Following two very good reviews, The Times They Are A-Changin’ gets a bad review this morning in the LA Times. It’s by Charles McNulty, who’s described as a “staff writer,” which I guess means he’s not a theater critic: “A dancin’ Dylan with two left feet.”

“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the oddly misconceived Twyla Tharp dance-concert staging of his songs that opened Thursday at San Diego’s Old Globe, tries to do for Dylan what “Movin’ Out” did for Billy Joel. In short, create an event that will lure baby boomers to plunk down a lot of money to rock in their seats while deliriously graceful dancers interpret beloved old tunes.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this proposition, especially when the choreographer-director is as abundantly resourceful as Tharp, whom you can always count on for breathtakingly precise artistry. And Dylan, who now licenses music to Starbucks, isn’t exactly above the commercial fray these days, if he ever was.

Still, songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Desolation Row” occupy a different cultural place than “Just the Way You Are” and “Uptown Girl.” And no matter how well wrought the execution, the kitschy aesthetic of that newly popular hybrid form, the “dance-ical,” seems a better fit for Joel than for Dylan, one of the few contemporary singer-songwriters to earn a place in “The Norton Anthology of Poetry.”

So, Dylan’s too good for this kind of treatment, the reviewer appears to be saying. Since RWB won’t see the musical until it gets to Broadway, I’m in no position to debate the reviews. Suffice it to say, this kind of reaction would have to be expected from a lot of people who simply don’t want to hear these songs outside of the context with which they are familiar. The fact that the first two reviews from regular theater critics didn’t take this tone, and were very positive, is, I think, probably a much better indication of the worth of the Tharp/Dylan musical on its own terms.

Later he complains that the “historical dimension” of Dylan songs like Masters of War and Maggie’s Farm is lost in the context of the play. Well, yes; that’s obviously the idea. For him, it doesn’t work – he doesn’t want to let go of that history. The more important thing is how people without such hang-ups will respond to the show.

He just plain doesn’t like the circus context of the musical, and pins the blame on Tharp:

Tharp strikes an unsatisfying compromise, setting Dylan’s songs in the context of a bogged-down traveling circus that’s roiling with all kinds of surreal plotlines.

Of-course he has little choice but to blame Tharp for the circus idea and the “surreal plotlines,” since Dylan gets no writing credit other than for the songs. Nevertheless, as I’ve indicated from the beginning, anyone who believes that setting this thing in a run-down traveling circus led by “Captain Arab” was not Dylan’s own concept is nuts. I think that the entire general plot outline is Dylan’s. As with Masked and Anonymous, it amuses him not to credit himself, for whatever reason.

So anyhow, the wheel stays in spin.

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