Hamlet

GRADE: B-

By William Shakespeare. Directed by David Esbjornson. The Duke on 42nd Street. (CLOSED)

Most critics agree that the success of a production of Hamlet depends in large part on the actor playing the role, but what they can't agree on is whether or not Christian Camargo is up to the task. In his New York Times review, Charles Isherwood calls Camargo's portrayal "virtually perfect." Most critics think he is talented, but still has a way to go when it comes to some of the more reflective moments in the play. Director David Esbjornson's choices also get mixed reviews, such as his splicing together the first two scenes.

The New York Times A-
(Charles Isherwood) The strengths of Mr. Camargo’s portrayal begin with his fluid, natural handling of the language. The almost offhand lucidity with which he speaks the role establishes an instant intimacy with the audience that is sustained throughout the play. Whether he is probing the sore spots in his mind in soliloquy or putting on a frenzied mockery of madness, Mr. Camargo’s Hamlet is powerfully, painfully transparent, so that we seem to be thinking his thoughts alongside him, or reading an open book with increasing respect, sympathy and understanding. The variety of Hamlet’s mind — its ability to encompass impulses both dark and light, a hunger for oblivion but also a lively appreciation for humor, friendship and love — is brought home with a fresh-feeling sharpness because Mr. Camargo’s Hamlet is fully present in every moment of the play, as much in his joyful encounter with the Players or in his easy rapport with Horatio as when he is lacerating himself for his inability to act. As each facet of his personality is etched with clarity, the image of an individual man taking shape before us also becomes a portrait of human consciousness itself, in all its complexity, its inward anguish and its beauty.

Back Stage A-
(Ron Cohen) Director David Esbjornson's handling of his 15 actors and his fluid staging realize much of the play's poetic sweep and narrative complexities, making artful use of the compact open thrust of Antje Ellerman's set design. Even with judicious cuts to the text, the show, including two intermissions, runs nearly three and a half hours, but it moves forward at a steady clip. Christian Camargo brings intelligence and passion to the title role and infuses the soliloquies with luminous clarity. It's painful to pick at such a monumental performance, but at times it comes across as a bit calculated. Lacking is some of the spontaneity that can resolve the mercurial contradictions in Hamlet's behavior as the troubled prince, charged with revenging his father's murder, does battle with his conscience, his soul, and the world around him.

CurtainUp A-
(Elyse Sommer) Even at a hefty three hours and fifteen minutes, some cuts and downsizing of plot elements are inevitable, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Craig Pattison and Richard Topol) and all the much quoted verbal gems made the cut. Best of all, there's no loss of the intimate connection between actors and audience that comes with the large houses needed to accommodate superstar productions. The Duke's thrust stage has the audience close to the actors, with Hamlet even sitting right in the aisle as if part of the audience to watch the play-within-the-play also known as the mousetrap scene. What about this Hamlet? Christian Carmago is at times somewhat distant, with a tendency to be more outraged than melancholy and indecisive. Director David Esbjornson not only moved his "to be or not to be" soliloquy to resume the play after the first intermission but has Carmago interrupt himself and replay it — an amusing filip which somewhat offsets the fact that these don't seem to be the words uttered by a man contemplating suicide. Generally speaking, no complaints about the clarity of Carmago's line delivery. Unlike older more mature actors for whom this role is a career milestone, having young actors to play Hamlet, Horatio (Tom Hammond), Laertes (Graham Hamilton), and the very briefly appearing Fortinbras (Sean Haberle), make this very much a young man's play about sons dealing with the loss of a father.

The New Yorker B+
(Unsigned) David Esbjornson’s stylish production—Gertrude looks as if she’s headed to a catwalk—uses a sleek black-and-white palette, reminiscent of an expensive chess set. Is it too sleek? Perhaps it might be, were the actors not so fluid with the verse.

Associated Press B
(Jennifer Farrar) David Esbjornson's direction conveys the subtle human flaws, passion and inconsistencies in all the characters, though some seem overly restrained. King Claudius (Casey Biggs) is almost a figurehead, only coming to life late in the play with his repentance speech. Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, played as an icy socialite by Alyssa Bresnahan, finally defrosts when confronted by her son in the bedroom scene. Camargo gives way to occasional ranting that livens up the production. He seems overly forceful, rather than rueful, in the "get thee to a nunnery" speech, shouting violently at his former girlfriend, Ophelia (a sensitive portrayal by Jennifer Ikeda.) But for the most part, Camargo gives Hamlet undeniable weight and depth.

Nytheatre.com B
(Alyssa Simon) In the playbill for Theatre For A New Audience's Hamlet, Jeffrey Horowitz, the artistic director and founder, states that their 2008-09 season is called HEAVYWEIGHTS (with all caps intended) because the plays, by Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Edward Bond, "explore power, marriage and family, good and evil, and God and humanity. They are as immediate as today's headlines." David Esbjornson, Hamlet's director, stays true to this intent. For example, he incorporates Arthurian legend to explore honor and familial duty and uses interesting text cuts to comment on current events. While big themes and contemporary issues are explored in powerful and fascinating ways, what is missing is a more personal story. I believe, however, with such a strong cast, they will find their own way into the text as the run progresses.

Village Voice B
(Alexis Soloski) In the role of the Danish prince, Esbjornson has cast Christian Camargo, a strong and lean ectomorph. Indeed, Camargo seemed the chief inducement for nearly a dozen giddy young women who laced the audience at a recent preview. During the intervals, they lavished praise upon his inky hair and pointed cheekbones. As for the play, well, they were sure it was very good—but, oh, those flashing eyes!

Theatermania C-
(David Finkle) For English-speaking actors, the role of Hamlet has the same effect Mount Everest exercises on mountaineers. They have to climb it because it's there. But the ascent is treacherous and not everyone gets to plant a flag at the top. Take Christian Camargo, who's assumed the part in David Esbjornson's Theatre for a New Audience production of Hamlet at the Duke on 42nd Street. He gets far up the steep incline but advances no farther, waylaid by the four famous soliloquies. And a Hamlet without a thoroughly successful Hamlet is, of course, inescapably compromised... Taking the dare on with what's often called the world's greatest play, Esbjornson is roughly as effective as Camargo -- except in one brief sequence he handles so perceptively it's tempting to give him full marks for the enterprise. Although the Bard leaves Gertrude's complicity in the older Hamlet's poisoning by Claudius open to interpretation, Esbjornson sees her as unaware and, as the play unfolds, increasingly suspicious of the man with whom she posted "with dexterity to incestuous sheets." As a result, there's a point late in the play when Claudius approaches Gertrude and she subtly recoils from him. It's a gesture that may never have been seen before and may never be seen again -- but it's a dilly.

Variety D+
(Marilyn Stasio) Antje Ellerman's minimalist set of open walls and clean-lined occasional pieces (which seem to float above the reflecting black tiles of the stage) and Elizabeth Hope Clancy's monochromatic costume palette (industrial grey, relieved by infusions of pearl grey, bridal white and biker black) suggest some cool post-modern world where objects speak in symbols (e.g., a plain silver sash draped over a business suit says: "I'm the King here"). If Esbjornson means to strip the play of its conventional trappings, it seems odd to raid Gothic traditions for Jonathan Fried's awe-inspiring Ghost, who makes one memorable appearance with a hellish demon riding on his back. (As Horatio, Tom Hammond reacts to this fearsome vision with a naturalness that is wonderfully uncool.)... There are big inconsistencies in the way Esbjornson treats his working themes of youth-versus-age, thought-versus-action, and truth-versus-vengeance. But aside from all that, it would be nice to know what to make of those wriggling worms of light that periodically appear all over everybody's faces.

Time Out New York D
(David Cote) We’ve seen too many Hamlets to be impressed by this modern-dress, abstract-minimalist approach, which offers scant thrills or insights. Christian Camargo is handsome and brooding enough for the title role, but his merely adequate readings of the great soliloquies unfold into a dramatic vacuum. Casey Biggs’s Claudius does the requisite pawing of Gertrude, Tom Hammond is yet another staunch Horatio, and Jennifer Ikeda proves that no contemporary actor can pull off Ophelia’s mad scenes. As Polonius, the venerable Alvin Epstein is darling but uninspired.

The New York Times A- 12; Back Stage A- 12; CurtainUp A- 12; The New Yorker B+ 11; Associated Press B 10; Nytheatre.com B 10; Village Voice B 10; Theatermania C- 6; Variety D+ 5; TONY D 4; TOTAL: 92/10 = 9.2 (B-)

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Happiness

GRADE: C

Music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie, book by John Weidman. Dir./Chor. Susan Stroman. Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. (CLOSED)

Critics had high expectations from the creative team behind Contact and the songwriting team behind Grey Gardens, and for the most part they're disappointed, with the notable exception of John Simon. This musical about a group of strangers who find themselves stuck on a subway car with a Twilight Zone twist incites dialogue among critics about a current existentialist trend in theatre. Susan Stroman is reportedly pretty stingy with the choreography she's known for, but critics do enjoy the movement of Thomas Lynch's sets. The cast, which includes Hunter Foster and Joanna Gleason, gets positive though hardly glowing notices, with Jenny Powers being a standout.

Bloomberg News A+
(John Simon) “Happiness,” at Lincoln Center Theater’s intimate Mitzi E. Newhouse stage, does more than just offer 110 minutes of flawless, nonstop entertainment. It amazes... Truly marvelous are the imaginatively layered sets by Thomas Lynch (frequent surprises on the upper level), the jaunty costuming by William Ivey Long and dramatic lighting by Donald Holder. Best of all, the painterly uses to which Stroman puts the stage, and her inventive choreography wherein certain fresh steps and holds eloquently convey happiness. The subway car itself dances. The performers include such savvy hands as Ken Page, Joanna Gleason and Hunter Foster (Stanley), as well as relatively lesser known actors of like aplomb. I am all admiration for Jenny Powers’s Gina, equally winning in her glamorous fantasies and her humble reality. Ditto for both Helens, old (Phyllis Somerville) and young (Alessa Neeck, enchanting in several brief parts).

Theatermania A
(Sandy MacDonald) For a sweet little fable about the need to seize the day and savor each moment, the new musical Happiness at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater sure packs a lot of pizzazz. It's the product of a dream team: book by John Weidman, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie (of Grey Gardens), and direction and choreography by Tony Award winner Susan Stroman. While the foremost pitfall of an exercise of this sort, beyond miniaturizing major themes, is the tendency to sappiness, the creators and their superb cast skirt both dangers with unceasing snap and polish.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) The most shocking discovery is Stroman: This is her best work in years. Her dances are far more original than those in Young Frankenstein and evince few of her typical tricks; her staging is innovative and experimental, utterly unrelated to her usual cartoon realism. Meshed with Thomas Lynch’s dynamic sets (especially the elaborate, stage-filling subway car), William Ivey Long’s crisp costumes, and Donald Holder’s rich lighting, this is one of the most 2009-looking and -behaving shows of the season. But one can’t help wish the authors had set their sights higher. Grey Gardens proved that Frankel and Korie could establish and maintain an unusual musical language across multiple types of characters and plots; that skill would have prevented the score from sounding like a dusty jukebox set on random. Like the songs, Weidman’s book is full of choice morsels that never solidify because they never have to.

Theater News Online C+
(Jessica Branch) Joanna Gleason suffers from the improbably written role of shock jock with a secret past, but manages to make the most of the acid-tongued lines it affords her. But these moments are, in the show - just that, moments. They don't add up to much - let alone to a whole of any significance - but they can entertain and amuse, if not inform and enlighten. So the real secret of Happiness may be to look at it as a revue rather than a revelation.

The New Yorker C
(Unsigned) The songs range from sweet to too sweet, and the repetitive structure only dulls the show’s life-affirming message. Still, Susan Stroman has assembled a skilled group of actors, including Joanna Gleason and Hunter Foster, many of whom find shades of nuance even in banal material.

Time Out New York C
(Diane Snyder) Unlike A Chorus Line, where similar confessional songs capture a character’s idiosyncrasies, many scenarios seem cherry-picked for what they represent from different eras (WWII, the ’60s) instead of their impact on an individual. But the potency here may lie as much in what audiences take away as in what they see onstage.

The Hollywood Reporter C
(Frank Scheck) The characterizations and dialogue frequently are risible, but there are some charming production numbers, including the old woman's memory of falling in love with a young soldier at a USO dance right before he's shipped off to World War II and an older man's (Fred Applegate) recollection of attending a baseball game at the Polo Grounds with his father. But the songs are highly uneven, and too rarely does the show provide emotional depth to its characters. An exception is the number "Gstaad" (performed superbly by Jenny Powers), in which a seemingly upscale young woman reveals the facade of her self-claimed identity. Stroman stages the proceedings with her usual flair, with numbers like "Step Up the Ladder" (performed athletically by Foster) displaying the imaginative choreography for which she is renowned. And the performers, for the most part, are able to overcome the stereotypical nature of their roles. But aside from the occasional moment, this is not a show that delivers pure "Happiness."

Back Stage C
(Erik Haagensen) With a device rather than a character at its center, Happiness has nowhere to go. And its revuelike structure—each passenger gets a number about his or her moment—puts it at the mercy of its songs, which vary in effectiveness. Nevertheless, there are ancillary pleasures. Frankel and Korie's score is attractively eclectic and gratifyingly particular to character. Weidman, forced by the conceit into a predictable structure, adeptly disguises it. He's helped by Stroman's virtuoso staging, which turns an inherently static situation into a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives, with assistance from Thomas Lynch's motorized set, Donald Holder's acute lighting, and Joshua Frankel's projections.

TheaterScene.net C
(Eugene Paul) Something is seriously wrong with this new century we’re in, judging from the offerings all over Broadway. Almost all of them are set in the recent past or brought back from the recent past or both. And in Happiness, playwright book writer John Weidman, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie make the brave leap of attempting to bridge the connection. They have set their story in the acid etched present day New York City, sketching the lives of eight cases, that is, New Yorkers.

Wall Street Journal C-
(Terry Teachout) The cast is superlative, Fred Applegate, Joanna Gleason and Jenny Powers in particular, and Ms. Stroman's jet-propelled staging and Thomas Lynch's quick-change sets are so pleasing to behold that you sometimes forget how banal the show is -- though never for long.

New York Post C-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) It says a lot about how embarrassingly inane musical-theater plots have been lately that this premise, cooked up by John Weidman, feels so much fresher than it actually is. But at least Weidman and director/choreographer Susan Stroman -- in their first joint outing since 2000's "Contact" -- strive to engage with our city's very fabric. And the first half-hour largely pays off. Swiftly redeeming herself from "Young Frankenstein," Stroman stages a kinetic number, "Just Not Right Now," in which she simultaneously introduces all the characters and immerses them in the hectic flow of a typical city morning. She nails it again with the swinging 1944 flashback "Flibberty Jibbers and Wobbly Knees." After that, the dancing inexplicably subsides and the show settles into a predictable rhythm as each character strolls down memory lane. And I mean strolls: "Happiness" feels too long at an intermissionless 110 minutes.

Hartford Courant C-
(Malcolm Johnson) As the memories bloom and fade, the two standouts are Foster and Gleason. Foster's cynical, all-knowing Stanley concludes the show with "Blips." Gleason's witty, acerbic, brutally bigoted Arlene excels in "Road to Nirvana," a return to the Fillmore East, including a memory of running into Mick Jagger and buttoning his fly as he exits the men's room. The staging by Stroman contrasts the constrictions of the ever-spinning subway car with the more open space of memories. Some of the flashbacks give the show energy and feeling but not enough to overcome its sense of gimmick. The idea of throwing together a mix of passengers in a cul de sac has sometimes played well, but this is a less happy occasion, even with Stroman at the helm.

CurtainUp C-
(Elyse Sommer) With a less cliche-riddled plot, more dancing, and more memorable tunes, this somewhat surreal musical subway ride might keep you from fretting over the next fare hike and make you think twice before you hold open a closing door rather than wait for another train. Unfortunately, despite a topdrawer creative team — composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie who made a big splash with Grey Gardens and the book writer and director/choreographer of Contact, a Lincoln Center super hit— I found Happiness only mildly more entertaining than my ride home on the E train.

NYMag C-
(Scott Brown)Weidman has paired with his old Contact collaborator, director-choreographer Susan Stroman, who’s confected some poppin’ dance numbers to round out this gorgeously realized yet soul-crushingly stupid fable about mortality: A Hummel set of recently deceased New York stereotypes find themselves in a stalled subway car, where a conductor (Hunter Foster, his hepcat-hobbit energy in overdrive) instructs each to pick a “perfect moment” in which to dwell forever.

The New York Times D+
(Ben Brantley) At around the same point its characters register that they can’t escape their underground prison in this Lincoln Center Theater production that opened on Monday evening at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, directed by Susan Stroman, you begin to grasp a similarly uncomfortable realization. You, it seems, have been caught inside an intermission-free, 1 hour 50 minute singing version of one of those whimsical, metaphysical fantasy novels that dominate the best-seller list around Christmastime and tend to have “heaven” in their titles. Well, that or a particularly preachy episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Your suspicions are confirmed when one of the performers jokily intones the four-note vamp of that series’s theme music, then realizes that this is no joke. There is talk of being “trapped in time’s primordial ointment” and human lives as “blips on the cosmic radar.” This show offers 10 — count ’em, 10 — specimens of such blips, and they all have confessions to make, slowly and in song.

Variety D
(David Rooney) The cutesiest of the numbers are the embarrassing "The Tooth Fairy Song," in which a smart-mouthed bike messenger (Miguel Cervantes) shares a goofy bonding moment with the daughter he neglected; and "Family Flashcards," a crash course in which a doting Chinese-Jewish couple (Pearl Sun, Robert Petkoff) brush up on their families' respective cultures. Unlike "Grey Gardens," which interwove witty pastiche numbers with heartbreakers like "Around the World," "Will You?" and "Another Winter in a Summer Town," there's a blandness and a generic '70s sound to Frankel's score here, despite some clever rhymes from Korie. Not one of the meandering melodies lingers in the head. Donald Holder's descriptive lighting creates some intriguing textures and Thomas Lynch's subway car set proves adaptable to the stories that spill out of it -- even spinning around like an amusement park ride during the lovely Powers' Coney Island reverie. But there's no real life onstage, either in the cardboard characters or the surprisingly tentative dance interludes. From the sprawling opening number, "Just Not Right Now," in which the soon-to-be-dead mingle obliviously with their fellow citizens on a hectic Monday morning, it's clear that cohesion is lacking. And try as Stroman might to get some emotional momentum going, it never really gels.

Associated Press D-
(Michael Kuchwara) The Lincoln Center Theater production features a fine collection of actors struggling to overcome John Weidman's contemporary, high-concept story that is awash in squishy, cosmic significance but short on fully developed characters theatregoers could actually care about. It also showcases a spotty score by Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics), the talented team that gave us "Grey Gardens." Their efforts, too, don't use the performers to their best advantage, particularly the delightfully sardonic Joanna Gleason. She is given a pallid 1960s-style rock that will make audiences wish they were at the current revival of "Hair."

Newsday F+
(Linda Winer) Oh, dear. As if the MTA didn't have enough trouble, here comes "Happiness" - Susan Stroman's disappointing new musical about nine New Yorkers stuck in a subway car. The show, which the Lincoln Center Theater opened last night in the space that launched Stroman's "Contact" in 2000, is beautifully produced. The large cast is fine - including Joanna Gleason as a right-wing radio host and Hunter Foster as the mysterious train conductor. There's even a luxurious orchestra above the stage. But the cardboard characters are either boring or obnoxious or, more often, both.

The Daily News F
(Joe Dziemianowicz) There's no plot, and the characters have no connection to each other. Unless the recollections are extremely strong, it becomes a matter of killing time as each commuter exits. Unfortunately, Weidman's vignettes are mundane, and the songs don't make them any less trivial. It's especially disappointing since Frankel and Korie's score for "Grey Gardens" made the lives of Jackie Kennedy's quirky cousins so poignant and amusing. Stroman, whose last effort was the short-lived "Young Frankenstein," fares better with setting the scenery in motion than with her cast. The train car twirls and lights up like an amusement-park ride, but her performers come off shrill.

Bloomberg News A+ 14; Theatermania A 13; Talkin' Broadway B- 9; Theater News Online C+ 8; The New Yorker C 7; TONY C 7; The Hollywood Reporter C 7; Back Stage C 7; TheaterScene.net C 7; WSJ C- 6; New York Post C- 6; Hartford Courant C- 6; CurtainUp C- 6; NYMag C- 6; The New York Times D+ 5; Variety D 4; Associated Press D- 3; Newsday F+ 2; The Daily News F 1; TOTAL: 124/19 = 6.53 (C)

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Irena's Vow

GRADE: B-

By Dan Gordon. Directed by Michael Parva. Walter Kerr Theatre. (CLOSED)

Moving to Broadway after a hit Off-Broadway run, Dan Gordon's Holocaust-themed play divides critics: A number of reviewers find its true tale of a young Polish woman hiding a dozen Jews from certain death as thoroughly gripping as it is moving, while a chorus of the less enchanted consider it predictable, uninvolving, even taste-challenged. Tovah Feldshuh gets uniformly high marks, and a few gushing valentines, for her lead turn, though few critics are as admiring of the supporting cast.

Backstage A+
(David Sheward) You need to catch Tovah Feldshuh. This multiple Tony nominee and Drama Desk winner gives a tour de force performance and may spark enough excitement to make Irena's Vow the sleeper hit of a crowded season...In a perfect wedding of actor and script, neither Feldshuh nor Gordon stoops to syrupy sentimentality in a straightforward, cleanly paced depiction of complicated events. The horrors of the Holocaust are revealed on Feldshuh's eloquent features as Irena haltingly relives atrocities. Her hesitations before she can describe what she has seen speak louder than any graphic depiction...Though Irena's Vow is physically small by Broadway standards and lasts only 90 minutes, it's a giant of a play featuring an equally giant star performance.

Bloomberg News A
(John Simon) Astounding human heroism and the amazing Tovah Feldshuh triumph in the blend of a powerful true story, suspenseful dramatization and humorous leavening. The result should prove a sure-fire crowd pleaser on Broadway...What a prodigy the actress is, enacting as she does both the old widow Irena Opdyke in America, lecturing to schoolchildren about her exploits, and the young Polish Irena Gut living them, while also making smooth, artful transitions between the two. She throws herself into the two roles brazenly, with brilliantly histrionic technique redolent of an earlier era...Gordon has written an effective thriller, which Michael Parva has cleanly staged on Kevin Judge’s stark set, filled out by Alex Koch’s grimly evocative projections.

Talkin' Broadway A
(Matthew Murray) If there’s been any doubt as to the identity of Broadway’s greatest living star, there won’t be once word spreads about Irena’s Vow...Irena Gut Opdyke was worth cheering for what she did, and Feldshuh - if in an entirely different way - is as well for bringing this unsung woman to sumptuous theatrical life. Explaining exactly what Feldshuh does isn’t easy, because she does everything...Even when she’s required to speechify - which she frequently is - Feldshuh grants the words importance without consciously elevating them to banner headlines. She so taps into Irena’s soul that she brings a freshness to the dramatic clichés that Gordon doesn’t pretend to avoid in his script; as the writing is a combination of hagiography and thesis-cold research, this can’t be easy. But Feldshuh never lectures, scolds, or preaches through her portrayal.

Curtain Up A
(Elyse Sommer) I know I was choked up all over again. As was true on the Off-Broadway production, it's Feldshuh's ability to literally let down her hair and turn from an elderly lecturer to a gutsy young Polish girl and that young woman's heroic story that make this a more memorable and powerful experience than many a more sophisticated script...The flashback structure once again relieves the audience of some of the tension with which this story bristles...Don't wait for the movie. See it live now.

The Hollywood Reporter A-
(Frank Scheck) Overcomes any weariness of the subject matter with an amazing and little-known story so engrossing it makes The Diary of Anne Frank seem tame. Although this drama by Dan Gordon...has some unfortunately clumsy dramaturgy, the sheer power of its narrative and the superb performance by Tovah Feldshuh in the title role well overcome any flaws.

The Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Gripping and gets the tear ducts flooding...It's an amazing story and Gordon...and director Michael Parva tell it in a workmanlike fashion. But there are some very tense moments. Feldshuh ("Golda's Balcony") is dynamic and powerful as an ordinary woman who does an extraordinary thing and found a life in the United States. To lighten the inherent darkness, there are flashes of humor as Irena relates her tale. Most are welcome, though some are played with an almost winking self-awareness that doesn't fit the character.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) Irena's Vow may be melodramatic and occasionally manipulative, but the emotions this stage biography stirs in theatergoers are genuine, a testament to the bravery and tenacity of the woman whose real-life story is being told...There is a lot of territory to cover in this 90-minute drama directed at a lickety-split pace by Michael Parva. Playwright Dan Gordon often resorts to direct address, sacrificing subtlety for exposition in what probably would work better as a movie. In fact, a film is in the works...Feldshuh excels in juggling the woman's harrowing double life: Irena's unshakable commitment to the people she is sheltering from certain death and her duties for the major, a relationship that starts as master-servant and then develops uneasily — and under coercion — into something more.

Lighting & Sound America B+
(David Barbour) Gordon gets the facts of Opdyke's life onstage, but, as many have noted, he hasn't done an elegant job of it. Irena's Vow is a kind of illustrated lecture--a one-woman show with supporting characters--and, at best, it's a crude piece of construction that, in its rush to get the story told in 90 minutes, skimps on some of the most gripping details...You can pick away at the production as much as you like -- but none of it really matters, thanks to Feldshuh's monumental performance, which renders, with almost unbearable force, how Opdyke must have felt when she walked her daily tightrope...It's also true that Feldshuh very occasionally gives in to the script's baser instincts, grabbing at crude gags seemingly planted to prevent the audience from turning away from the story in horror...Michael Parva's crisp, fast-moving direction goes a long way to conveying the constant state of tension under which Irena and her charges must have lived.

Theatermania B+
(David Finkle) Powerful if predictable...While there is a broad streak of the dramatically expected here -- for example, the sexual advances Rugemer eventually makes to Irena -- Gordon's play retains its force because every report comparable to Irena's remarkable vow remains a welcome reminder of how often forces for good prevail over evil. There's also something irresistibly gripping about the succession of chilling sequences where it looks as if the wolf is about to charge through the door and is cleverly diverted. There's much to be said for Michael Parva's sensitive direction of the entire cast, even if the intrepid Feldshuh -- who looks nothing like the blonde and delicate Irena shown on Alex Koch's projections -- stresses the script's comic moments more than necessary. But ultimately, Irena's guts are the thing, and Feldshuh has that part of this heroine's personality down pat.

Variety B
(David Rooney) The conviction of Tovah Feldshuh's transformative performance drives Irena's Vow, but it's the compelling true story of courage and heroism that makes Dan Gordon's by-the-numbers script so moving...The play draws its power more from the nobility of its sentiments and the events it portrays than from the writer's over-explanatory treatment of them. Still, if the audible sobs in the theater at key moments are any indication, audiences may be willing to overlook the clunky dramaturgy...But even if Feldshuh's Irena is the vivid center of an exposition-heavy drama otherwise populated by thinly fleshed-out characters and far too much reported action, this is an engrossing tale laced with suspense, horror and uplifting humanity.

New Yorker B
Although the flaws of this modest production, directed by Michael Parva, are more obvious on the Broadway stage than they were when it was playing to more intimate audiences Off Broadway, the story itself, which is true, remains undiminished...The small, cohesive cast brings Opdyke’s horrifying and sad stories to life, and audience members not put off by its Borscht Belt humor and the occasional wonky accent might find Dan Gordon’s play inspiring.

American Theatre Web B
(Andy Propst) It's certainly a compelling slice of history that playwright Dan Gordon has landed on, and he delivers it sturdily...What elevates the drama is Feldshuh's spirited performance as the spunky, self-effacing and self-sacrificing Irena. There's seemingly nothing that this heroine can't accomplish and Feldshuh manages to make even the most eye-brow raising scrapes credible. At the same time, she communicates the slow spiritual and emotional erosion that Irena suffers during her time with the Major...But strangely, during much of "Vow," directed with a sure-hand by Michael Parva, one experiences the tale on a cerebral, rather than emotional level.

Nytheatre.com C+
(Martin Denton) The message of Irena's Vow is vital and one that we must embrace. How I wish that this play by Dan Gordon lived up more fully to its subject! Alas, the script itself is serviceable and nothing more: Gordon has not seemed able to find a consistent style for this piece, which wavers unsteadily between black black comedy and gripping melodrama and mostly feels like a one-woman play onto which some additional roles have been grafted. Tovah Feldshuh, as committed and oversized a theatrical presence as ever in the role of Irena, is probably at her best in the portions of the show that embrace the solo performance ethos...Michael Parva's direction is fluid.

New York C+
(Stephanie Zacharek) Both insufferable and riveting. [Feldshuh's] skills may be more in line with motivational speaking than they are with acting: She believes so wholeheartedly in what she’s doing that her conviction becomes the star of the show. You don’t have to love her; you may want to pelt her with tomatoes. But you can’t turn away from her...The story is sometimes suspenseful and sometimes moving, as when Irena dissuades her friends from making a choice that plays into despair rather than defying it. Mostly, though, it’s ploddingly earnest. Irena’s Vow works best when it’s funny.

Theater News Online C+
(Jessica Branch) The real story on which the play was based is truly remarkable, riveting, and, yes, uplifting...So why be mean? Because this well-meaning endeavour feels more like melodrama and Irena's startling story deserves a bit better. Director Michael Parva does an admirable job of keeping the action tight and the plot moving quickly, but neither his efforts nor the acting abilities of his talented cast can entirely disguise the moments when the play bogs down in schmaltzy set-pieces, as when Irena agonizes over her feelings about the pregnancy...Feldshuh's performance is feisty, mischievous, and often charming, but she's almost got too much to work with, and her heroic efforts to energize the action end up feeling more like grandstanding.

New York Post C
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Nobody wants to be the heartless Grinch who points out that a Holocaust drama is flawed. Oh well, here I go then...Feldshuh gives her all, of course, but the constant emphasis on Irena and her quasi-saintly behavior also leeches out conflict and drama. This single-minded focus may be a blessing in disguise, however, as the cast is wildly uneven. As German officers, for instance, Ryan and John Stanisci are so blandly meek as to make you wonder how these Nazis could possibly have conquered half of Europe. "Irena's Vow" essentially is an after-school special -- and I mean this in a good way. It's unfortunate the expression has acquired such negative baggage because this particular show is important, and it is presented in a brisk, accessible and appealing manner. Yet while it deals with real issues, "Irena's Vow" also has real problems.

The New York Times C-
(Charles Isherwood) Theatrical hokum...Susceptible audiences will want to practice their hisses and prime their tear ducts before attending this efficiently manipulative drama covering territory that is rather too frequently exploited for its undeniable emotional force...This history deserves attention and respect...But as compressed into 90 minutes of stage time, Irena’s personal tragedy and inspiring courage are mostly cheapened into suspense-driven melodrama...Ms. Feldshuh gives a canny, effective performance that invites admiration without really asking for it. Petite and trim, she is surprisingly persuasive as a woman just out of her teens, underplaying the pathos and reining in emotionalism when it could easily be splashed to the rafters...Ms. Opdyke’s potentially moving story is handled in such a banal, ham-fisted manner that it sometimes feels like bad fiction.

Time Out NY C-
(Adam Feldman) Inspirational but manipulative...The distortions come from Gordon’s Hollywood-screenwriter impulse to tart up the story, as when he invents a major plot point involving the birth of a baby among the hidden Jews. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is mostly wooden, or that Michael Parva’s production...is not on the level of professionalism we expect on Broadway; Tovah Feldshuh does a whole lot of acting as Irena, some of it good, but many of her costars lack presence. No work of art on this subject should leave you thinking how phony it seemed. To be honest is a duty that Holocaust writers should never forget.

Newsday C-
(Linda Winer) Good intentions are not the same as good theater. Feldshuh has a vital, if studied dynamism as Irena, a Polish Catholic woman who saved 12 Jews by hiding them in the cellar of a Nazi officer's villa. In Dan Gordon's didactic, overly schematic script, Irena begins as an old woman telling her inspirational story in a high-school auditorium. The actress lets down her hair and changes her shoes to portray the feisty Irena and a few other characters. Others in the large cast are essentially used as props, pressing the expected buttons in a project that plays like a Hallmark TV special.

Bergen Record D+
(Robert Feldberg) Irena's Vow...has a powerful, inspiring story to tell. It's a real shame that the telling is so pedestrian...There are moments when tension — the constant fear of discovery, the knife's edge on which the resourceful Irena has to balance — seeps through. But, mostly, the play proceeds flatly on its formulaic way, revealing only the story's surface...Humor — not the rueful kind, but the Hogan's Heroes type — is peppered throughout the evening, undercutting even the slight possibility that the play, slackly directed by Michael Parva, and with an unprepossessing supporting cast, might rise to gripping drama.

USA Today D
(Elysa Gardner) Gordon reduces Opdyke's tale to a clumsy, at times cartoonish, melodrama that largely wastes the talents of leading lady Tovah Feldshuh...Gordon and director Michael Parva, to their credit, help by introducing Irena as an older woman looking back on her experiences, then inject scenes from her past with asides that clearly reflect the more mature Irena's perspective. Unfortunately, they also saddle Feldshuh with attempts at comic relief that play like lines out of a soggy Borscht Belt routine. Recalling how she hid her Jewish friends from visiting Nazi officials by keeping them on separate floors of her boss's villa — "When the Nazis were down, the Jews were up. Jews were down, Nazis were up!" — Irena sounds more like Jackie Mason than a feisty Polish maid. The bad guys, too, are cringe-inducing, and often not for the right reasons.

Wall Street Journal F
(Terry Teachout) Dan Gordon has performed a feat of upside-down alchemy with Irena's Vow: He's taken the true story of a Polish Catholic girl (Tovah Feldshuh) who saved the lives of 11 Jews by hiding them in the cellar of a Nazi major (Thomas Ryan) and turned it into an egregiously sappy piece of what can only be called Holocaust kitsch. Dramaturgically speaking, Irena's Vow suggests an after-school special whose script is salted with punch lines apparently intended to make the unthinkable palatable to matinee crowds...Needless to say, the world cannot be reminded enough that the Holocaust should never be allowed to happen again -- but this is no way to do it.

Backstage A+ 14; Bloomberg News A 13; Talkin' Broadway A 13; Curtain Up A 13; The Hollywood Reporter A- 12; The Daily News B+ 11; Associated Press B+ 11; LS&A B+ 11; Theatermania B+ 11; Variety B 10; NYer B 10; American Theatre Web B 10; NYmag C+ 8; Nytheatre.com C+ 8; Theatre News Online C+ 8; New York Post C 7; The New York Times C- 6; TONY C- 6; ND C- 6; USA Today D 4; Bergen Record D+ 5; WSJ F 1; TOTAL: 198/22= 9 (B-)

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The Secret Agenda of Trees

GRADE: C+/C

By Colin McKenna. Directed by Michael Kimmel. At the Wild Project. (CLOSED)

Colin McKenna's downbeat look at dead-end red-state lives gets a few nods for relevance and detail, but many critics find the play--and Michael Kimmel's production--to be a less-than-involving grab bag of Jerry Springer tropes and precious poeticism (what is it with playwrights imputing metaphorical arboreal anthropomorphism to confused youngsters?). Critics are divided on whether the performances Kimmel gets from his actors are rivetingly gritty or muddled and unmodulated.

Variety B+
(Sam Thielman) Sadly, there's no better time for "The Secret Agenda of Trees," Colin McKenna's tense drama of modern rural poverty and American discontent. The piece has only a vague sense of place (its setting is "a rural community in the U.S.") and its structure could use some vigorous polishing, but McKenna's enthusiasm for life-and-death conflict over politicking or preening pays off in spades. Fluidly staged by Michael Kimmel, the play displays a knack for the theatrical eagerly exploited by its three excellent leads...For all its faults, though, there's an urgency about this play that seems to come from outside New York, and that's a valuable thing...These people are recognizable not from sitcoms or movies, but from life.

That Sounds Cool B
(Aaron Riccio) So far as realism goes, Michael Kimmel's direction nails it...By maximizing the squalor--right down to references to "Lucky Charms breath"--he strikes the right balance for the giddying moments of escapism when Maggie and Jack light up and let loose...However, the rest of the play falters, both in acting and writing. Veronica's dreams of her brother, Dixon, are forced attempts at conflict, and McKenna's justification for them--adding additional fantasy monologues--is unnecessary. Thankfully, de Courcy acts the hell out of them...The Secret Agenda of Trees doesn't really branch far beyond its central three characters. Moreover, by putting down such deep roots for those three, it makes that clawing at the sky all the more heartbreaking. And that's worth putting on the agenda.

CurtainUp B
(Dierdre Donovan) A probing exploration of drug dependency peppered with poetically-charged monologues. It is a funny, sometimes sad evening at the theater. With its gritty mixture of human cupidity and turpitude, it is the kind of work that brings to mind Sam Shepard, but it creates an incontrovertible atmosphere of its own...There's not a healthy character or relationship in the entire story...It is amazing to see how good actors can take unsympathetic characters and engage you in the details of their lives...Michael Kimmel has directed adroitly and energetically.

Backstage B-
(Mark Peikert) What elevates this sordid Southern melodrama about a hard drinking mother on meth, her junkie lover, and her wise 14-year-old daughter above the standard of Lifetime TV movie fare is the wealth of detail with which playwright Colin McKenna has lovingly filigreed his text. Unfortunately, the details don't add up to an arresting whole...Though Veronica seems remarkably mature for her age, McKenna negates her spiky intelligence -- particular to an adolescent growing up in the South—by forcing her into stale melodramatic situations about a soldier brother and an immature mother...Directed by Michael Kimmel to deliver her lines with all the teenage hothouse passion she can muster, De Courcy's Veronica turns from a small-town eccentric into the sort of 14-year-old who found her bible with The Bell Jar. Such people might be fun to write, but they're far too self-absorbed and willfully contrary to be sympathetic.

The New York Times C+
(Anita Gates) The dramatis personae of Colin McKenna’s meaningful two-act drama “The Secret Agenda of Trees” might feel at home on one of those talk shows in which the host encourages guests to scream bleep-worthy accusations. Mr. McKenna looks at these people more sympathetically, but in the tepid production at the Wild Project, directed by Michael Kimmel, their pain is hard to buy. The story itself is skillfully plotted, with a brutal final twist. But the overwhelming theme of these people’s lives is hopelessness, with a resulting psychological idleness, and never for a minute did I believe that Michael Tisdale, as Jack, the drifter, really belonged there.

Nytheatre.com C
(Robin Reed) Playwright Colin McKenna has hung his play...upon three very broken characters, only one of whom, the precocious Veronica, has any hope of becoming a whole person as she has not yet succumbed to the utter hopelessness of her environment...Though McKenna has found some beauty in Veronica's teen angst, infusing her language with poetry and a flair for the performative, this play could stand to rethink or just lose a number of elements...As Maggie and Jack, Lillian Wright and Michael Tisdale are acting their hearts out, but are not rough enough around the edges for their roles...It is only Reyna de Courcy who flies anywhere near believable as Veronica. She taps directly into the meat of the role, finding the balance where the fading precociousness of an early teen meets the exploding adult thoughts and feelings, neither of which she is yet equipped to deal.

Village Voice D-
(Alexis Soloski) Rather ridiculous...McKenna crams the script with far too many plot elements, among them overdose, violent detox, frequent threats of violence, and an Iraq War death. He sometimes offers a touch of a poet, but too often relies on what sounds like a parody of redneck speech (Veronica's opening line: "Heard a ruckus, thought it was them varmints again"). Despite Michael Kimmel's capable production, I wouldn't mind terribly if Trees were logged.

Theatermania F
(Andy Propst) Feeling too often like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show, Colin McKenna's melodramatic The Secret Agenda of Trees, now at the Wild Project, takes audiences into rural America, where hope and opportunity are in short supply. Theoretically, it's a play that should open New York theatergoers' eyes to the concerns of the working class poor in the hinterlands, but instead, it makes one long to close them...Like the trees of the play's title -- which have an agenda of reaching the sky -- it's clear that all of these characters are trying to find some way of escaping their existence. Yet, while it's difficult watching these people make the choices that they do, the play never effectively tugs at the heartstrings. In part, this is the result of the shrill and often shallow performances that director Michael Kimmel has elicited from his cast.

Variety B+ 11; That Sounds Cool B 10; CurtainUp B 10; Backstage B- 9; The New York Times C+ 8; Nytheatre.com C 8; Village Voice D- 3; Theatermania F 1; 60/8=7.5 (C+/C)

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Exit the King

GRADE: B+

By Eugene Ionesco. Translated by Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush. Directed by Armfield. At the Barrymore Theatre. (CLOSED)

With the exceptions of Resident Grouch John Simon (whose only concern in reviewing the play is whether or not the long-deceased author would've liked it) and Michael Feingold (who simply loathed it), critics go ga-ga for Exit the King. Reviewers are particularly taken with Geoffrey Rush's "star turn," which apparently is almost indescribably awesome. Reservations arise about the other cast members (some reviewers dislike Ambrose, others Susan Sarandon) and about the updated translation, which some feel is too contemporary and topical by half. NOTE: The grade, a B+, is largely the result of John Simon and Michael Feingold's pans; the most frequently occuring grade for this show is an A-.

The New York Observer A+
(John Helipern) Put simply, Mr. Rush is giving one of the greatest virtuoso performances I’ve ever seen... Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon (Queen Marguerite) and Lauren Ambrose (playing Marie, the other Queen) are among the strong ensemble in Neil Armfield’s splendid, near childlike production. But all eyes are forgivably drawn to Mr. Rush’s bravura King. The Australian actor (also an Academy Award winner) is a born clown. He has the face and mask of one. Peeking out from his gold paper crown, his hair is revealed as startled tufts of red—until it turns white. (Shakespeare’s clowns were traditionally red-headed.)

Backstage A+
(Erik Haagensen) Rush is sensational as the king, showing a peerless gift for physical comedy and a tremendous facility at shifting emotional gears. As Berenger finally faces death, the actor makes the nearly catatonic king's inability to do anything except repeat the word me both a devastating indictment and a pitiable truth. As Queen Marguerite, Susan Sarandon finds both the humor and the humanity in the queen's implacable desire to do what must be done. Her final scene, in which she serenely guides the dying king to his end, is mesmerizing. Lauren Ambrose is all selfish youth and beauty as Queen Marie, locating her character's needy core to excellent comic and tragic effect. Andrea Martin's Chaplinesque maidservant is comedic perfection, always fixedly upbeat even when describing the drudgeries of her life, with every emotion visible in its purest form on her perpetually wide-eyed face. William Sadler's doctor is an appropriate apparatchik, and Brian Hutchison is both touching and funny as a guard who desperately wants to please.

The New Yorker A
(Hilton Als) Brilliantly directed by Neil Armfield, “Exit the King” introduces us to the major players as they stride across the stage, waving at the audience, as if greeting the paparazzi. After fulfilling their public duty to be adored, they retreat into their home, where we catch glimpses of the characters beneath their calcified public masks. There is no pretense to naturalism. Armfield wants us to know, straight off, that the play that Ionesco wrote—lovingly and well translated for this production by Armfield and Rush—is as much about performance as anything else. Ionesco once said that plays were not literature; he meant his to be, in a sense, springboards for the actors’ imaginations. The actors here, kicking aside their too long trains on a tapestry-strung stage (the thoughtful set and costumes, by Dale Ferguson, use dark hues and deep reds that bring to mind Julian Schnabel’s paintings), inhabit the space as though they were simultaneously inside and outside it. They love Ionesco’s language, but they know that the Master didn’t want constrictive realistic readings of it. So they perform little pirouettes around his concrete poetry. Rush and Ambrose are especially astonishing at this. While Ionesco’s plays have a tendency to overdescribe the action as it’s happening, Ambrose and Rush convey the absurdity of talking this way, in such hyper-theatricalized speech. They’re interested in exposing the rigor behind the presentation, and in deflating the ridiculous notion that we ever present a true self to the world. Still, they make the audience comfortable with this entirely unexpected Broadway fare.

TheaterMania A
(Andy Propst) Getting laughs isn't all that this piece is about; as the work unspools with wild and sometimes joyful abandon in Neil Armfield's beautifully calibrated production, it proves both cuttingly topical and surprisingly touching.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Mr. Rush is not only more entertaining than the usual never-say-die bogeyman but also more frightening. That’s not because you’re worried that the 400-year-old Berenger might come after you in your dreams, Freddy Krueger style; it’s because you know that the seedy, power-addled egomaniac onstage — who’s working overtime to dodge his own mortality — is, quite simply, you...the genius of the show’s presentation — derived from a 2007 production by Mr. Armfield with Mr. Rush in Melbourne, Australia — is in its use of rowdy comic grotesquerie to lure us into raw and very real emotional territory. The surface joke of the king who wouldn’t die, having already wrecked his country beyond repair, shades into a psychic X-ray of Everyman, refusing to believe in the death that is about to claim him. (Berenger is Ionesco’s name for his universal hero in other plays, including “Rhinoceros.”)

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) Rush has a grand time surveying the depths of comedy and pathos offered by Berenger. It's a flamboyant, hilariously physical performance that becomes profoundly moving as the king struggles to come to terms with his fate, and reveals the childlike fear and uncertainty underlying his narcissism. As Berenger's coldly pragmatic first wife, Sarandon is his foil and his antagonist, chiding him in a flat, acidic voice; later, her earthy delivery becomes more soothing, suggesting a possibility for redemption. Since Exit is an ensemble piece, the other characters are equally crucial, and Armfield culls excellent work from all. Lauren Ambrose makes a wonderfully warped ingénue as the hyper-emotional Marie, who represents Berenger's need for sensual gratification, while Andrea Martin brings her own sure-footed wackiness to the nurse/servant Juliette.

AP A
(Michael Kuchwara) Geoffrey Rush, making his Broadway debut, manages a mesmerizing high-wire act of balancing outrageous comedy and overwhelming tragedy in a fascinating revival of Eugene Ionesco's absurdist Exit the King... The actor is a total chameleon, part vaudeville comic, part circus clown, part overwrought tragedian, in his larger-than-life portrayal of a monarch who's dying while his kingdom collapses around him -- dying, but refusing to go quietly. ''I will die when I feel like it,'' he sniffs royally.

The Guardian A-
(Alexis Soloski) Long live Geoffrey Rush, who plays the mortal monarch in Eugène Ionesco's tragedy-cum-farce Exit the King. Making his Broadway debut, Rush's King Berenger I enters in a swirl of velvet and ermine, swinging his arms, shaking his legs, barking out orders. Two hours later, he ends the show deaf, dumb and blind, bereft of life and breath. In a performance that effectively rejuvenates the 1962 play, Rush renders this rapid deterioration both credible and compelling, lending a merely passable script the sheen of genius.

NYTheatre A-
(Martin Denton) Overall this is a triumphant presentation. Armfield's staging is jokey and fourth-wall bashing without feeling postmodernly ironic; there is heart in this play, everywhere. Dale Ferguson's deliberately overdone sets and costumes are of a piece with the work's sensibility. Damien Cooper's lighting, Russell Goldsmith's sound design, and John Rogers's music (some of which is performed live—Shane Endsley and Scott Harrell alternate as trumpeter) support the world of the piece still further.


TalkinBroadway A-
(Matthew Murray) His Majesty has probably never seen the last chapter of his own story, written by Eugene Ionesco and titled Exit the King, portrayed with the tenacity, insanity, and astringent poignancy brought to it by the haunting new revival that just opened at the Barrymore... The other performers aren’t quite in Sarandon and Rush’s league, but they’re all good: Hutchison never oversells the guard’s broken-record shtick, Sadler is relatively reserved as the doctor, Martin never lets her gold-plated clownishness overwhelm Juliette, and Ambrose is perfectly aged whine as the empty bodice who's always mistaken lust for love. She's the first to dissolve when Berenger's memories fade - she never understood her place, but she's destined to take it nonetheless.

Lighting and Sound America A-
(David Barbour) Under Armfield's supremely deft and creative direction, this blackly comic clown show exists in a deeply disorienting universe all its own, an effect that is aided by a most adept design team. Dale Ferguson's setting wraps the action in fabric walls depicting a surreal procession of images from antiquity. Inside this tentlike structure are Berenger's massive gilded throne and a tiny red couch for the others, with bare lightbulbs dangling over the stage, a testament to the kingdom's growing poverty. Ferguson's costumes, including miles of ermine and towering gold crowns, are expert caricatures of royal finery. Damien Cooper's lighting switches from broad white washes to sinister footlight effects to the encroaching darkness of the climax, creeping in like fog. Russell Goldsmith's layered, complex sound design includes fanfares, marches, live Miles Davis-style trumpet solos, and an unsettling low hum that may signal the approach of death by inertia.

Wall St. Journal A-
(Terry Teachout) Only two weak links mar this sterling revival. The first one, I'm sorry to say, is Ms. Sarandon, whose acting is flat and uninteresting. The second is the translation, a new English-language version by Messrs. Armfield and Rush that has been modernized, vulgarized and generally tarted up. It works, I guess, but I doubt that Ionesco would have approved of the cheaper jokes. On the other hand, I'm sure that he would have relished the rest of this production, whose rip-snorting vitality makes his vision of the dark at the end of the tunnel a bit easier to take -- if not to accept. See it by all means, but don't expect to go home grinning.


AMNY A-
(Matt Windman) Though the script itself isn’t too strong, the cast’s energy level and comic timing carries the production until it reaches a serious peak. The production design might be described as graveyard grotesque, with the actors looking like zombies in white makeup. Geoffrey Rush’s performance as the crazed, ridiculous king cannot be missed by anyone who appreciates great stage acting. What’s most incredible is how his performance carefully evolves throughout the play. At first, he is extremely flamboyant and showy, covering the stage with his long purple robe. But he soon sinks into crisis mode and starts really freaking out.

Newday A-
(Linda Winer) It hurts to have to report that Sarandon, for all her intelligence, is not ideally cast as the discarded queen who prods and guides the king to the abyss. The actress, so powerful Off-Broadway in the 1982 Extremities, has a glittery, thug-like elegance. But she is too naturalistic and lacks the big stylized technique needed to carry the theme of mortality, much less a parable for the decline of Western civilization. Ambrose - best known as Claire in "Six Feet Under" but also cherished as Juliet in Central Park - has a radiant sense of humor and a rhapsodic soul as the young queen, clinging to the idea she can love the life back into the rapidly aging king. Martin is adorably outlandish as court "cleaning woman and registered nurse," assigned to monitor the arrangements of the endless trains on Dale Ferguson's ermine-trimmed gowns.

Variety A-
(David Rooney) "Nothing's abnormal when abnormal has become the new normal," declares Geoffrey Rush, a short distance into his astonishing performance as the dying monarch in "Exit the King." It's that state of pervasive uncertainty, in a world thrown into chaos as an empire crumbles, that rescues Eugene Ionesco's 1962 absurdist tragedy from the dusty vaults and infuses it with unexpected currency. But the play's relevance is secondary to the virtuoso work of its lead actor, who unleashes a dazzling arsenal of mime, clowning and physical techniques to swerve in an instant between comedy and pathos, keeping the audience riveted to him through every hairpin turn...Berenger's queens are more uneven. If Lauren Ambrose doesn't quite have the technique to match Rush's quicksilver shifts, she's nonetheless radiant as the adoring second wife who tries to cushion his pain with love. She hurls herself bravely into the spirit of a production that plays everything large, climbing to melodramatic heights without fear of seeming foolish. With her Marge Simpson hair-tower caged in bling, Sarandon is an arresting ice queen, her back arched and legs akimbo as she looks on coldly, clenching and unclenching her gloved fingers. There are sharp moments in Sarandon's venomous comments, but authority is lacking.

NY1 A-
(Roma Torre) Rush did the contemporary-sounding translation along with director Neil Armfield, seizing on Ionesco's manic energy. Their surrealist spin serves the play exceptionally well, evoking both slapstick and poignance. As Marguerite, Susan Sarandon seems slightly out of her element. While everyone's shooting for classical farce, she's relatively subdued. Her best scene is at the end, soberly guiding the king to his final exit...Some people will no doubt find Exit The King frustrating and too long. I found this fine production both funny and moving, much like life itself.

Hollywood Reporter A-
(Frank Scheck) There is little in the way of plot in the play, which at two hours and 20 minutes goes on rather too long to sustain its slender concept. But along the way it offers a series of pungent comic and not so comic riffs on a multitude of subjects, both political and personal, that register with full force in this adaptation by Rush and director Neil Armfield. The dialogue has been amusingly updated, with the king not only credited with such achievements as writing "The Iliad" and inventing the airplane but also with designing the first search engine and the "qwerty" keyboard. And a line about having to pawn the palace washing machine to "bail out the treasury" naturally receives a tumultuous laugh.

NYPost B+
(Elizabeth Vincentelli) Guiding us through denial, resignation and the childish senility that precedes the ultimate oblivion, Rush is never less than virtuosic without lapsing into showboating. In the first act, for instance, he rolls a craggy Lear, a cocky man-child and a capricious master of the universe into one increasingly decrepit package. His Berenger is at once theatrically stylized and all too human. It's a delicate balance, and one the rest of Neil Armfield's production doesn't nail quite as precisely. Partly it's due to Armfield's timidity -- he just doesn't go far enough with the second act's metaphysical chaos -- and partly to some of the actors' difficulty with suggesting ambiguity.

TimeOut B+
(Adam Feldman) Ionesco’s play—which Rush and Armfield have adapted and tartly updated—is a metatheatrical metaphor. Some may find it overextended; written today, it would probably be half an hour shorter. Still, it is a pleasure to see bona fide ideas on Broadway, and to admire the way the playwright uses theater itself as a trope for his themes. Exit the King suggests that every man is a world unto himself, and all the world’s a stage—eventually, a stage of grief.

NY Daily News B
(Joe Dziemianowicz) The adaptation by Armfield and Rush is a lot like the trains adorning the royal robes (by Dale Ferguson, who also did the tapestry-filled set). It swirls playfully and lickety-split in the first half, but it drags repeatedly and gets tangled after intermission. Even so, this unusual, seldom-seen play, in its first Broadway revival since 1968, is worthy of an audience.

NYMag B
(Stephanie Zacharek) Exit the King explores the tenacity with which we poor, miserable human beings cling to life. Ionesco’s conclusion, after two acts’ worth of wordplay and slapstick, with numerous expository philosophical ramblings tucked in among the somersaults, is that we’re powerless and we’d better get used to it. At best, that’s old news; at worst, it’s tiresome, condescending finger-wagging. But even when the material groans under its alleged weightiness, Rush—who, with Armfield, translated this version—keeps pumping energy into it. His performance is muscular and subtle at once: His King Berenger can barely move a step forward without becoming entangled in his own robes, a marvelous physical metaphor for humankind’s tendency to trip itself up. Andrea Martin, as royal servant Juliette, helps keep the proceedings aloft as well, getting a kingdom’s worth of laughs out of the word stew.

CurtainUp B
(Simon Saltzman) Exit the King is essentially a one-idea, one-act play stretched to full-length, like its dying 400 year-old title character, ordained to test the patience of the living. Encouraged by the tedium and redundancy of the play's message, I made a conscious effort to appreciate its sophomoric excesses in the light of what was deemed revolutionary in the 1960s. Today, the existentially driven drivel can only be as digestible as the actors who are assigned to it. Aren't we lucky that a stellar cast is almost successful in making this grimly comical play tolerable and at times a lot of fun?

Bloomberg D
(John Simon) For Broadway, Eugene Ionesco’s 1962 farce stars Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandon and a solid American cast, engaging in all manner of audience-pleasing, circus-like behavior. Admittedly, such clowning would not have pleased Ionesco. Yes, this is an absurdist play, but the absurdity is in the situations and the dialogue. Except for one or two brief scenes, the author wanted straight playing, letting the bizarre shine through. This staging by Neil Armfield, who with Rush adapted the play from a literal translation, is like hearing a joke meant to be delivered deadpan, instead presented by a giggling comic.

Village Voice F
(Michael Feingold) Ionesco's Exit the King (1962)... in which a predictable event slowly takes its course, will outlive them all because it tackles the ultimate event (death), tests it against all possible modes of defiance, and opens it out to reveal all possible ramifications. Thanks to this intellectual sturdiness, the play will even survive the brash, noisy mess that Neil Armfield's production has made of it, abetted by star and co-translator Geoffrey Rush, who's way too busy chewing scenery to give the title role any cohesive life.

NYO A+ 14; BS A+ 14; TNY A 13; TM A 13; AP A 13; USA A 13; NYT A 13;TG A- 12; LSA A- 12; TB A- 12; NYT A- 12; WSJ A- 12; AMNY A- 12; ND A- 12; V A- 12; NY1 A- 12; HR A- 12; NYP B+ 11; TONY B+ 11; NYM B 10; NYDN B 10; CU B 10; BB D 4 VV F 1; TOTAL = 270 /24= 11.25 (B+) MODE = A-

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Impressionism

GRADE: D

By Michael Jacobs. Directed by Jack O'Brien. Schoenfeld Theatre. (CLOSED)

Apart from Martin Denton's near-rave and a bemused New Yorker blurb, the knives are out for this troubled romantic comedy, which marks the dubious Broadway return of Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. Critics duly note the attractiveness of the stars and of a series of reproductions of famous paintings that fly by in director Jack O'Brien's staging, but apart from a handful of scribes who admire the play's finale enough to (almost) forgive the rest, reviews range from politely disappointed to outright hostile. The most persistent refrain is the question: How did Michael Jacobs' play attract artists of such caliber?

Nytheatre.com A-
(Martin Denton) I enjoyed Impressionism more than any other new play on Broadway this season. The script is undoubtedly uneven, but the two main characters Michael Jacobs has created here are people I found myself increasingly drawn to as the story progressed, and as portrayed by expert actors Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen they easily become a couple to root for...Oh, and did I mention that Impressionism has the one essential element that so many plays lack? I'm talking about its absolutely socko ending—a delightful, smart climactic scene, featuring a show-stealing performance by theatre vet Andre de Shields, that pulls together the ideas in the piece and leaves the audience satisfied, gratified, happy, and maybe even a little bit uplifted...Jacobs's writing, especially when it's expository, is clunkier than we'd wish it to be. But it gets the job done...Under Jack O'Brien's understated direction, the play flows briskly, its obvious imperfections notwithstanding. Impressionism puts us in the company of people who love and appreciate art, and their enthusiasms prove infectious.

New Yorker B
As awkward as it is sublime...The dialogue is lovely and jumbled, and, as one senses that the dramatic arc has been sublimated to a near-vanishing point, it becomes easier to sit back and enjoy the play’s brazen sweetness, its openhearted humor, and, most of all, the ravishing projections of Klimts and Renoirs employed by Jack O’Brien, whose directorial eye is nothing if not painterly.

The Hollywood Reporter B-
(Frank Scheck) Michael Jacobs' play can be said to resemble impressionist works as well: The closer you examine it, the less moving it becomes. Still, this gentle comedy/drama about the relationship between a brittle New York art gallery owner and her mild-mannered employee has its charms, which are accentuated by the winning presence of its lead performers, who have been absent from the Broadway stage for far too long...The play is not helped by its diffuseness -- it has been shortened considerably since its early previews -- or by its tonal shifts between sitcom-style comedy and sensitive drama. And the lengthy explications about the famous paintings projected on scrims slow the pacing considerably. But the final scene, when the main characters let down their emotional guard and finally find a way to connect, is quite moving, making one nearly forgive the many missteps along the way. The two stars -- who are aging like fine wine -- make middle-aged love seem very sexy indeed.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) Seven scenes mill about with intoxicating aimlessness, all while building to a finale that - not to mince words - is great. It’s the most frustrating part of an already maddening outing in pretentious presumption: You can’t thoroughly hate the journey because the destination proved so much fun when you finally got there...Director Jack O’Brien does everything he can to dispel the static nature of the show’s build-up, but his staging and pacing are unusually (and unnecessarily) stodgy...Allen and Irons, the only two actors in every scene, don’t always help - they render many of their discussions and speeches in ponderous, explorative tones that seem intended to give additional weight to lines that can’t generate it themselves.

CurtainUp C+
(Elyse Sommer) Probably the first time that I've seen a play's between scenes intervals upstage its stars. That's an especially impressive feat, considering that the stars are Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen...What's wrong with this so appealingly cast and handsomely staged play? On the plus side, Michael Jacobs has neatly linked his rather pedestrian plot and his characters' hangups to the four key paintings popping up and down on Scott Pask's set...On the minus side, the metaphoric connection lacks subtlety, substance and credible details. The plot too obviously leads to an ending that will leave Katharine (Allen) and Thomas (Irons) less emotionally blocked once they're able to step back far enough to view not only art but their lives. Their individual stories somehow lack the needed power, originality and detail.

New York C+
(Stephanie Zacharek) The first two-thirds of Michael Jacobs’s Impressionism are so indistinct and unfocused they make Monet’s water lilies look like photo-realism...And then, in the last half-hour of Impressionism’s single act, Katharine and Thomas’s world opens up like one of those Monet lilies...The material’s surprise revelation is more a handy way out of the characters’ incessant talkiness than a satisfying, believable conclusion, but at least it gives us something to hang on to. Allen works hard to make Katharine sympathetic; we can see that she’s wounded, not just self-centered and abrasive. But the performance is too finely calibrated: It clacks along efficiently but never breathes. As Thomas, Irons has the luxury of being relaxed and charming, even though his character, too, harbors painful secrets. Irons’s performance is comfortably rumpled and lived-in, an effect that requires meticulousness and discipline. His gift is that he makes hard work look like a shrug.

Hartford Courant C
(Malcolm Johnson) Despite a solid cast headed by Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen and Marsha Mason, this new American play by Michael Jacobs too often feels like an art history quiz...Though it runs an intermission-less 90 minutes, the eight-scene opus directed by Jack O'Brien seems much longer as it slips back in time and jumps about the globe. Allen excels as a gallery owner, Katharine Keenan, who initially appears to be reluctant to sell her works. Irons brings his usual British coolness to her assistant, photographer Thomas Buckle. Mason beams like a cat with a saucer of cream as Julia Davidson, a rich arts patron.

AM New York C-
(Matt Windman) Something is probably wrong when the scene changes are better than the scenes that follow...Not much conflict occurs in the 90-minute play. But when they and customers stare into the paintings, we relive their memories. Some random debate also occurs as to whether life is a product of realism or impressionism when viewed from a distance. Though occasionally entertaining, the uncooked play fails to make a real impression of the audience...Director Jack O’Brien has done a decent job considering how little he had to work with.

USA Today D
(Elysa Gardner) There is much to please the eye in Impressionism...Sadly, it's hard to imagine what, other than the scenery, compelled the accomplished and appealing actors to choose this particular project for their return...The playwright is clearly intent on telling an adult love story, and the result is a good-natured but woefully contrived account of two artsy, alienated types grasping for connection...Both lead actors seem stumped by their awkwardly, sentimentally drawn roles, as does their estimable director, Jack O'Brien. Irons manages to bring redeeming grace to the performance, speaking his lines with a knowing gentleness and exuding an easy, rumpled charm. Allen's readings, in contrast, seem breathless and strained, as though she is struggling to force more genuine life and nuance into Katharine...Art it ain't.

The New York Times D
(Ben Brantley) Pithy little life lessons keep coming at you in Michael Jacobs’s “Impressionism,” as if off a conveyor belt in a greeting card factory. But the one most immediately relevant to this undernourished play, which stars an ill-used Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, has to do with looking at life as if it were an Impressionist painting. As Katharine Keenan (Ms. Allen), the owner of an art gallery, puts it, none too academically: “You can’t get it when it’s right in front of you. You have to step back"...I’ve concluded that even if I were to back up all the way to the Hudson River, with half-open eyes fixed on the stage where Mr. Irons and Ms. Allen labor so valiantly, “Impressionism” still wouldn’t look credible...Both stars are asked to generate charm out of thin air, and you feel the strain. Mr. O’Brien, one of the most reliable and versatile of Broadway directors, keeps things moving fluidly if not briskly.

Lighting and Sound America D
(David Barbour) The producers of Impressionism have spared no expense, assembling the best creative team money can buy. They have acquired the services of Jack O'Brien, one of the two or three best directors in the theatre today. They have signed up a group of top designers and a fine supporting cast. And they have arranged for two stars -- Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons -- to make their returns to Broadway after absences of 19 and 25 years, respectively. There was one item that seems to have slipped the collective memory, however -- they forgot to provide their stars with characters to play...Many have wondered what so many eminent people saw in this script, and, indeed, it's rare to see two stars so obviously at sea as Allen and Irons.

Village Voice D
(Michael Feingold) Michael Jacobs's Impressionism notoriously went through a troubled preview period, revealing, when it finally opened, the twin sources of the trouble: Jacobs's script and Jack O'Brien's production. Based on an untenable metaphor—a gallery owner (Joan Allen) who refuses to sell the paintings she hangs because they're linked to her most traumatic memories—the script is clumsy and often stilted, supplying only an occasional heart-tug with some well-worn piece of theatrical hokum. The physical production, featuring projections on top of projections, looks cluttered and awkward; Jeremy Irons, playing all the unhelpful men in Allen's life, conveys even more uncomfortable awkwardness. The couple strikes no sparks; Allen's inner radiance, still palpable after a 19-year absence from Broadway, has to carry the sludgy evening by itself.

Associated Press D-
(Michael Kuchwara) An elaborate if awkward romance--positively brimming with self-importance--and showcased in a setting that includes a parade of gorgeous photographic reproductions of famous paintings.

Theatermania F+
(David Finkle) Hasn't a single redeeming brush stroke...The...issue here is Jacobs' relentlessly juvenile understanding of how ostensibly intelligent urban adults behave...Under Jack O'Brien's direction, Irons and Allen may be doing their best, but their best isn't nearly good enough. Sure, they spar with commitment, but that gets them nowhere when everything they have to say is inauthentic. Of the supporting cast, Marsha Mason gets one genuine laugh as a monied art lover, and Andre De Shields does well as both a Tanzanian griot and a Manhattan baker who helps set Katharine and Thomas to rights with his unpretentious art insights. What can be said in the project's favor is the soigne look that set designer Scott Pask has provided, particularly a show-curtain and several frequently raised and lowered frames on which are projected familiar Impressionist (and several non-Impressionist) works. But for all their beauty, Impressionism doesn't even begin to paint a realistic picture of life.

Variety F+
(David Rooney) Highfalutin schmaltz...[Jacobs'] overly precious new play smacks of sitcom in its articulate characters, who don't so much speak dialogue as deliver lines that overlap but rarely flow organically. However, the writing aims higher than sitcom. It's Hallmark sentiment masquerading as intellectual sophistication, with every one of its characters' stories and memories contorted into a laborious metaphor for love and life. That might be palatable if we had some investment in seeing the central couple hook up. But Katharine and Thomas are a bloodless pair without an ounce of body fat between them; one worries they might snap something should they ever get physical...The overwritten play's most engaging moments come when two minor figures are onstage. Marsha Mason has a semi-satisfying dramatic arc, playing a woman swathed in flashy furs and haggling over the price of the Cassatt aquatint while rankling at becoming a grandmother. And Andre De Shields adds warmth as the baker of the aforementioned muffins.

American Theatre Web F+
(Andy Propst) Muddled and dispiriting...Allen, who looks terrific in a plethora of chic career-woman ensembles from costume designer Catherine Zuber, and Irons deliver proficient performances in their various roles. But these are not the sort of turns that theatergoers might expect from these two award-winning actors. Part of the problem is that the characters are not so much enigmatic as sylphs whose motivations are almost capriciously mercurial.

Bloomberg News F
(John Simon) The play suffers from three major ailments: pretentiousness, trickery and triviality...Between scenes, in director Jack O’Brien’s technologically dazzling production, famous paintings drop down and glitter momentarily before flying away...There are maddeningly lengthy discussions of the relative merits of raspberry muffins and coffeecake (the loser) and of their boxes secured with string versus tape (the loser); also of the history of coffee and its many varieties, some so fine as to be life-changing, others perhaps even finer but beyond the financial reach of the play’s characters.

Bergen Record F
(Robert Feldberg) [Irons] gives the sense of having dropped in on the production very recently. He performs tentatively and without passion, perhaps preoccupied by thoughts of what he plans to do to his agent for getting him into this mess. Allen is a lot more into it, but the result isn't much more illuminating. Katharine remains as vague and slight a character as Thomas. Adding to the general sense of futility are unpersuasive supporting performances. The two best-known featured actors, Marsha Mason and Andre De Shields, push too hard, likely trying to compensate for the weakness of the material...The evening was directed by Jack O'Brien, one of the most skilled and resourceful directors around. I'm sure he tried.

Newsday F
(Linda Winer) Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen have great bones. The play, alas, does not...How is it that director Jack O'Brien - with Tony achievements as diverse as "Hairspray" and "Henry IV" - lavished his entire magnificent creative team from "Coast of Utopia" on this emotional piffle wrapped in fancy dress? "Impressionism" manages what would seem to be impossible. It makes bores out of two unconscionably attractive and intelligent actors and wastes the sporting efforts of Marsha Mason, André de Shields and an underemployed quartet of less-celebrated talents.

Backstage F
(David Sheward) A blobby, predictable mess rather than an intriguing collage...Jacobs is a veteran small-screen writer who has created such tepid fare as Charles in Charge and My Two Dads. His characters here are as dimensionless as his sitcom creations. They speak the kind of supposedly snappy dialogue that has every line ending in a laugh. They have sudden revelations and change their entire worldview in a matter of moments. Jacobs has written them as if they had to reach a major life shift in time for the next commercial. To make matters worse, there is no chemistry between Allen and Irons. They act like cubicle chums killing time till the workday ends rather than the loves of each other's lives. Allen is a shade more invested than Irons...100 intermissionless minutes seem like endless hours.

The Daily News F
(Joe Dziemianowicz) It took 16 producers to present "Impressionism," a new play now open at the Schoenfeld Theatre. They would have been better off investing in low-interest CDs. Even the talented Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen and director Jack O'Brien, who have five Tonys among them, aren't able to breathe charm or art into this pale drama by Michael Jacobs, which is both obscure and simplistic.

Edge NY F
(David Toussaint) In what’s easily the most mismatched pairing since Babs kissed Bush, Katharine and Thomas work at a New York art gallery -- wait, scratch that: Thomas doesn’t work there, we find out; he just shows up with coffee and tells caffeine-related stories and somehow earns a living...Naturally, this being a comedy, they are destined to fall in love, even though Allen and Irons seem about as interested in each other as we are in them. The biggest problem with the production, in a long list of complaints, is that Irons is almost lethargic onstage, coming across as either horribly unprepared, bored with the role, or thinking a high-brow English accent can make up for everything. Since he gives almost nothing to his co-star, Allen does just the opposite, fretting and fussing and tearing-up so much she’s like a blender that keeps switching speeds.

New York Post F-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) On paper, "Impressionism" is all class. Onstage, it's a stupefying bore...Not to be outdone, O'Brien matches Jacobs cliché for cliché--the director lacks the imagination to make up for the material's literalness. So, of course, there are projections of tasteful pictures. Of course, Katharine introduces flashbacks by freezing and staring into space while the music starts again. Everything telegraphs SIGNIFICANCE. Allen and Irons put up a stoic front but can't help betraying a certain sense of defeat.

Chicago Tribune F-
(Chris Jones) Wretched...So pretentious, so ridiculous and so internally incoherent that the emotional travails of the two central characters bleed perceptibly into the flailings of clearly frustrated actors trapped in a very public set of unfortunate circumstances...Penned by Michael Jacobs, known as a producer, "Impressionism" came to Broadway cold, and cold sums up the piece...Marsha Mason makes a surreal cameo and gets off the only funny line of the night when she declares herself the only woman in America with any money left. It is a risky line, though, because it invites the audience to contemplate the cost of their non-refundable tickets.

Time Out NY and NY 1 F-
(David Cote) We expect movie stars to do hack work for easy money. Who begrudges Joan Allen her silly turn in Death Race or Jeremy Irons’s stopping by the set of Dungeons & Dragons en route to the check-cashing joint? But seeing these talented actors in a vanity project as weak as Impressionism is uniquely embarrassing, a waste of resources nowhere near as fun or forgivable as a summer popcorn flick.

Nytheatre.com A- 12; New Yorker B 10; The Hollywood Reporter B- 9; Talkin' Broadway B- 9; CurtainUp C+ 8; New York C+ 8; Hartford Courant C 7; AM New York C- 6; USA Today D 4; The New York Times D 4; LS&A D 4; VV D 4; Associated Press D- 3; Theatermania F+ 2; Variety F+ 2; American Theatre Web F+ 2; Bloomberg News F 1; Bergen Record F 1; Newsday F 1; Backstage F 1; The Daily News F 1; Edge NY F 1; New York Post F- 0; Chicago Tribune F- 0; TONY F- 0; 100/25=4 (D)

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