“Vibrant and funny, desperate and elegiac… will shatter your heart”
“More of a song cycle than a traditionally structured, plot-driven musical, ‘The Beautiful Lady’ is set at the Stray Dog Café, a real-life St. Petersburg cabaret where the owner, Boris Pronin (Starr Busby), hosted such literary luminaries as Anna Akhmatova (Kate Fuglei)… vibrant and funny, desperate and elegiac, with some so lovely they will shatter your heart.”
-Elisabeth Vincentelli
NYT Critic’s Pick
“She vividly does during this hallucination on the final night of her life”
“Like Hair or Swados’s own Tony-nominated musical, Runaways, The Beautiful Lady is most interested in capturing a specific time and place… It is up to the only survivor of the bunch, Anna Akhmatova (Kate Fuglei), to remember — and she vividly does during this hallucination on the final night of her life.”
-Zachary Stewart
“Lively and inviting… memorable performances”
“The opening number of this resurrected musical from the late Elizabeth Swados is so lively and inviting that it reminded me of ‘Comedy Tonight’ in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum… Thanks to the score, Anne Bogart’s engaging, energetic direction, and some memorable performances, the show rewards a broader audience than might normally be drawn to ninety minutes of poets and poetry.”
-Jonathan Mandell