Not Ready for Prime Time @ the Newman Mills Theater

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The Play: Not Ready for Prime Time; a lackluster retelling of the early days of TV's “Saturday Night Live.”

Written by: Erik J. Rodriguez & Charles A. Sothers              Directed by:  Conor Bagley

One good thing: The show looks great (the costumes capture the bell-bottomed swagger of the era and the main set replicates the junk-shop whimsy of Studio 8H where every episode of “SNL” has been recorded for the past 50 years) and it sounds great too with an onstage band joyfully rocking out pop tunes from the ‘70s even before the show starts

One not-so-great thing: No one associated with the show seems to have come up with a reason for doing the show or any ideas about how to add something new to the legions of articles, books, documentaries and even movies that have been made about "SNL"; meanwhile the cast, while not untalented, can only muster up wan imitations of the lighting-in-a-bottle magic that made stars out of such real-life Not Ready For Prime Time Players as John Belushi and  Gilda Radnor 


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