 the “brilliant” score, this Cabin in the Sky is “one of the best-sung, best-danced Encores! ever.”
Newsday’s Linda Winer, dubbing Cabin “a naive period piece,” lamented, “Despite an A-list cast, the elaborate and loving direction and adaptation by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and viscerally original choreography by Camille A. Brown, the production can’t shake off enough dated stereotypes to revitalize history.” She blamed “a hokey old story” and “a jaunty, if hardly revelatory mix of jazz, showbiz and gospel.” Winer praised the “wonderful” dancing, the “textural transparency” of the choral numbers, and Santiago-Hudson’s “elegant musical ear,” but found the acting “comic mugging.” Noting that Vernon Duke founded the Society for Forgotten Music, the Newsday reviewer concluded, “‘Cabin in the Sky’ has been remembered, which, alas, is not the same as being rediscovered.”
In the New York Times, Christopher Isherwood dubbed Cabin in the Sky “musically vibrant, dramatically a dud” and reported, “The first act of Lynn Root’s book . . . contains virtually no action and glides by rather sluggishly, enlivened only by a couple of standout songs.” The Timesman continued, “Things pick up, modestly, in the second act,” but demurs that “little of that life [of the original Broadway production] blooms anew on the City Center stage.” He complained, “If I closed my eyes, I think I might have had a better time at ‘Cabin in the Sky’ . . ., since the singing throughout is so pleasurable.” Despite the “suitably seductive” rendering of the score by the Encores! orchestra, Isherwood ended on a down note: “[B]y the time this sweet fable of a sinner redeemed, and then redeemed again, panted to its conclusion, I had long ceased to care whether the Devil or the Lord took home the big, or rather little, prize.”
Describing the story as “icky” and “very thin” in New York magazine, Jesse Green affirmed it’s “full of faux-naïve folkloric touches that give off a strong odor of condescension today.” In a tone that even sounds a little angry, Green added, “The ending is happy if you are Christian enough to believe that getting to heaven is worth it even if it took a gunfight to get there, while dragging your blameless wife along.” “Were this only a play,” the man from New York asserted, “no one would produce it now . . . . As drama, it is so mild that cringeworthiness may be its strongest trait.” It’s not a play, however, Green continued, “it’s a musical.” “The score is flat-out lovely,” with “a clutch of” tunes with Duke’s “adventurous jazz harmonies.” But the New York review-writer still isn’t fully satisfied: “And yet a show so problematic cannot ever be totally satisfying.” He faulted Santiago-Hudson’s “very flat and visually cluttered” staging, which Green found “emotionally withdrawn as if slightly embarrassed.” He had, however, words of high praise for both Hughes as Georgia Brown and Camille Brown’s choreography.
The cyber press paralleled the print outlets. On Theater Pizzazz, Brian Scott Lipton, warning that Cabin in the Sky is “the kind of early musical theater piece that, in less seasoned hands, could easily have come off as unpleasantly dated and too folksy by half,” but, “thanks to” a sterling creative and performing ensemble, “the result is delightful.” This, despite the fact that “Lynn Root’s book is a bit silly and old-fashioned, and the characters are mostly two-dimensional” and “the show is written so lightly that the actual outcomes hardly matter.” Still, said Lipton, “The score . . . does matter.” After lauding the sets, costumes, and choreography, TP’s reviewer concluded, “Indeed, this is one ‘Cabin’ you’ll leave grudgingly, albeit with a smile on your face.” On TheaterMania, Zachary Stewart described the Encores! production “lovingly re-created”: though the “characters are a little too cute for their own good,” Santiago-Hudson and co-adapter Viertel “keep the tone buoyant and airy, highlighting the craftsmanship of the score while acknowledging the ridiculousness of the book. Nothing is too serious and everything is fair game for a laugh.”