If you’re a fan of Ren├â┬⌐e Fleming, then you will love Living On Love, the new Broadway play about an aging opera singer starring the real life opera singer.
Fleming is making her Broadway debut with the comedy, which seems to have been created as a starring vehicle for her. Unfortunately, this is no Master Class.
Fleming’s singing voice, which she gifts the audience in snippets throughout the play, is a force of nature. Unfortunately, this show fails to come anywhere near her brilliance as a vocalist.
And, since she’s not given the best material to work with, Fleming does not shine the way she should!
She’s funny and endearing, but playwright Joe DiPietro paints her character so broad and cartoonish that she’s too over-the-top and the audience doesn’t root for her. The same could be said of her husband in the show, the usually superb Douglass Sills, who in Living On Love is trying so hard! Too hard! He’s overcompensating for a fine but far from great script.
There are moments of greatness – and truly funny insider jokes – but those are not enough to make this overly familiar and rather generic show feel as special as it needs to be!
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