It would seem that music is something you have to get right in a musical based on the Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity. This musical tried as hard as it could but just couldn’t get it right. Songs about sleeping with Lyle Lovett, sleeping with the man who handled Kurt Cobain’s intervention and a poor imitation of Neil Young (sans real lyrics) are just a few thing that would make any music lover cringe. Also, being able to sing is something that I expect from actors in a musical but with a few exceptions, they all seemed to strain to hit notes.

One good thing about the play was the set design. It looked like the set designer was the only one who had ever been in a “real” record store. I think that whoever scored this play should have joined the set designer on research trips instead of hanging out in the Coconuts record store browsing through the Yanni /John Tesh section.

If you like music but not musicals you should not go to this play. If you don’t’ know the difference between those two things, then this play just might be for you.

PS - After writing this review I saw in todays Daily News that High Fidelity is getting yanked off of Broadway already. So none of you will ever have to be subjected to the misery of watching it anyway.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 10:31 am and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.