"BEST SHOWS OF 2011": calling it "the best new American musical since "Spring Awakening", Bloomberg News included "The Blue Flower in its list of "Best Shows of 2011", along with: "Jerusalem"; "The Book of Mormon"; "Blood and Gifts"; "Venus in Fur"; "Chinglish"; "Completeness"; "Stick Fly"; "Sweet and Sad", and "Other Desert Cities".
"I was moved [while watching The Blue Flower] when I suddenly realized that I was watching a groundbreaking new form."
"The most ambitious and virtuosic music theater score I've heard in a very long time."
"The Blue Flower is one of the most creative and original pieces of musical theater I have ever encountered — funny, moving, incredibly theatrical.... It creates a completely personal musical world and yet is enormously evocative and universal."
"A high minded muddle . . . that may leave you scratching your head."
"Jim and Ruth Bauer's indisputable masterpiece is one of the season's most electrifying and unmissable musicals. Remarkable writing, so colorful, so rich in its characterizations, so cohesive in the interplay betweeen the music, lyrics, dialogue and the very atmosphere that surrounds it all. Exquisitely crafted and realized, a moving and magnificent work."
"An adventurous, one-of-a-kind and perhaps unforgettable affair. A musical theater piece as rare and provocative as a blue flower."
"The Blue Flower is ravishing, enthralling, and the best new musical since 'Spring Awakening'."
"An ambitious and visually arresting musical about art, politics, culture, science, and really everything else."
"Intensely creative and exhilarating. Exotic and playful, suffused with empathy, this "Flower" blooms with a haunting beauty."
"A wondrously dreamy, beautifully incremented multi-media confluence of truth and fantasy, art and history. The way the Bauers have literally, figuratively and symbolically configured life, love and art into a stunningly expressionistic musical collage is quite a feat. It's a sensorial treat."
"A gorgeous kaleidoscope of sight and sound . . . at once familiar and strange, funny and shattering. I left with tears running down my cheeks."
"Abundant in imagery and imagination . . . an extravagant production."
“A modern Dadaist masterpiece . . . the most exciting and necessary kind of theatre possible.”
"One of the best musicals I have ever seen. It's a serious, philosophical, meditative work that incorporates a huge variety of art to further it impact. The storytelling is organic, moving seamlessly from past to present, from song to scene."
"One of Greater Boston's best shows of the year. A must-see event . . . What a wonderful gift . . . Go unwrap it."
“Brave, strong, unexpected and exhilarating . . . as delightful as it is moving, as smart as it is beautiful.”
"A collage-like meditation on art and history . . . pulsing with creative experimentation"
"Genuinely moving . . . zestily performed . . . boongala boongala!"
“History that’s made breathtaking . . .”
“A spectacularly inventive blend of gorgeous music, historical drama, and videography.”
“A unique, intelligent and wondrously creative evening of musical theater.”
“An extraordinarily moving evening . . .”