The Notebook Reviews

Brianne from New York, New York

NOT A DRY EYE

Never have I seen a play so beautifully written and so captivating. The entire audience was entranced and truly enjoyed the actors, music, and overall performance.

Rick Cummins from New York, New York

THE MOST MOVING SHOW I'VE SEEN

Not having ever read the book or seen the movie, I was an open-minded frequent theatre-goer motivated by curiosity. As a man in my 70's, I was so moved by recognizing my own life stories and the universality of our beginnings, middles, and ends. The huge talents of the actors, designers, and directors captured the story of our lives. I loved the songs! I loved this show!

Jen T from Halifax NS

FANTASTIC

I laughed, I cried and felt like I was only sitting 15 minutes by the time the intermission began. The singing was incredible. The orchestra did an excellent job. What a beautiful story performed by a talented cast. This is a play not to be missed!!

Charlie from Chicago, Illinois

IT’S GOOD, NOT YET GREAT

The 10-2 performers were terrific, including the understudy playing Old Noah. I agree the songs are not memorable but they are beautifully sung and all the harmonies are perfect. The rain scene is amazing. And the climax is beautiful and a true tearjerker. I should mention I’ve not read the book or seen the movie. The audience gave an enthusiastic standing ovation, largely, I believe because Act 2 is so strong. They need a couple of solid, memorable songs before they get to Broadway but this is a good show.

Beth Filapek from Chicago, Illinois

GOOD START, MUCH MORE WORK TO DO

Let me just start by saying how excited I was for this book to be turned into a musical. It has an amazing storyline that I could easily see set to music. It was about what I expected of a world premiere-lots of kinks to work out before moving on but still enjoyable. The pros: the story is beautiful. The orchestrations were very moving as well. There were some really great staging and lighting moments and it rained! Old Allie and Noah were incredible actors throughout. The cons: the character development of Allie and Noah is almost non-existent. You need to understand their conflict of classes and why they can’t be together to have the same emotional pull as the book and movie. The existence of Finn and Lon also was almost ignored. The song lyrics were awful to me. They were incredibly boring with almost no emotional pull to them. Nothing memorable at all. I would like to see the whole score reworked before heading to Broadway. Finally-a word on casting. Color blind casting has its time and place. This story revolves so much around rich, southern white people and that was not reflected. It was also confusing to have different races of actors portraying the characters at different times in their lives. My friend and I also swear young Allie kept alternating between two different actors! Very confusing. Still an enjoyable night out and an emotional story, but could be so much better with work!

Mitch Stewart from Chicago, Illinois

NOTEBOOK MUSICAL REVIEW

The play focuses on Noah and Allie and not so much the other characters in the book/movie. The acting and singing of all the Allie’s were fantastic! Noah’s character could sing well, but his character came across as possessive and creepy - to the point we were all cringing. It made it hard for my daughters and I to pull for the young and middle Noah… but the Old Noah was really good. I missed some of the classic lines from Noah too “if you’re a bird, I’m a bird”, “get in the water scene”, “it wasn’t over - and it’s still not over”, or the young witty Noah hanging from the Ferris wheel. I know you don’t want to copy it too much - just trying to think of ways to make the Noah character someone we root for - like we did in the movie or book. The music was all pretty good. Overall, I enjoyed it.

David Southerland from Chicago, Illinois

NOTHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT

With a unmemorable score and story that gets lost from curtain home to curtain down there is certainly many notes to fill a book but unfortunately these are notes on how to make this production entirely different from what was presented on the stage .

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