar Broadway exercise in holiday exploitation—it’s polished and
pleasant. But a great gift to the
theater season aborning it’s not. More
like a prematurely hung Christmas stocking smelling faintly of mothballs.
Robert Feldberg of the Bergen County,
New Jersey, Record described Holiday Inn as “old-fashioned—but in a very pleasant way,”
explaining, “It doesn’t poke smug fun at itself, or, at the other end of the
attitude spectrum, pretend with a straight face that tastes haven’t changed in
75 years.” Feldberg felt that the
production “takes an appealing middle ground. It says, in effect, we know the
story is hokey, and we might wink at it a bit, but we’re going to treat the
characters and their feelings with respect.”
The “main job” of the book, the Record
reviewer thought, “is to provide a . . . framework for a cascade of Berlin
numbers, with a fair portion of the dialogue functioning as song cues.” He found, however, that the original film
score was “fairly pedestrian,” so it had to be “bolstered” by songs from other
sources. Feldberg’s final assessment
was: “Though ‘Holiday Inn’ might be a musical constructed according to a
formula, it’s a winning example of the type. Forgettable, perhaps, but fun while you’re
watching it.”
On NJ.com, Christopher Kelly, the
reviewer for the Newark Star-Ledger
declared that Holiday Inn, which he
said “is as brightly colored and intellectually nuanced as your average
commercial for Froot Loops cereal,” “is no one’s idea of groundbreaking or
cutting-edge.” It is, however, “directed
with generosity and warmth” and “wears down all defenses.” The Star-Ledger
reviewer felt that the book “doesn’t always make sense,” but the Berlin
music and the singing and dancing make up for it. He asserted that the show “ultimately lacks
the imagination or ambition” of the then-recent American in Paris adaptation (see my report and one by Kirk
Woodward, posted on Rick On Theater on
2 August 2015 and 13 November 2015, respectively), but concluded, “Flaws and
all, ‘Holiday Inn’ leaves you unreservedly happy—these days, no
small feat.”
“In a season of American agita, the
Roundabout serves a nice glass of warm milk,” its adaptation of Holiday Inn, quipped the New Yorker in “Goings On About Town.” “Don’t expect an iota of irony,” warned the
anonymous reviewer; “like Jim, the show longs for simpler pleasures, and
delivers them by way of well-polished choreography, familiar tunes, and two
debonair leading men.”
Jesse Green, writing on Vulture for New York magazine, dubbed the show “a jukebox” musical, with the “shoehorning
of songs from one context into another,” forcing “other songs to fit into the
story,” and making “the portions . . . too small or too jammed together to
enjoy.” Green proclaimed “Holiday Inn is . . . less a ‘New
Irving Berlin Musical’ [it’s official subtitle] than a new Irving Berlin
medley.” He thought it was “intentional”
to use “the cover of old-fashioned family entertainment to excuse the
let’s-throw-it-all-on-the-stage aesthetic.”
He asserted, “The emphasis on brightness and speed is so extreme that
the show too often feels paradoxically dim and tiresome.” Green ended with the lament that “all the
charm in the world could not compensate for the reverse alchemy that has turned
Berlin gold into brass plate, and Holiday Inn into Labor Day.”
In Variety,
Frank Rizzo declared that Holiday Inn
“has gotten a complete and first-class stage redo at Roundabout Theatre
Company, turning this shaky fixer-upper into prime property that should please
audiences looking for an easy-on-the-eyes, none-too-taxing escape.” Greenberg and Hodge “have significantly
rethought, reshaped and revitalized the script, giving the show more heart, a
slightly modern sensibility and a joyful spirit.” Rizzo concluded, “This clever musical should
have longer legs than the Yule-centric stage version of ‘Irving Berlin’s White
Christmas,’ especially for those yearning for an old-fashioned respite from
political angst.”
David Cote of Time Out New York described Roundabout’s Holiday Inn as “renovated and refurbished,” but added, “Sure,
there’s more corn and cheese served in this earnest, sweater-vested affair than
any nutritionist would approve, but what harm in a cup of early eggnog?” Melissa Rose Bernardo announced, “There’s
virtually nothing new about Holiday Inn,” in Entertainment Weekly.
The characters “are so stock they’re practically cardboard” and “the ‘plot’
. . . is pretty much just a clothesline on which to hang Berlin’s songs,” the EW
reviewer pointed out. “Still, you’d
have to be a total Grinch not to melt even a little” at the Berlin score.
Frank Scheck’s “Bottom Line” in the Hollywood Reporter was “The Irving
Berlin songs work their magic in this formulaic but sweet-hearted musical” and
he proclaimed, “So sweetly wholesome that you experience a sugar rush while
watching it, the show is corny and predictable.” Scheck reported, “Although the story is more
fleshed out than in the film, the rudimentary book . . . fails to develop the
characters beyond thin archetypes. Instead
it relies on a plethora of clichéd jokes.”
He ended advising, “There may be lulls in between, but this is a
Holiday Inn you'll want to check into.”
Roma Torre on NY1, the proprietary local news channel of
the Spectrum cable TV service, complained, “‘Holiday Inn’ emerges as a
quasi-jukebox musical that's pretty much by the numbers,” despite the “iconic
music,” “terrific dancing,” “tweaked” story, and “added” songs. Though the “musical numbers are sublime,”
Torre wished “the story that frames these delightful songs didn’t feel so
forced. Granted, it was hokey in the
movies, but its requisite charms are diminished here.” The characters are “underwritten,” “lacking
the kind of motivation that compels audiences to care.” Torre concluded, “‘Holiday Inn’ is pleasant
enough, but when I think of its musical peers from the era . . ., it’s more
workaday by comparison.”
On Theatre
Reviews Limited, Michele Willens declared that Holiday Inn “heavily depends on first class singers and dancers as
well as classy production values,” which she felt the Roundabout production
had. Willens warned, however, that
theatergoers would be disappointed “[i]f you are seeking conflict or edge.” Michael Bracken of Theater Pizzazz observed that this Holiday Inn is “more self-aware than the original: it
gently—perhaps too gently—pokes fun at itself.”
He called it “a grown-up ‘Let’s put on a show!’ show.” Bracken felt that “Greenberg and Hodge’s book
does not measure up to Berlin’s score,” and “you wish it would make up its mind
to be either parody or pastiche. Instead,
it’s noncommittal, changing the story’s window dressing without changing what’s
in the window.” In the end, however,
Bracken felt, “That doesn’t mean that Holiday Inn, in Greenberg’s otherwise
steady hands, is anything less than surefire entertainment. You just can’t help
wishing it could have made it to the next level.”
On Talkin’
Broadway, Matthew
Murray offered “congratulations” to Roundabout's Holiday Inn, which,
“[d]espite doing absolutely nothing new, . . . managed to push contemporary
theatrical escapism to dizzying, unheard-of heights.” “Usually,” Murray noted, shows that are
basically “just out to give you a good time,” “give you an ounce or two of meat
with your foot-tall mound of Cool Whip.”
(I’m not sure I’d really want meat with fake whip cream—but I get what
Murray means.) “After all,” the TB revewer added, “it’s not easy to
swallow sugar for two hours straight without feeling ill.” But Holiday
Inn “doesn’t mind. Its selling point
is” the Berlin score. “Much like the
film, it’s just an excuse for showcasing a bevy of themed Berlin tunes
coordinated with the performances” at the inn.
Murray’s big lament, though, was that, though “all shows committed to
purveying empty calories should do so as competently as this one does, and its
verve makes it utterly unhatable,” he “can't help wishing those involved had
wanted to do more with such tantalizing raw components.”
Comparing White
Christmas, another Berlin movie musical that was adapted for the stage
(Broadway, 2008-09), with Holiday Inn,
Steven Suskin of the Huffington Post
pronounced the latter “A decidedly better and more enjoyable film than ‘White
Christmas,’” but was “rather” surprised “to find that Holiday Inn . . . makes a decidedly weaker stage attraction.” Suskin labeled Holiday Inn “an unassuming and unchallenging musical, and an
ineffectively assembled one at that.” He
advised, “Audiences looking for something gentle, built on bouncy Berlin
melodies, might well be pleased.” The HP reviewer had problems with the story,
“which in the film dutifully plows ahead,” but in the stage adaptation, “halts
again and again at Studio 54 while we get a handful of ballads that prolong the
sleepy evening.” He concluded, “Audiences
looking for a non-challenging, 100% old-fashioned musical might well have an
altogether swell time at Holiday Inn. But the overall effect is dampened, as if
everything but that firecracker [dance] number was staged with soggy powder.”
(I never mentioned the “Let’s Say It with Firecrackers”
dance that both Astaire and Bleu perform; many reviews mention it with great delight. Ted does a solo dance—for the Fourth of July,
natch—tapping as he throws firecrackers and “torpedo” crackers on the stage
floor. Both renditions were truly
spectacular showstoppers.)
[I
hadn’t ever seen the stage version of Holiday Inn, which is why I watched the WNET broadcast. Then when the movie came on cable, I thought
it would be interesting to see it so close to the play. I just thought the juxtaposition of the play
and the film was fortuitous—like one trip I made to Washington, D.C., 11 years
ago, when my Mom and I saw She
Loves Me at Arena Stage
and, the same week, TCM aired both The Shop Around the Corner, the 1940 film adaptation of the
original straight play, Parfumerie, and In the Good Old
Summertime, the 1949 movie-musical adaptation starring Judy Garland and Van
Johnson. (It didn’t
run You’ve Got Mail, the 1998 rom-com update, which I thought
was a shame. I posted a report on Arena’s
staging on ROT on 22 July 2016 in
“Two Looks Back.”)]
