As Brantley writes, "The exception is Ms. Perez, who makes the ambitious, angry Googie an electrical force indeed, endowing Googie with a rabid self-belief and willpower that lasso your attention and hold it tight. More than the boys in the club, this gal (and don’t mistake her for a transvestite, or you’ll be sorry) burns with the conviction of her desire. That’s the desire to be famous. And it turns Googie’s misbegotten medley of show tunes, which concludes the first act, into a few of the funniest minutes on Broadway. She is the raw, ugly side of the lusty ambition and love of showbiz that animate all performers determined to make it on Broadway. If Googie had talent she would be a star. As it is, her confident incompetence is the best reason to see 'The Ritz.'"

Rob Kendt of Newsday thought, "At its best, Mantello's cast whirls around Scott Pask's multi-storied set like figures on a cuckoo-clock face, with the fey, needy Chris (Brooks Ashmanskas) as a kind of benign ringmaster. But for all the spring in its step, the play can't help but show its age. In the absence of farce's most essential ingredient, an exquisite pretzel of a plot that twists its characters around in a perfectly closed circuit, 'The Ritz' squeezes its laughs from caricatures well past their sell-by date." And he thought, "Perez is a game and endearingly fearless performer, she doesn't quite hit all the registers of irony and desperation in this quintessential hopeless wanna-be."

Justin Bergman of the AP was more pleased with the production, writing, "The Roundabout has assembled a delightful cast, including Rosie Perez, Kevin Chamberlin and former gay porn star Ryan Idol who looks far too comfortable dressed only in a sheer white towel. Pluses also include the work of Tony Award-winning set designer Scott Pask, who has created what could be the Pantheon of all bathhouses — a three-level palace of cherry-red doors, hidden passages and cutaway rooms. The play is meant to be a farce and Mantello gets top-notch performances from his actors, chief among them Perez. She plays the washed-up lounge singer so perfectly, one almost wishes the play revolved around her rather than a silly Italian family squabble."

However, Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News was disappointed, noting that, "director Joe Mantello is aces at creating still moments. The merrily melodramatic prologue gets things off to a good start. And sly use of a Donna Summer song lets us inside the mind of Ritz regular Claude (a sharp and amusing Patrick Kerr) who likes pudgy men, like Proclo. Mantello is less skillful when things are in motion. Slapstick chases and physical business, like when Googie accosts Proclo on a bed, are clumsy. What should be airy ends up a cement soufflé." As for the cast, he thought, "Chamberlin, a fine comic actor, sets the wrong tone. He's too low-key lovable and not jangled enough. Perez injects Spanglish, spark and spunk, especially in her intentionally off-key medley, a scene that now suffers from been- there, seen-this, a million times. As Chris, a flamboyant bathhouse patron out to get busy, Brooks Ashmanskas delivers irresistible charm, even if he can't make his character more than a kimono-clad cliché."

But Clive Barnes of the New York Post disagrees: "If you need just one reason to visit 'The Ritz,' I can give it to you in two words: Rosie Perez. Her marvelously mangled medley of Broadway hits is in itself worth the price of admission: She never puts a wrong note right in a virtuoso hit parade of the absurd. Googie deserves Broadway, but does Broadway deserve Googie?" Barnes thought, "McNally's written the best Feydeau farce since Feydeau, where eccentrics in seedy hotels chase one another wildly in search of love, or at least sex, in a merry-go-round of misunderstanding. Where McNally trumps Feydeau is in having Googie mistake the businessman for a Broadway producer, with hilarious consequences." And, he thought, "director Joe Mantello, always in tune with McNally, has gotten a perfect ensemble performance. The adorable Chamberlin is pitch-perfect as Proclo, the harassed businessman beset by slowly dawning misunderstandings and fear of sudden death. Brooks Ashmanskas is all high spirits and girlish self-assurance as Chris, self-appointed queen of the night; Patrick Kerr is splendid in his single-minded quest for masculine weight; Terrence Riordan is handsomely naive as the dim, high-voiced detective; Lenny Venito is finely grotesque as the businessman's brother-in-law; and Ashlie Atkinson is properly conflicted as Proclo's wife."

For Variety's David Rooney , "the star of Roundabout's Broadway revival of 'The Ritz' is Scott Pask's principal set, a gleaming, three-tiered pleasure dome depicting the interior of the eponymous gay bathhouse, studded with line upon line of bordello-red doors. But while the traffic moves frenetically around its maze of stairs, corridors and private rooms, and those doors slam ceaselessly open and shut, Terrence McNally's 1975 comedy mostly groans along as a pallid echo of a time both wilder and more innocent, when gay sex was still a risque subject. As in his starry but unsatisfying revival of 'The Odd Couple' two seasons back, Joe Mantello's slick direction is not always employed to best effect in comedy. In his overproduced staging of "The Ritz," he plays it broad, fast and loud but reveals no feel for farce, which requires a deft balance of giddiness and precision that also eludes most of his cast."

"Which is not to say there's nothing here to enjoy. McNally's dialogue is peppered with witty zingers, and he crafted two irresistible comic creations in swishy flamer Chris and hot-tempered Latina singer Googie Gomez, whose showbiz ambition is undiminished by her absence of talent. Brooks Ashmanskas steals every scene as Chris, amplifying McNally's skill at humanizing the most extreme of gay stereotypes. As Googie, Rosie Perez steps with mixed success into the gaudy platform shoes worn by Rita Moreno in the original Broadway run and subsequent film. Perez (looking disconcertingly like Eartha Kitt when she dons a turban) doesn't seem entirely comfortable in the screechy role. Struggling with an unevenly exaggerated Hispanic accent, she fares better with the physical comedy than the verbiage, notably in her bathhouse cabaret act, a deliciously awful medley of butchered show tunes."

(Photo: Studio 54 Theater)