Chaplin, The Musical

The show is based on Chaplin’s biography and I think it does well portraying his ups and down moments in his career and in his personal life, eg. his struggling relationship with mentally ill Mother and his divorces with young teenage brides, however I did not come to Broadway to watch a documentary, I want to be entertained. Before watching this show, Chaplin has always been a funny comedic character to me, after watching this production, I saw the reality of Chaplin’s depressing life and that image of funny Chaplin is lost. The music weren’t very memorable and the set design wasn’t that fancy. I do like the projector screen scenes a lot. I left feeling sad after watching this show.

yes I am a fan of Charlie Chaplin and Rob McClure who was brilliant and magical in his performance of Chaplin. Jenn Colella’s Hedda Hopper was mesmerizing. Zachary Unger as young Charlie is a raising star. It’s entertaining and delightful, the music is contagious, the ensemble cast brings it all together. I was iffie about it even as I bought the tickets but afterwards I’m so glad I did.

I am by no means a professional reviewer, and I really don’t even know that much about the theater world. But of the 7 broadway and off-​broadway shows I have seen — this one is the best. I felt tied to the characters, constantly engaged with the plot and songs, intrigued by the set and costumes, and overall thrilled to be a witness to the event. This musical is also the only show I have seen where there was an immediate and (from what I could tell) unanimous standing ovation when the lead actor came to take his bow. I didn’t know anything about Charlie Chaplin or what to expect in the musical when I went in, and I was beyond pleasantly surprised.

Chaplin was a great show. I had to come here for a required class at my school and man did i love it.
I thought that Rob McClure did a wonderful job. His acting was superb and the music was great.
The child actors were just adorable! They were so cute and sweet when i saw them Some people need to stop being so harsh on these broadway shows or shows in general.
Honestly, bad reviews dont sum this up! I’m suppose to be writing a paper for my theater appreciation class, but im here trying to support the off-​broadway and browadway shows community.
Chaplin was well written and i was able to understand what was going on the entire time. As long as it was a wonderful performance and well-​written, that is all should matter.
What more can you ask for from a broadway show with wonderful actors, good music, good dancers and an amazing cast?

First things first, Rob McClure is a genuine find, a true Broadway star in the making, perfectly mimicking the classic comedian’s early moves with graceful athleticism. The producers are fortunate to have him in the central role, and in turn, McClure doesn’t waste a second of his time in the spotlight. I wish the rest of the show lived up to his potential, but it doesn’t because the book by Christopher Curtis and Thomas Meehan attempts to cover too much of Chaplin’s life and career and ends up shortchanging his legacy with an episodic approach that only hints at what made the legendary performer and filmmaker so great.
Using a storytelling technique similar to «Nine» which has Chaplin surrounded by the key figures in his life like a Greek chorus, the musical starts with his unhappy childhood on the streets of London when his mentally unstable mother performed at a local music hall. It is there he develops his innate talent for pantomime and impersonation. He gets noticed years later by silent comedy impresario Mack Sennett who recruits the young Chaplin to Hollywood where he has a bumpy start in comedy shorts with comedienne Mabel Normand. Inspired by memories of his mother, he invents the Little Tramp as his screen persona (a clever bit in the show very well played out by McClure) — and the rest is history.
Or more accurately, the rest is Act II which explores Chaplin’s later years filled with megalomania and multiple marriages finally finding true happiness with Eugene O’Neill’s daughter Oona, an aspiring actress who loves Chaplin for all his flaws. But not before he faces the wrath of Hedda Hopper who used his leftist political grandstanding and lascivious love life for fodder in her columns, which ultimately led to his two-​decade-​plus exile from the U.S. Curtis wrote the music and lyrics, and while serviceable for the plot, for the life of me, I can barely remember a single note, even McClure’s dramatic climactic number («Where Are All the People?») which reveals his singing voice to be on the thin side.
Aside from McClure’s star-​making turn, Jenn Collela does sharp work as Hopper, including the one song I can remember, «Whatcha Gonna Do?», in which she methodically plots to destroy Chaplin with comical malice. The other performers are good but hardly that memorable, but that has more to do with the truncated book which gives potentially colorful turns by Michael McCormick as the blustery Sennett and Christiane Noll as Chaplin’s bewildered mother Hannah short shrift in the story. Erin Mackey, who was charming in her brief numbers in «Sondheim on Sondheim» two years ago, charms again in the blandly colorless role of supportive Oona.
Beowulf Boritt’s movable sets and the period costumes by Amy Clark and the late Martin Pakledinaz evoke the period well in shades of black, white and gray, but honestly, the lack of color started to wear me down as the evening trudged along. In fact, the near-​death pallor of the make-​up on some of the actors’ faces, including McClure’s, is at times downright creepy. However, the biggest obstacle is really the soggy sentimentality of the book which appears to depend on a string of clichés to keep the story moving forward. Yes, this elaborate show is a disappointment, but it is worth seeing just for McClure’s enthusiastic, spot-​on tribute.