We round up the reviews for Broadway’s robot inspired musical…
The Guardian: **** “Maybe Happy Ending, as suggested by the title, is a predominantly bright love story, with clear echoes of Pixar: a Toy Story-esque plot of abandoned Helperbots who fall in love in what is essentially an island of misfit toys.”
Variety: “Both Criss and Shen give excellent, very different performances. As an older model, Criss is purposefully more robotic: angled arms, stiff neck, straight spine, minimal facial expressions. His commitment to the physicality is remarkable and impressive — you might only fully appreciate it during curtain call, when he walks and emotes normally. He is the stronger singer of the pair, but his roboticness, though true to character, can make him slightly harder to connect to. (His silent-film star makeup, by Suki Tsujimoto, is also distracting.) Shen, on the other hand, feels practically human, and there’s more pathos to her pained performance, especially in her awareness of her own impending mortality.”
Time Out: ***** “Can a show as strange and special as Maybe Happy Ending find a place for itself on Broadway today? I like to think that maybe it can. But as the show reminds us, everything is ephemeral: “We have a shelf life, you know that,” says Claire. “It’s the way that it has to be.” The fact that this show is casting its firefly glow on Broadway at all feels like a gift. In its gentle robot way, it helps us see ourselves through freshly brushed eyes.”
Deadline: “A tenderhearted meet-cute rom-com tinged with poignance, laughs and break-your-heart melancholy, Maybe Happy Ending just might be this season’s answer to Kimberly Akimbo.”
New York Post: “Welding comedy, romance and science fiction, string quartets and bourbon-inflected jazz, holograms and fur
Talkin’ Broadway: “Still, this string of simple moments manages to sneak up on us and begins to add up to a delicate little love story, held together by a perfect scenic design made up of Dane Laffrey’s appearing and disappearing sets and George Reeve’s video projections. But more than this, Maybe Happy Ending can also be seen as a parable about planned obsolescence and disposable lives, say of the elderly, in a world that holds neither in great esteem. The show was a big hit in South Korea, where it originated; word-of-mouth and the wonders of social media may well do the trick here.”
New York Theatre Guide: “Director Michael Arden’s gorgeous staging makes the most of Dane Laffrey’s multilevel sets behind sliding panels and George Reeve’s floor-to-ceiling videos. As Oliver and Claire fall, it’s easy to do the same for the show. No maybe about it — Maybe Happy Ending has theatrical magic.”
To find out more about the show visit: https://www.maybehappyending.com/