Ben Brantley, in his "New York Times" review of the 2003 Kennedy Center production, said "never seems to leave its starting point...Mr. Kind and Mr. McGillin execute this self-introduction [title song charmingly, translating wryness and ruefulness into a breezy soft-shoe sensibility. But in a sense, when they have finished the song they have already delivered the whole show..."Bounce," which features the vibrant Michele Pawk as a zestful gold digger (of both Klondike and jazz-age varieties) and Jane Powell as the Mizners' mother, only rarely kicks into a higher gear than the one that gently propels the opening duet...their trajectory feels as straight and flat as a time line in a history book. The bounce in "Bounce" is never very high...Much of the music, while whispering of earlier, more flashily complex Sondheim scores, has a conventional surface perkiness that suggests a more old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing kind of show than is this composer's wont. But his extraordinary gift for stealthily weaving dark motifs into a brighter musical fabric is definitely in evidence, mellifluously rendered in the peerless Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations."