All That Chat - My reviews of: Curious Incident / Only A Play / Can’t Take It With You / Country House

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My reviews of: Curious Incident / Only A Play / Can’t Take It With You / Country House

Posted by:	jesse21 11:26 am EDT 09/15/14

- Since I’ll be away from New York from tonight through most of the remainder of this year, I’m catching the fall season on Broadway in spurts and often at early previews as I have this month and will be doing again in October. Here are my opinions of four plays now on the boards, yet to open. I think I’ll save Love Letters for the Anjelica Huston-Martin Sheen edition in January. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time The question in the air at the first preview was whether Alex Sharp as the lead Christopher Boone would deliver. No need for concern. This May 2014 Juilliard graduate with no professional stage experience is splendid: appealing, touching and sometimes painful to watch as the math wiz with Asperger's syndrome. In addition, his slight build renders a very believable 15-year-old character. This hugely imaginative import from Britain’s National Theatre, written by Simon Stephens from Mark Haddon’s popular book and brilliantly directed by Marianne Elliott (War Horse), is everything its record-setting seven Olivier Awards suggest and that includes a dazzling production design. (This re-staging for proscenium from the original Cottesloe black box production seen on movie screens via NT Live is equally stunning.) The stage adaption engages the mind and the heart simultaneously in ideal balance to memorable effect. This one should not be missed. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ”The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” opens Sunday, October 5, 2014, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th Street, New York City. Seen at a preview on Sept. 10 (started 8:10pm; intermission at 9:23pm; curtain back up at 9:42pm; ended 10:45pm). Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes including a 20-minute intermission). Open-ended run. Tickets currently on sale through March 29, 2015. Link to website. It’s Only A Play Playwright Terrence McNally complains about the trend toward 90-minute, intermission-less plays on Broadway. Yet his play, poorly “modernized” to the present day from its original 1982 version, offers tedious repetition in a two-and-a-half hour running time. He owes Nathan Lane big time, a star who can wring laughs from lines as weak as these. As with The Addams Family, Mr. Lane is so good and so far above the material, they ought to just hand over 90% of the proceeds to him and let the other involved persons fight over the remainder. The play is about an opening night party for a flop in the novice producer’s Manhattan brownstone. Mr. McNally’s new stuff consists of bitchy one-liners on the current Broadway scene that can be appreciated only by devotees. There is additional ribbing about the theater in general that the entire audience can comprehend. And then there is deadly preaching about the current state of theater which is spoken by an ill-at-ease Matthew Broderick as the playwright in the script. (When he and Mr. Lane are paired, box office sales take off: first The Producers, then The Odd Coupe and now this.) When It’s Only A Play was new, it was funny and fresh because it was first to satirize The Great White Way with specifically named references. Soon after, however, the material was far out-shined by Gerard Alessandrini’s Forbidden Broadway. Today, the territory is ‘been-there, done-that.’ With the exception of Nathan Lane as the visiting sitcom star, nobody else in the star-studded cast is any good. Well, Stockard Channing as an alcoholic over-the-hill actress does land a few laughs. Rupert Grint, unrecognizable in makeup and costume as the hot shot director, needs help in timing his shtick from director Jack O’Brien. Newcomer Micah Stock, a Jim Parsons type, is saddled with two unfunny running gags as hired help for the evening. F. Murray Abraham as a drama critic displays no affinity for this kind of comedy. Megan Mullally is even less funny as the first-time producer hostess and is mostly inaudible. Mr. O’Brien and cast might improve matters by opening. (At the sixth preview I attended, Mr. Broderick was simply awful.) But then, I have little hope that Mr. McNally will improve his script in which much of he material still remains stubbornly stuck in 1982. ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ”It’s Only A Play” opens Thursday, October 9, 2014, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th Street, New York City. Seen at a preview on Sept. 2 (started 8:06pm; intermission at 9:25pm; curtain back up at 9:45pm; ended 10:38pm). Running time: 2½ hours including a 15-minute intermission. Limited engagement. Tickets currently on sale through January 4, 2015. Link to website. You Can’t Take It With You Like It’s Only A Play, You Can’t Take It With You has an assortment of loopy characters. The difference is that in the latter, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman have grounded the comedy in those characters whereas Terrence McNally simply uses his characters as mouthpieces for one-liners. The 1936 “Can’t Take It” is getting a loving revival that’s nicely directed in proper period-style by Scott Ellis. This is an old-fashioned Broadway comedy in three acts about a family of individualists living in a house near Columbia University. It is best enjoyed, I think, by pretending you are back-in-time to a gentler era when eccentrics were more rarefied and when the IRS (as portrayed here) and Bolsheviks made for topical humor. James Earl Jones has top billing and he’s very likable as the granddad. But this production’s highlight is Kristine Nielsen (robbed of a Tony for Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike), an ideal Penelope Sycamore (the mother in the household) which is, thankfully, the largest role or else seems that way in Ms. Nielsen’s portrayal. In a large cast, just about everybody is good. I particularly enjoyed, besides Ms. Nielsen, Annaleigh Ashford as her younger, ballet-dancing daughter Essie; the trio of men who live under the same roof: Mark Linn-Baker (father); Patrick Kerr (Mr. DePinna) and Will Brill (Essie’s husband Ed). Also as Essie’s sister Alice, Rose Byrne of TV fame makes a Broadway debut that is most charming. Two well-known stage actresses have what are essentially cameos. Julie Halston scores as a drunken actress, but Elizabeth Ashley was not getting laughs in her one scene as a dethroned Russian princess. ★ ★ ★½ ☆ ☆ ”You Can’t Take It With You” opens Sunday, September 28, 2014, at the Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street, New York City. Seen at a preview on Sept. 5 (Act I started 8:06pm; intermission at 8:49pm. Act II started at 8:59pm; intermission at 9:38pm. Act III started at 9:48pm; ended 10:17pm.) Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including two 10-minute intermissions. Limited engagement. Tickets currently on sale through January 4, 2015. Link to website. The Country House In the second act of The Country House, a black sheep, failed actor (played by Eric Lange of various TV series) has turned to writing plays. The first is being read aloud by all five of the other characters (mostly his relatives). The reading of the play-within-the-play doesn’t go well and actually brings to mind the deficiencies in Donald Margulies’ latest work which feels like something we’ve seen before, not to mention having redundant dialogue. Example: a famous television star is referred to as an actor; he labels himself a “celebrity” instead and then goes on unnecessarily making the obvious distinction between the two terms. But mostly, this play doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be: Chekhov or The Royal Family or maybe Hay Fever. It is at its best early on when it is a comedy wherein the three women on stage want to bed that “celebrity” (a very good Daniel Sunjata). The characters are gathered at the longtime Williamstown, Mass summer home of a theatrical family, a retreat for the participants who exercise and refresh their stage chops annually in short runs of classic or serious plays as a break from other less demanding endeavors on big and small screens. But in Act 2, “House” turns serious and centers on Mr. Lange’s sad sack character and the lifetime distance between him and his mother, a famous film and stage actress portrayed by Blythe Danner. The drama has not been fleshed out enough prior to these scenes to be effective. Blythe Danner has the kind of easy role where she flits in and out saying charming things. Her character is constantly being described as one of the all-time great actresses who still remains ravishingly beautiful, attributes that Ms. Danner I’m guessing is pleased to hear eight times a week. Others in the cast are also fine: Kate Jennings Grant, Sarah Steele and David Rasche. For the record, Daniel Sullivan is the director. Essentially, The Country House is feel-good theater for older subscriber audiences. ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ”The Country House” opens Thursday, October 2, 2014, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th Street, New York City. Seen at a preview on Sept. 11 (started 8:06pm; intermission at 9:18pm; resumed at 9:32pm; ended 10:20pm). Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including a 15-minute intermission. Limited engagement. Tickets currently on sale through November 23, 2014. Link to website. - Jesse -

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