meretricious

The production can’t hide the show’s meretricious heart, but like the song that Scherzinger endows with Puccini-esque splendor, Lloyd has discovered “new ways to dream” Webber’s musical.

But as a character study, with Holocaust themes deepening the stakes of the domestic turmoil, the play holds up extremely well in its critique of a world that has lost its capacity for silence and that is prepared to sacrifice literature for meretricious distraction.

Or maybe, seen with a cold eye, meretricious.

These shows raised the bar for musical drama and proved to Broadway that meretricious soullessness isn’t the only way.

The economic crash of 1929 descended on America like an ice age, ending a meretricious prosperity.