Theater: Neil Simon Theatre / 250 West 52nd Street, New York, NY,
Synopsis:
Based the novel by Daniel Wallace and the 2003 film starring Ewan McGregor, Big Fish is a modern fable centering on charmer Edward Bloom (Norbert Leo Butz), whose stories of epic and largely unbelievable adventures irritate his by-the-books son Will (Bobby Steggert). As Edward approaches the final chapter in his own story, Will sets out to sleuth whether his father is an average man with tall tales or an unbelievable hero of truth.
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October 6, 2013: For a show that celebrates tall tales, “Big Fish” feels curiously stunted. Granted, this movie-inspired musical about a whopper-spinning traveling salesman, which opened on Sunday night at the Neil Simon Theater, is certainly big by most conventional measurements.
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October 6, 2013: Fantasy wages war with reality in Big Fish, a delightfully old-fashioned musical based on Daniel Wallace's beloved novel (and Tim Burton's 2003 film). In one corner, there is Edward Bloom (the sensational Norbert Leo Butz), a traveling salesman from backwater Alabama given to spinning tall tales about mermaids and giants to fill in the gaps in his otherwise ordinary life. In the other, there is his son, Will (Bobby Steggert), a just-the-facts journalist who's never really connected with his often absent, now-ailing dad and faces the prospect of fatherhood himself.
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October 6, 2013: Edward Bloom will die a “glorious” death at the end of “Big Fish,” which has just opened at the Neil Simon Theatre. That’s not a spoiler; it’s an explanation. Blessed, if you’d call it that, to know the “when” and “how” of his life’s final chapter, the peculiar protagonist of Susan Stroman’s giddy, overstuffed new musical is free to take risks the rest of us wouldn’t, for fear of bodily harm.
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October 6, 2013: I doubt Broadway has ever seen a prettier, more sensuously kinetic musical than Susan Stroman’s adaptation of “Big Fish” set to music by Andrew Lippa (“The Addams Family.”) It’s enchanting, especially once it slows down a bit to catch its breath. That doesn’t happen until the second act, but it won’t matter much, even to fans of the Tim Burton movie (or the Daniel Wallace novel that started it all).
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October 6, 2013: Wholesomeness gets a bad rap on Broadway these days, usually regarded as the kind of unbearably sweet and inoffensive entertainment that sophisticated theatergoers must endure while taking their conservative grandmas out for a night on the town.
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