Critics agree that Here Lies Love is nothing like anything seen on Broadway before. Set designer David Korins have transformed a traditional Broadway theatre into a nightclub, and director Alex Timbers what would traditionally be a hard-hitting Broadway musical into a party. You will dance and clap and have a great time; while following a harrowing story told through strange soundbites. Whether the form serves the narrative is questionable; but not in question is the all-encompassing experience. Have you seen the show? What did you think?
New York Times Review of Here Lies Love
The infernally catchy songs by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, performed by a tireless and inspired all-Filipino cast, will have you clapping whether you want to or not. Their chunky beats, abetted by insistent dance motivators, may even prompt you to bop at your seat — if you have one. Because the real star of this show is the astonishing architectural transformation of the theater itself, by the set designer David Korins. … The confusion of sympathies is just where Byrne and the director Alex Timbers want us. Avoiding the near-hagiography of “Evita” and yet unwilling to bank a commercial production on a totally hateful character, they aim for a middle ground that doesn’t exist, yet mostly hit it anyway. … Still, a musical not centered on feelings is a strange thing. … To compensate, or double down, Timbers emphasizes pure pageantry in his staging. … “Here Lies Love” bets that glamour can make up for narrative — or, rather, that in a show about the dangers of political demagogy, glamour itself is the narrative. It’s a case of form follows function into the fire. We are drawn to cultural and political excitement in much the same, often dangerous way.
Deadline Review of Here Lies Love
Byrne and Slim (and Tom Gandey and J Pardo) have concocted some terrific blends here. There’s the pulsating American dance club music that so enthralled Filipino nightlifers, there’s a heavy dose of Filipino folk music tradition, some fairly straightforward American show tunes and – listen carefully – a dash here and there of Talking Heads-era Byrne. It all combines into a winning soundscape. But the real pull of Here Lies Love is the staging, with a malleable performance space, an audience herded to and fro, and cast members finding perches throughout the venue. … And no small amount of the show’s appeal is Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast, with stand-outs among the large ensemble including Llana as Ferdinand and Ricamora as the doomed idealist Ninoy Aquino.
TimeOut Review of Here Lies Love
Director Alex Timbers and set designer David Korins have revolutionized and radicalized the capacious Broadway Theatre into a gleaming dance club, walled by dozens of video screens, where audience members—often literally standing in the middle of the action—get swept up in the shifting tides and undertows of history. … Byrne and Timbers’s musical has even deeper resonance today than it did in its Off Broadway incarnation. Eva Perón had the good public-relations sense to die young, but Imelda is alive and kicking up her many shoes at the age of 94; she has survived disgrace to see the Marcos dynasty rejuvenated in the Philippines, where her son Bongbong became President last year. Our complicity with such cycles of populist fervor—whether, depending on your ticket, as spectators from a safe distance or as extras in a mob scene—is the loudly beating heart of Here Lies Love, a party that hides a mordant critique of civilization and its discotheques.
New York Post Review of Here Lies Love
Once we’re acclimated to the changed space, however, we start to ask more of the story. Broadway, after all, is a vastly different place than the Public Theater where I first saw the musical in the smaller LuEsther Hall 10 years ago and liked it a hair more. Some of the intimate downtown charm of the immersive show has not made the trek from Eighth Street to one of Midtown’s biggest houses. And standing in the theater that once hosted the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” — a similar story about Argentina’s power-hungry first lady Eva Peron — makes you crave a stronger point of view on Marcos, rather than just an excuse for party time. The musical, somewhat shallowly, paints the woman as a kindly victim who was swept up by the decadence and momentum as much as we are. That aside, it is indeed awfully easy to lose yourself to the glamorous escape that director Alex Timbers (“Moulin Rouge”) and his team have so splendidly built, accompanied by a devilishly catchy score. … You’ll walk out at the end with no changed opinion of Imelda Marcos, but instead with your eyes opened about the endless possibilities for Broadway theaters.
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