‘Freestyle Love Supreme’ Review: With a Co-Creator Leaving, Musical Improv Show Has a Bit of Poignance Amid the Mirth in Pasadena

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThere aren’t many Tony-winning productions in which one of the veteran creator-performers can announce that he’s retiring, right in the middle of a performance… and do it in song form… and have it be part of the natural flow of the evening.

But that’s what happened at the opening night of “Freestyle Love Supreme” at the Pasadena Playhouse Thursday night, as the high-profile musical revue reached the final stop of an 11-city tour.

Situational silliness abounded, as is the show’s natural wont, but so did some weirdly, wonderfully emotional moments that proved that improv and tears, while not necessarily natural bedfellows, are not mutually exclusive.

Anthony Veneziale, who created the show with Lin-Manuel Miranda and director Thomas Kail in circa 2004 (and who has acted as master of ceremonies for most of its recent revival runs), took an improvisational song in the middle of the show to sing to his wife and daughters in the audience about his guilt that he’d spend too much time away from them. “I’m finishing this tour, that is it for me / I’m hanging up the spurs from the Freestyle Love Supreme / It’s true, this is like the last show that I will do,” Veneziale rapped, adding that he had just six performances to go before quitting. “You sacrificed enough, no more / I want to spend every minute with you and our daughters / I hope you know I put you up on altars.” Not particularly funny, this interlude, but the audience was willing to forgive it that, as, to his left, singer Aneesa Folds then wailed, “This show blows my mind every day, like wow / You see, audience, we just learned that shit right now.”The rest of the performances at the Pasadena Playhouse, continuing.