New York theater critics have given mixed reviews to the new musical Flying over Sunset, which plays a limited engagement through February 6 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The creative team includes James Lapine (book, direction), Tom Kitt (music), Michael Korie (lyrics), Michelle Dorrance (choreography), Beowulf Boritt (sets), Toni-Leslie James (costumes), Matthew Armentrout (hair & wigs), Bradley King (lights), Dan Moses Schreier (sound), 59 Productions (projections), Michael Starobin (orchestrations), and Kimberly Grigsby (music direction).
The cast includes Hary Hadden-Paton (Aldous Huxley), Carmen Cusack (Clare Boothe Luce), and Tony Yazbeck (Cary Grant), with Kanisha Marie Feliciano (Ann / Judith), Nehal Joshi (Dr. Harris / Cary’s Father), Emily Pynenburg (Rosalia / Sophia), Michele Ragusa (Austin / Handmaiden), Robert Sella (Gerald Herad), Laura Shoop (Maria Huxley), and Atticus Ware (Archie Leach).
Broadway News (Charles Isherwood): Other people’s dreams are boring to hear about, so you would assume that other people’s acid trips are equally if not more eye-glazing. And yet the ambitious and frequently moving musical Flying over Sunset defies such assumptions. … Among the primary pleasures of Flying over Sunset is the sumptuous, symphonic score, which attempts to channel through music the rapturous experiences the characters go through. … It’s a valiant and intriguing journey into uncharted territory. This musical attempts to expand the possibilities of musical theater, just as its characters were intent on expanding their consciousnesses.
New York Times (Jesse Green): Though sometimes mesmerizing, Flying over Sunset … is mostly bewildering, and further proof that transcendence can’t be shared. It admits as much in its structure, which throws into one scenario (by James Lapine) three famous seekers who never actually got high together. … Lapine, who also directed the show, steers Flying over Sunset in some very strange and ultimately tiresome directions. … The second act, with its nonstop LSD sequences, goes quickly downhill. … If the drug offers access to a shared consciousness that can help humans connect, neither the show nor the subsequent lives of its real-life characters demonstrate it. … Some mysteries, this musical among them, are too interior to be understood.
Theater Mania (David Gordon): The description almost sounds like a joke. … Unfortunately, I don’t have a punchline, and neither, it seems, do the creators of the new Broadway musical Flying over Sunset, who take this one-line synopsis and stretch it out to nearly three unsustainable hours. … While I’ll give Flying over Sunset some well-earned points for its originality (the theatrical equivalent of an A for effort, I guess, but that and a dollar will get you on the subway), the show ultimately commits the cardinal sin of entertainment: It’s just boring. There are people who will get more out of this abstract musical about grief than I did, and I hope they do. As for me, I’m just gonna take an edible and watch North by Northwest.
Time Out (Adam Feldman): If you’ve ever been cornered at a party by someone describing at length how high they are, when you yourself are not high, then you have some idea what awaits you at Flying over Sunset. … Most of the show is disappointingly old-fashioned: Hair, but square. … This, alas, is not musical theater on acid; this is acid on musical theater. The Lincoln Center production has real pleasures. … And the staging is very handsome indeed. … But these elements can only distract so much from a show that would probably make more sense as a one-act in a smaller space. What a long, strange trip it is. 3 out of 5 stars.
Variety (Marilyn Stasio): In the midst of the deadly dull 1950s, Hollywood celebs Cary Grant, Claire Booth Luce and Aldous Huxley escape their ennui by dropping acid. No serious sex is involved and no one rushes out on a frantic candy run but much witty chitchat ensues in Flying over Sunset, a stylish new Broadway musical. … The show’s trippy sensibility is strikingly displayed on Beowulf Boritt’s spare, highly stylized cycloramic set and under Bradley King’s luscious lighting. … There’s also a terrific scene of Grant, Huxley and Heard gamboling in the ocean in swimsuits. Although cleverly staged by choreographer Dorrance, it would have been more terrific — and more theatrically appropriate — if they’d been naked.