‘Doctor Zhivago,’ the Broadway Musical
Charles IsherwoodApril 21, 2015: “Doctor Zhivago,” the endless Boris Pasternak novel familiar to most of us from the endless David Lean movie, has been resurrected for dramatic purposes once again, as a musical that opened at the Broadway Theater on Tuesday night. The verdict: Um, is it over yet? Hold your fire, Russophiles and cinephiles. Obviously many revere the book, first published in Italy in 1957 after being banned by the authorities in the Soviet Union, where it wasn’t published until decades later. The 1965 movie, starring a luminous Julie Christie and a pair of moist, doggy eyes otherwise known as Omar Sharif, is considered by many a classic in Lean’s late, sumptuously pictorial style. But after slogging through both recently, I remain staunch in my opinion that the book is among the most drearily indigestible of so-called modern classics, and the movie rich in visual atmosphere but dramatically flaccid. My reaction to the musical, with a book by Michael Weller, music by Lucy Simon and lyrics by Michael Korie and Amy Powers, doesn’t derive from the usual sorrowful observations about the inferiority of the stage version to a beloved book or movie. No, the dismay here has to do with the musical itself, a turgid throwback to the British invasion of Broadway in the 1980s, and more specifically to the epic-romantic style of the Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil shows “Les Misérables” and “Miss Saigon.” Of course, those musicals, too, have innumerable admirers. If full-throated love ballads and thundering militaristic anthems, baggy plots, highly expositional dialogue and doomed romances are your cup of tea, fire up the samovar and give the show a try. But be warned: Even as it shares similarities with those long-running hits, “Doctor Zhivago” is inferior in most respects to the musicals it is emulating.
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