Springsteen on Broadway
Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City, (212) 239-6200
Maybe we’ve been selling Bruce Springsteen’s talents short all along, said Madison Vain in Entertainment Weekly. In his new one-man show on Broadway, the 68-yearold rock legend proves to be “an ace dry comedian” who’s “even better when he’s breaking your heart.” He reveals both gifts, and many more, in a two-hour performance that’s essentially a bare-bones acoustic concert mixed with biographical recollections. But early on, a couple of his anecdotes about growing up in workingclass New Jersey spark “raucous laughter,” and when he later talks about the 2011 death of saxophonist Clarence Clemons and says, “Losing him was like losing the rain,” a powerful quiet “washes over the crowd.” Across 15 songs, Springsteen takes the crowd on a journey, and the result, said Andy Greene in RollingStone.com, is “one of the most compelling and profound shows by a rock musician in recent memory.”
The format works beautifully— for “a mesmerizing half hour or so,” said Mikael Wood in the Los Angeles Times. When he’s talking about his parents and drifting into intimate songs like “My Father’s House” and “The Wish,” you “almost forget you’re in a theater surrounded by other people, so evocative are his images.” He’s good, too, as he uses “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and “The Promised Land” to recall putting his band together and working to hit it big. But after a nice interlude during which his wife, Patti Scialfa, joins him for two duets, the show, on opening night, “kind of fell apart.” The adoring crowd wanted to sing along when the star launched into “Dancing in the Dark,” but he told them not to. At the moment when his fans wanted release and the joy of feeling united in song, he insisted on proceeding alone, with just his guitar, piano, and harmonica. But a fun time is not the point, said Jesse Green in The New York Times. From start to finish, Springsteen “clearly knows where he’s headed”: He’s presenting himself as a guy who bet while young on rock’s ability to shape American culture, to celebrate what’s best in it while helping change it for the better. Because enormous professional success hasn’t erased disappointment over his unmet dreams, Springsteen on Broadway often feels “like a radio monodrama broadcast from the deepest interior of a troubled soul.” His fans are clearly ready for it, sometimes paying more than $1,000 a ticket, and creating sellouts for all performances through the show’s February close. Most won’t be disappointed. “Indeed, as portraits of artists go, there may never be anything as real—and beautiful—on Broadway.”