Paris by Night Review Round-Up

Sandy MacDonald's astringent review for TheaterMania.com is unapologetically negative. PBN is a "watery pastiche," its musical mode "reductive," and its characters "hackneyed." It wears its musical and narrative influences too obviously on its sleeve and is "a tedious, if earnest, slog." Her writing is bracingly saline.

Louise Kennedy at the Boston Globe recognizes the same influences but evaluates the show on its own merits. It's "an old song in a new key." Her review is lively and admiring.

James Merolla at the Sun Chronicle gushes but can't quite get over the gay love story. He calls it "controversial" (there's no better way to provoke controversy) and asserts, broadly and blandly, that one's response to the show "depends completely on [one's] liberal or conservative bent." Merolla is so liberal that he can't contain himself: his review is a wonderful collage of extravagant adjectives.

Channing Gray rebuts Louise Kennedy: PBN is an old song in an old key. His is a dull-edged piece with some legitimate questions--what does the lovely and urbane singer Marie see in the troglodytic and duplicitous Frank?--but, as always, it's strangely vacant. Gray seems to have no interest in human nature or in expressive language; reading him is like reading joyless notes, carelessly scrawled, casually disposed.