“KELLI O’HARA CONFIRMS HER POSITION AS ONE OF THE MOST EXQUISITELY EXPRESSIVE STARS IN MUSICAL THEATER. Passion is always as much about its own fiery existence as its object. And when Ms. O’Hara sings, we believe unconditionally in the fire, and why it both exalts and troubles her. She sings in a voice that courses from flutelike fragility to thundering affirmation and back again, and the audience is lost in ecstasy.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times
“MOMENTS OF MUSICAL THEATER NIRVANA! Kelli O’Hara sings like a dream and not only delivers a finely tuned performance, but she also has inspired composer Jason Robert Brown to new heights, with songs that brilliantly mix a sense of intimacy, near operatic grandeur and heartbreaking beauty.” – New York Post
“THE VOICES SOAR! Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale come just short of blowing the roof off theGerald Schoenfeld Theatrein this touching doomed romance that features a superb, thrilling score by Jason Robert Brown.” – Associated Press
“SMART, POWERFUL AND RAPTUROUS! The Bridges of Madison County is a very serious musical indeed, with a gorgeous score by Jason Robert Brown. It is also one of the few recent Broadway shows to take up the challenge laid down by the great midcentury works of Rodgers &Hammerstein and their cohort: to tell stories that weld important sociological upheavals to personal conflicts and somehow make them sing.” – New York Magazine
“BRIDGES BURNS BRIGHTLY – this is a new work that plays like a classic! Kelli O’Hara sounds ravishing, and she and Stephen Pasquale—in the performance of his career—generate that rarest of Broadway commodities: a genuine spark of erotic heat.” – Time Out NY
“IRRESISTIBLE! Bart Sher’s fluid direction brings all the elements together, painting a beautifully intimate portrait shaded in natural tones. Jason Robert Brown’s love songs are marvelous extensions of the heart, soaring expansively to heights of desire. Stephen Pasquale is excellent. As a charming, troubled soul, he sings with the kind of power and conviction that leaves no doubt a new star is born. And the stunningly gifted Kelli O’Hara should win her fifth Tony nomination with this role, the most finely tuned of her illustrious career, and she sings her heart out. Expect to be utterly smitten.” – NY1
“JASON ROBERT BROWN’S WARM, EXPANSIVE SCORE IS AS MUSICALLY EXCITING AS ANYTHING HEARD ON BROADWAY SINCE STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S GLORY DAYS.” – Wall Street Journal
“A RAVISHINGLY BEAUTIFUL MUSICAL! Kelli O’Hara is at her most emotionally and musically impeccable, and she and Steven Pasquale are magnificently magnetic. Jason Robert Brown’s score is marvelous, the orchestrations exceptionally sensitive.” – Newsday
“BLISSFULLY BEAUTIFUL WITH SHIMMERING STAR TURNS AND ONE OF THE BEST BROADWAY SCORES OF THE LAST DECADE! It’s a familiar, yet stylish tale with pulse-quickening passions that also earns its tears and stays with you well after the last lovely notes. Kelli O’Hara gives a performance of rare and radiant grace. With the rugged good looks made for the part, Steven Pasquale matches her moment by moment with his virile vocals.” – Daily News
“Bridges features Jason Robert Brown’s most emotionally gripping score, and Kelli O’Hara delivers a radiant, self-assured performance, faintly perfumed with the exotic. The smoldering Stephen Pasquale, possessed of a quaking baritone, exudes a romance-novel allure that makes his Robert believable as the answer to a prayer Francesca did not know she was uttering.” – The Washington Post
“BRIDGES IS TERRIFIC! Kelli O’Hara is just so good you find yourself waiting for the next beautiful song. Her Co-star Steven Pasquale, making his Broadway debut, has an equally marvelous voice and when the two of them get together, it’s magic. This is an evening you will cherish long after the show is over.” – NPR
“Jason Robert Brown has written a lush and deeply romantic score, filled with rich and melodic duets that show off its leads’ terrific voices.” – Entertainment Weekly
“IS THERE ANYTHING KELLI O’HARA CAN’T DO? SHE IS DAMN NEAR PERFECT. The creative team of Jason Robert Brown, Marsha Norman and Bartlett Sher, could not be better-suited to a musical adaptation of the 1992 novella by Robert James Waller.” – WNBC TV
“A DAM BURSTS AND A FLOOD OF EMOTION FILLS THE THEATER. Like a bolt of lightning piercing the atmosphere, it’s a sweeping, powerful declaration of love. Brown has written by far the most powerful and luscious score of his career, an attempt at something big and meaningful that he totally pulls off. Mission definitely accomplished. The two lovers generate tear, a lump in the throat of the audience. – The Record
“A nearly perfect melding of story, arias, dialogue and tunes. Jason Robert Brown’s melodies shimmer like sunlight. Marsha Norman and director Bartlett Sher work magic.” – The Wrap
“BROADWAY RARELY SEES TWO SUCH WONDERFUL SINGING PERFORMANCES, and things are mighty incandescent when Jason Robert Brown’s glorious songs are being sung. He’s at his lushest and most radiant here. BRIDGES offers the sort of robustly romantic Broadway-style singing–and writing–that brings to mind such treasures as Carousel and The Most Happy Fella. Steven Pasquale has been a hidden musical theatre secret, but Bridges demonstrates that he is a top leading man.” – The Huffington Post
Credits: