Sure you want a career in theatre?

Ready for reviews like this? This seems to me to be the critical analog to that x-ray I posted a couple of days ago:

February 3, 2005
THEATER REVIEW 'GOOD VIBRATIONS'
To Everything There Is a Purpose
By BEN BRANTLEY

Even those who believe everything on this planet is here for a purpose may
at first have trouble justifying the existence of "Good Vibrations," the
singing headache that opened last night at the Eugene O'Neill Theater.

But audience members strong enough to sit through this rickety jukebox of
a show, which manages to purge all catchiness from the surpassingly catchy
hits of the Beach Boys, will discover that the production does have a
reason to be, and a noble one: "Good Vibrations" sacrifices itself, night
after night and with considerable anguish, to make all other musicals on
Broadway look good.

Such virtuous behavior could not come at a more propitious moment. Just
think of the roster of dim, dispiriting shows that have opened this
season: "Brooklyn," "Little Women," the deceased "Dracula." Each of these
clunkers now feels like a high point of professionalism thanks to "Good
Vibrations," which features a lot of washboard-stomached performers who
give the impression of having spent far more time in the gym than in the
rehearsal studio. As they smile, wriggle and squeak with the desperation
of wet young things hung out to dry, you feel their pain. It is unlikely,
however, to be more acute than yours.

Directed and choreographed by John Carrafa (with the reported assistance
of last-minute consultants), "Good Vibrations" strings together more than
30 of the kind of musically sophisticated, girl-crazy, California-centric
songs ("Surfer Girl," "California Girls") that kept the Beach Boys high in
the Top 40 in the mid-1960's.

But it isn't just songs that have been borrowed (and mutilated) for this
production, which features a blockheaded comic strip of a book by Richard
Dresser, a respectable playwright who should know better. Every element in
the show appears to have been cribbed in haste, as if on the morning of a
final exam, from other, more agreeable musicals of the jukebox/pop
pastiche genre, which is gradually devouring all of Broadway.

The plot, which traces the bumpy romance between a popular bad boy and a
nerdy good girl (who learns how to be cooler than he is), loudly echoes
that of "Grease," the pimply grandsire of the kitsch-rock musical. The
idea of showing a generation dance from adolescence to adulthood, to an
era-defining background of period music, has been shaped to perfection in
"Movin' Out," the improbable, inspired collaboration between the singer
and composer Billy Joel and the choreographer Twyla Tharp. (For its
interpretation of its title song, "Good Vibrations" unwisely dares to
invite direct comparison to Ms. Tharp's ecstatic, white-clad finale for
"Movin' Out.")

And as for where the folks behind "Good Vibrations" got the idea for their
goofy, literal-minded, karaoke-style approach to a classic pop songbook,
you need only think of two little words that have become a religious
mantra for producers looking for a prepackaged mix for a hit: "Mamma Mia!"
(That's the title of the cannily idiotic sing-along show that weaves a
score from the songs of the disco group Abba.)

But while "Good Vibrations" dutifully culls from its hot-ticket
predecessors, the sum effect is of a lumbering, brainless Frankenstein's
monster, stitched together from stolen body parts and stuffed into a wild
bikini. From its cutely clichéd script (which begins, "Once upon a time
there was a far-off land called California") to its haphazard
choreography, the show feels as if it simply gave up on trying to figure
out the balance of nostalgia and satire that can make this kind of
show-biz exercise profitable.

Since the performers really aren't to blame for the aimlessness of "Good
Vibrations," I won't mention any of their names, though there are a few
who make you feel that smiling should be outlawed for a while. I'm
surprised, though, by the sloppiness of the staging and dance routines,
since Mr. Carrafa showed himself as a choreographer of promising, winking
wit with the recent New York productions of "Urinetown" and "Into the
Woods."

The talented Heidi Ettinger's cartoonish, overaccessorized sets (beach
balls galore!) are tacky in a way that looks appealing in the campy
windows of the Ricky's chain of cosmetics stores but does not benefit from
being blown up to Broadway proportions. Jess Goldstein's costumes suggest
a mass-market department store trying to woo a younger, trendier customer.
The clothes, by the way, are a potpourri of looks from the 1960's to the
present, since the creators of "Good Vibrations" are clearly hoping to
appeal to as many age groups as possible. (The year when the show takes
place is deliberately never identified.)

Much of this could be forgiven if the songs sounded any good. But despite
the abiding infectiousness and seeming simplicity of the music of Brian
Wilson, the brilliant mastermind of the Beach Boys, and his collaborators,
recreating these numbers is no easy task. Mr. Wilson is famous for
laboring for long months in the studio to fine-tune the elaborately
layered vocals and instrumentals that became his signature. A single flat
note or a falsetto's slip into a screech is enough to make the
Wilson-style wall of sound come tumbling down. Suffice it to say that
there is an abundance of flat notes, literal and figurative, in "Good
Vibrations."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Ouch!