Sing the Song Before You Drop That Bomb ‘Atomic,’ a Musical About the Making of the Bomb
David RooneyJuly 13, 2014: Summer in the city is a time for musical experimentation, with the New York Musical Theater Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival among industry showcases for developing works. Given their aim to allow creative teams to assess the strengths and weakness of their babies while they eye a commercial future, those forums invite a spirit of forgiveness from the audience as the teething troubles and conceptual kinks are worked out. It’s more perplexing, however, when a new musical lands a professional production and wrangles a capable, vocally accomplished cast without much evidence that anyone involved has asked the fundamental question: Why does this story need to be sung? That’s the conundrum hanging like a mushroom cloud over Atomic, an earnest new musical from Australia that opened Off Broadway Sunday at Theater Row, with book and lyrics by Danny Ginges and Gregory Bonsignore, and music and lyrics by Philip Foxman.
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