| IT"S ONLY - NO, BARELY- A PLAY. | |
| Posted by: | portenopete 12:43 am EST 01/17/15 |
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| I am just out of IT'S ONLY A PLAY, which I got at TKTS for about $80. I know the box office has been down since Nathan Lane left, but the house looked pretty full to me (although I couldn't see upstairs admittedly). Everyone was in, although Matthew Broderick seemed to be nursing a voice/throat issue. There was at least one glass of water surreptitiously hidden which I noticed him pull from behind a plant to take a sip from. (Not sure why it seemed hidden, when presumably all the characters would be walking around with drinks in their hands.) I really didn't like the play or the production and found the tone to be awfully self-aggrandizing. If we're meant to take Peter as McNally himself- which I am assured by many theatrical cognoscenti is the case- then he had better have a good briefcase-full of terrific plays behind him in order for me to view him as a noble genius. McNally has had a thoroughly-respectable but spotty career- almost all of it Off-Broadway and regional, with a handful of musical books on Broadway (which will probably be his greatest legacy). The one piece I've seen of his that lives in my memory is MASTER CLASS, which I thought was ingeniously constructed and of course gorgeously performed by Zoe Caldwell. (THE RITZ- because of its audacious setting and even more audacious Googie Gomez- is also something I am glad I experienced and is probably one of the more successful post-farce era farces.) I remember liking LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION! without much passion and CORPUS CHRISTI I have no memory of at all except for the metal detector going into MTC and the cast of pulchritudinous young men, many of whom were on the cusp of stardom. I know I go on so I'll try and isolate a couple of things I found irksome. The heavy-handedness of the "satire". I am thinking that the wunderkind director is meant to be.....who? Trevor Nunn? Peter Brook? (The likelihood of a 30-ish director being knighted- let alone made a Lord- is far-fetched, especially when the only credits he has that are mentioned were an American regional show and something at RADA.) And the sneering tone towards the British just seems so personal and mean-spirited. I can understand that, back in the '80s, there was that snobbery/insecurity about the British invasion in musical theatre, but if anything, the directors were the ones who made those shows work. I can't help but think that McNally is bitter about never having had much success in Britain and then to see playwrights like Stoppard, Bennett and Hare come to Broadway and go home with Tonys. (The title of the fake Hare play referenced in the script is so broad and puerile that I cringed as the joke went on and on- and was met with silence as most of the audience would have no idea what kind of plays David Hare writes.) But leaving even the most disappointing Hare play- and I've seen a few of them- I would never deny that they were devoid of ideas or craft, and that's something I can't say about IT'S ONLY A PLAY. I also questioned why the characters would allow a critic- especially one who has been cruel to them in the past- to remain in a private bedroom at a private party. I admit I've seen critics lurking about at opening parties, but in a theatre lobby milling about in a big crowd. I've seen it noted in a review, but Julia Budder's vapidity was hard to buy as a lead (and sole) producer. I like the idea of skewering all those investors we see crowding each other on the Tony daïs, but I don't buy any of them could ever single-handedly get a show to Broadway. (And McNally- knowing what's good for him- makes her a moral compass, to boot.) I thought the only performance that seemed to conjure up a real person was Martin Short's, who is not terribly well-cast in a role penned for Coco/Lane, but actually seemed to care about what he was saying. To say the opposite is true of Matthew Broderick is putting it mildly. I haven't seen him onstage since THE WIDOW CLAIRE thirty years ago. I thought the deadpan automaton schtick I saw/heard on HOW TO SUCCEED and PRODUCERS clips was pretty right for Leo and Ponty, but I am at a loss to fathom what he thinks he's achieving here. And does Jack O'Brien like it? Or is he powerless? Stockard Channing would seem to be at least twenty-five years too old to play a role originally played by Joanna Gleason in the mid-'80s, and there's a very different feel about a 40-ish addict than a 70-ish addict. Katie Finneran does her best with dud material and manages a few chuckles. Maulik Pancholy- who always made me laugh on 30 ROCK- seems like a high school student here: monotonous high-pitched voice, barely-discernible English accent (tough when your Englishness is the main character trait) and seemed to stop acting whenever he wasn't speaking. F. Murray Abraham I found kind of on the money: blissfully clueless about his reputation, which I'm always amazed about when I meet critics. And I'm glad Micah Stock is getting good buzz, but I found him to be a collection of tics and poses and drawls, none of which built to a believable character. Maybe I'm swimming against the tide of what New York theatregoers want. They dutifully applauded and stood up when Broderick was feeding them the cues in the dribble-off final moments of the show, and they seemed to exit the theatre quite satisfied. But for long stretches- when the playwright should have been crafting character and situation and mood- they seemed to be adrift and unsure of what to make of it. I'm not sure they realized it in the end, but I don't think they had a very good time. | |
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| Previous: | Martha Plimpton on WNYC - kieran 03:07 am EST 01/17/15 |
| Next: | re: IT"S ONLY - NO, BARELY- A PLAY. - Mc1227 09:20 am EST 01/19/15 |
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