BroadwayWorld reports:

If Encores can transfer many of its productions to Broadway, why not MasterVoices—starting with its current revival of Sweet Smell of Success? If you missed its brief run (November 21–22), keep an eye out for future MasterVoices offerings. The show proved to be an electric, full-throttle performance within the grand Frederick P. Rose Hall, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Based on Ernest Lehman’s 1955 novelette and the 1957 film adaptation, the musical follows Sidney Falco (Ali Louis Bourzgui), a hungry young press agent who dreams of becoming a powerful gossip columnist like the ruthless J. J. Hunsecker (Raúl Esparza). Hunsecker can make or break a career simply by slipping a name into his wildly influential column, read by 60 million people.

This cautionary tale – be careful what you wish for – spirals into a world of jealous manipulation, mob violence, and proto-cancel culture. John Guare paints an intentionally ugly landscape for his protagonist and his tyrannical mentor, but a glimmer of decency ultimately breaks through and wins in the end.

If the chief reason to revive this musical is to hear Marvin Hamlisch’s jazzy, propulsive score played live (I literally gasped at the thrilling opening measures of the overture), then no company is better suited than MasterVoices, with Ted Sperling serving as artistic director, stage director and conductor. The 17-piece orchestra delivered the score’s driving pulse from the overture straight through the exit music – music so exhilarating that many audience members stayed rooted in admiration until the last note. The score matches the electric brilliance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Dance at the Gym” from West Side Story.

Still grieving that Marvin Hamlisch left us so early – he died at 68 in 2012, never seeing his final musical The Nutty Professor (directed by Jerry Lewis) produced in New York – I can’t help but wonder what else he might have given us. Fortunately, we now have this successful revival of Sweet Smell of Success, a blazing tribute to his talent and a production that will linger in memory for years.

Read more here.