Reviews are in for The Notebook and critics were universally underwhelmed by the production despite its fine cast and creative team. Featuring repetitive music, actors in and out before you can connect with them, and a pared down script, nostalgic fans will still weep and love the new musical, but more for the story it’s telling than for its storytelling.
New York Times Review of The Notebook
Romantic musicals are as personal as romance itself. What makes you sigh and weep may leave the person next to you bored and stony. At “The Notebook,” I was the person next to you. … [T]here’s a reason the producers are selling teeny $5 “Notebook”-themed boxes of tissues in the lobby. Love is powerful. Dementia is sad. The result can be heartbreaking. Or maybe, seen with a cold eye, meretricious. … The musical, unwilling except at the margins to alter a plot so beloved — or at least so familiar — tries to distinguish itself in other ways. … In any case, the de-slicking was a mistake; it turns out that the Hollywood varnish was the only thing holding the picture together. In its place, the musical makes few convincing arguments for a separate existence. … That the “Notebook”-themed tissues are so teeny says it all.
Deadline Review of The Notebook
To say The Notebook had a devoted, built-in audience before it sang so much as a note on Broadway would be an understatement this romantic tear-jerker never attempts. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 bestseller about a young – then older, then much older – couple who survive a lifetime of tribulations (until they don’t), the musical opening tonight at the Schoenfeld Theatre is the theatrical equivalent of muzak, comforting in its unapologetically manipulative way and unabashed in its disregard for anything approaching the grit of the real world. … Of all the show’s disappointments planted like so many wild flowers ready for plucking, none stings quite so much as Michaelson’s score. … The Notebook gets to its final pages – or very nearly so – without letting its manipulations become too overbearing…yet it never approaches the finer works of nearly everyone involved.
New York Theatre Guide Review of The Notebook
In The Notebook, memory is on the mind. With a book by Bekah Brunstetter and music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, The Notebook Broadway musical attempts to create a nesting doll of memories – the audience’s and the characters’. The audience’s, by recalling the nostalgic affection they may have for the 1996 book and 2004 film. The characters’, by triple-casting its romantic leads by age. … This compelling conceit gets weakened by a flat book and lyrics. Brunstetter and Michaelson aim for simplicity, but lyrics like a repeated “sadness and joy” fail to illuminate Noah and Allie’s depth of character. The Notebook: The Musical can only compensate so much with Michaelson’s strumming music, with repetitions that are pleasant but melt together, and some songs become indistinguishable from each other.
New York Post Review of The Notebook
While the cast of “The Notebook” sings and dances up onstage at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, there is an even more dramatic performance going on in the seats. The sniffle chorus. … Like Pavlov’s pups, millennials habitually sob during that 2004 film, and the production has seized upon its teary reputation by selling branded tissue boxes. During the final 10 minutes, the noses are deafening. I suspect, however, that it is audience members’ fond memories of the movie and book, more so than the merely pleasant proceedings in the theater, that are prying open their tear ducts. Because as elegantly staged as “The Notebook” is by co-directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams, and despite boasting an appealing cast, the show amounts to a series of un-involving pencil sketches rather than a layered portrait of a decades-long love.
Broadway Musical Blog 
Leave a comment