Accent on Youth

GRADE: C+

By Samson Raphaelson. Directed by Daniel Sullivan. Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. (CLOSED)

Critics aren't exactly popping their corks over Manhattan Theatre Club's new revival of Samson Raphaelson's 1934 romantic comedy, in which David Hyde Pierce lightly limns a playwright's midlife crisis. Most critics appreciate Pierce's comic timing and single out a few other supporting performances for praise (Charles Kimbrough and Byron Jennings get some love), but are otherwise content to damn the enterprise with faint praise. At either end of the spectrum, a few are a tad more charmed and a few are much more severe, in particular the Post's Elisabeth Vincentelli, who may be the first theater critic at a major New York daily to use "emo" as an adjective.

Theater News Online A
(Jessica Branch) This wry comedy by Samson Raphanelson, better known for The Jazz Singer, still retains more vigor and charm than many more modern shows-as well as a touch of wisdom...The elaborately plotted, fast-moving play has more than its share of clever lines and witty observations, and director Daniel Sullivan makes the action run smoothly and logically despite the odd central caesura. But what ultimately makes the comedy stick with you as well as sparkle is that, while it plays with cliches of young obsessions and old love (the name of Steven's play within the play), it never reduces its characters to the stereotypes inherited from Restoration comedy.

New York A-
(Stephanie Zacharek) David Hyde Pierce has an air of nebbishy elegance that’s perfect for Samson Raphaelson’s 1934 Accent on Youth...and he brings buoyancy to Raphaelson’s Champagne-pop dialogue. The glamour quotient (not to mention the amount of lovely, lovely smoking) is high...If this production is missing one tiny thing, it’s the equivalent of the Lubitsch touch: It moves with crisp efficiency when just a little more zip and glide would be perfect. But director Daniel Sullivan and his cast come close enough, reminding us what a revival should be: awakening a sleeping beauty with the right kiss. Or by lighting her cigarette.

Bergen Record B+
(Robert Feldberg) They haven’t written debonair romantic comedies like Samson Raphaelson’s bonbon in a very long time. The play is imperfect — the characters’ motivations don’t always make sense, and the plot takes a dubious turn — but it’s amusing and charming, and effortlessly pushes our nostalgia buttons...David Hyde Pierce — witty, stylish and likeable, as always — portrays Steven Gaye, a middle-aged, extremely successful writer of Broadway comedies...Under the smart direction of Daniel Sullivan, the actors perform their roles with complete conviction, but also with a knowing little twinkle.

Bloomberg News B+
(Jeremy Gerard) It’s the kind of cream puff -- lighthearted, wistful, with just enough wit to make the viewer feel smart but no more -- that we associate with Noel Coward or, among Americans, Philip Barry and precious few others. Yet director Daniel Sullivan and a venerable ensemble led by David Hyde Pierce blow the dust off this minor gem, providing two hours of diversion from whatever you may need diverting from...Sullivan is one of the few directors around confident enough to treat such material without the standard post-modern dash of irony -- no troops marching off to war in the background or interpolations of Ponzi schemes and the like. Pierce may be a bit too youthful looking for the role, but what he lacks in facial creases he makes up for in perfect timing and suavity...There are more performances to treasure, as well. Notably Byron Jennings as a veteran actor who gives a master class in playing a drunk scene, the great Charles Kimbrough as an all-knowing butler, and Lisa Banes as an actress of a certain age and former flame of the playwright. The real find, however, is Mary Catherine Garrison. As the love-struck secretary, she makes naivete attractive.

New Yorker B+
An urbane, well-written meditation from a literate time gone by, about a successful writer who is losing the battle between his work and his women. The work goes swimmingly; the relationships with women don’t. As the morose writer, David Hyde Pierce does his droll thing, ably supported by Charles Kimbrough as his plucky butler. The casting of the women is more problematic; they make the struggle between life and art a rather easier choice than it should be. Daniel Sullivan directed this pleasant revival, which could have used more heat under it.

Nytheatre.com B+
(Michael Criscuolo) A charming time capsule-like diversion that showcases the dry, comic skills of its cast in a flattering light...Beneath Accent on Youth's 1930s glamour and sophistication, is a soft-spoken melancholy that grounds the play and gives it more substance...But there are plenty of pleasant, harmless laughs to be had, as well...Daniel Sullivan directs with a mild, no-nonsense urgency that gives the actors room to breathe...A confection that goes down smooth and easy and leaves no guilt in its wake.

Associated Press B
(Michael Kuchwara) An amiable, minor-league diversion. For one thing, the production, directed by Daniel Sullivan, has been elegantly put together: from designer John Lee Beatty's spiffy, wood-paneled Manhattan apartment to Jane Greenwood's stylish period costumes, particularly for the ladies. For another, its cast is headed by David Hyde Pierce, an actor who positively brims with likability...It's a flimsy tale, but Raphaelson has spun it out with the addition of several choice supporting characters, and Sullivan has cast them all savvily. Chief among them is Byron Jennings, one of theater's most reliable workhorses.

Lighting & Sound America B
(David Barbour) While it's hard to imagine anyone being deeply in thrall to Samson Raphelson's 1934 cocktail party, at least Sullivan's deeply assured, swankily designed production passes the time pleasantly. And he has assembled a mostly first-rate cast to help thing along. Chief among them is David Hyde Pierce...Pierce is ideally cast for this kind of understated comedy, his elegant manner and fine way with a deadpan line harvesting the maximum value out of Raphelson's dialogue...And as long as this mild, Manhattanized update of Cyrano De Bergerac is focusing on the self-serving show folk on the sidelines, it provides some pretty solid amusement...Still, the Steven-Linda romance is an awfully mechanical affair. Raphelson basically skips over the part where they get together, so we never see what might make them right for each other...Still, anyone with a fondness for this kind of period comedy will probably find Accent on Youth to be irresistible -- even if it comes in a distant second to the currently running Blithe Spirit. It's no small help that John Lee Beatty has come up with one of his most gorgeous recent designs -- a Deco sitting room with odd, yet appealing, Federal touches.

Variety B-
(David Rooney) Daniel Sullivan's spiffy production and David Hyde Pierce's effortless timing make the antiquated comedy tick by painlessly enough, but there's not much substance beneath its mild charms...Sullivan's breezy staging of the first act, with its amusing dialogue and affectionate observation of quintessential theater types, makes you wonder why this contorted May-December romance doesn't turn up more often on the regional theater docket. But the strained plotting and longueurs of the second act, in which art imitates life and vice versa, make that absence clearer. Ditto the play's half-hearted bid to uncover a melancholy note in the trials of mid-life love.

Talkin' Broadway C+
(Matthew Murray) The instant the curtain (yes, a real curtain) rises on the drawing room of superstar playwright (no, I’m serious) Steven Gaye (that’s his name), and begins its incessant meta-tweaking of theatre folk, personalities, and scripts as if none of it had ever been done before, you know you’ve been catapulted into a different era...This is good for the production, which Daniel Sullivan has directed with no shortage of spit and polish, which John Lee Beatty (sets) and Jane Greenwood (costumes) have designed with luscious period detail, and which the cast - led by the fine pair of David Hyde Pierce and Mary Catherine Garrison - acts with elegant, dust-busting abandon. But it does the 1934 play no favors, because it just reminds you of the many more involved, interesting, and inventive ways in which this device has been used over the course of the last seven and a half decades...A pleasant, if empty-headed, two hours.

Theatermania C+
(David Finkle) Little more than mild entertainment for ticket buyers content with a passing-the-time trifle...Pierce may have made a habit of pushing the fey button when playing Niles Crane on Frasier, but here he puts the accent firmly on his romantic leading-man chops...Under Daniel Sullivan's slick direction, just about every one of the players has polished his or her role with whatever actors use as a Lemon Pledge equivalent...The exception to this perfection is Garrison, whose Linda Brown is absolutely right for the first act as Gaye's infatuated factotum. However, in act two, when Linda -- now having starred in that December-May play Gaye finished -- enters looking "extremely chic and expensive from head to toe," Garrison doesn't evoke the required theatrical savoir faire.

Village Voice C+
(Michael Feingold) No journey's easier than the amiable, wafer-thin, mildly witty one that Samson Raphaelson's 1934 comedy Accent on Youth shepherds us through. Raphaelson, who wrote some of Ernst Lubitsch's best screenplays, knows just how to spice up a standard love triangle with a dash of Pirandellian self-awareness. David Hyde Pierce and Mary Catherine Garrison, in director Daniel Sullivan's surprisingly bland production, give at least two sides of the triangle the needed sparkle, which makes for pleasantness, but not much more.

The New York Times C
(Charles Isherwood) Age has not exactly withered “Accent on Youth,” a 1934 comedy by Samson Raphaelson about the storms besetting a May-December romance in the theater world. But it has not done this personable but minor play any great favors either...Still, the Manhattan Theater Club revival...offers cozy comforts understandably prized by a significant subset of Broadway theatergoers. Namely those for whom a couple of hours of light laughs in the presence of a likable star and some ogle-worthy period scenery will suffice for an afternoon of diversion...Mr. Hyde Pierce hits his comic marks with the precision we’ve come to expect from his priceless turn on the long-running, exceptionally literate sitcom “Frasier"...The female roles are less stylishly played.

Newsday C
(Linda Winer) As Broadway's heavyweight season stampedes madly to today's official close, it would be lovely to be able to adore the breezy arrival of an unpretentious 1934 fluffball called "Accent on Youth"...Alas, it is hard to work up serious affection for the revival...The well-dressed production is more than dutiful, but less than scintillating. It's merely pleasant in the leisurely, mild-mannered style of elevated summer stock...Pierce - not particularly romantic or aged - delivers the knowing inside-theater observations with his usual pointed flair. But when Steven bellows, "To hell with the audience!," Pierce drops all pretense of the style and sticks his butt out at us. I'm going to try not to remember him like that.

American Theatre Web C
(Andy Propst) In Daniel Sullivan's graceful, but unremarkable revival that opened last night at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the show's discrete pleasures are certainly in evidence, particularly given leading man David Hyde Pierce's elegant performance, but as this show business romantic comedy spins its droll, but not terribly merry way, one can't help but wonder why the company selected this play for revival in the first place...It's comedy meant to inspire smiles, and perhaps the occasional laugh, but it's hardly uproarious stuff, and given the understated performances in the production, occasional bemusement is what theatergoers can expect from "Accent."

The Hollywood Reporter C-
(Frank Scheck) Feels like a bottle of champagne that's long lost its fizz. Not that there's anything terribly wrong with this production directed by Daniel Sullivan for the Manhattan Theatre Club. It certainly looks smashing, thanks to John Lee Beatty's gorgeous art-deco living room set, Jane Greenwood's elegant period costumes and Brian MacDevitt's caressing lighting design. And its star, David Hyde Pierce, uses his pitch-perfect comic timing, honed for so many seasons on "Frasier," to fine effect...But his efforts are not enough to prop up this decently crafted but uninspired 1934 comedy.

Entertainment Weekly C-
(Jeff Labrecque) Looks every bit its age. Tony-winning director Daniel Sullivan...opts for the original's 1930s sensibility, challenging a contemporary audience with feeble attempts at provocation and an antiquated representation of love...Minus the taboo that once accompanied a May-September romance, the characters' whiplash swoons seem irritatingly arbitrary, and the play's humor becomes more corny than clever. A less literal adaptation may have fared better, but as is, Accent on Youth is the rare romantic frolic that is all head and no heart.

Time Out NY D
(Adam Feldman) Feels distressingly aged and extraneous; you forget it even as you watch it. What is happening at MTC? The company’s website bills it as “one of the only institutions in the U.S. solely dedicated to producing new plays and musicals.” But its Samuel J. Friedman Theatre began the season with the new-in-name-only To Be or Not to Be, adapted from the 1942 film; then came a revival of 1990’s The American Plan; and now this. When did the MTC’s mission become a nostalgia trip? Are its captains asleep on the job? With productions like this one, no one could blame them.

AM New York D
(Matt Windman) The posh Manhattan apartment set design and Depression-era costumes are pretty. The cast is pretty charming. Some witty dialogue occasionally pops up. But it’s hard to not feel underwhelmed and bored by the Manhattan Theater Club’s well-meant but unnecessary and uninspired revival of what feels like a third-rate Noel Coward play...Pierce gives a sensitive and quirky performance, but it is nothing that we haven’t seen before. He appeared most comfortable not with leading lady Mary Catherine Garrison, who is pretty much at sea with her role, but Charles Kimbrough as the fun-loving butler.

Daily News D-
(Joe Dzeimianowicz) Flaccid...Whips up so little laughter it should carry a "lite" label. It is a surprising letdown, considering Raphaelson's credits - "The Jazz Singer," which became the first talkie, plus screenplays for the "The Shop Around the Corner" and "Suspicion," films that are timeless. "Youth," meanwhile, shows every one of its years, and neither Botox nor director Daniel Sullivan's game cast can erase them. Pierce, a "Frasier" favorite who won a Tony playing a singing gumshoe in "Curtains," pulls out his signature droll charm.

Backstage F+
(Erik Haagensen) It creaks, groans, and lumbers its way across the stage of the former Biltmore Theatre despite the best efforts of a talented company. Manhattan Theatre Club's production proves the danger of indiscriminate archeology and engenders incredulity at the resources lavished upon it. What's next, a revival of Glad Tidings?...Pierce summons every ounce of charm he possesses and lands his share of faded bons mots, but there's little he can do to make this antique stereotype interesting. Mary Catherine Garrison is more comfortable as the quirky secretary than she is as the Broadway star, never making the character's glamorous transformation wholly believable.

New York Post F
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Rarely have material, director and cast been as mismatched as they are in the leaden Manhattan Theatre Club production that opened last night...Unfortunately, Sullivan seems to have instructed his actors to act all emo and serious, ruining Raphaelson's effect. Adopting a slow, ponderous tone, the two leads leech all the wit out of the text...Hyde Pierce is so dour throughout that his simultaneous lifelessness is almost a relief -- it takes out some of the sting -- while Garrison, an appealing supporting performer in "Top Girls" and "Assassins," can't convincingly handle either her first-act mousy secretary or her second-act stage actress...The bummer of a set doesn't help...What irks me most is that, in the right hands, a Raphaelson script can still hit plenty of grace notes.

Theater News Online A 13; NY mag A- 12; Bergen Record B+ 11; Bloomberg B+ 11; Nytheatre.com B+ 11; NYer B+ 11; Associated Press B 10; L&SA B 10; Variety B- 9; Talkin' Broadway C+ 8; Theatermania C+ 8; VV C+ 8; The New York Times C 7; Newsday C 7; American Theatre Web C 7; The Hollywood Reporter C- 6; Entertainment Weekly C- 6; TONY D 4; AM New York D 4; Daily News D- 3; Backstage F+ 2; New York Post F 1; 169/22=7.68 (C+)

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The Singing Forest

GRADE: C

By Craig Lucas. Directed by Mark Wing-Davey. Public Theater. (CLOSED)

The reviews of The Singing Forest are almost as confusing as the play seems to be. (The plot as laid out in the reviews is too complicated to go into in this short space.) It seems that critics respect Craig Lucas too much to slam his play (except for John Simon, who gives the play zero stars), so they get around it by applauding his efforts. They do say the play, referred to in three reviews as "overcaffeinated," is too long and attempts too much, so never really reaches any satisfying conclusions. Nytheatre.com's Stan Richardson disagrees, writing, "When you see it—and I highly recommend that you do—allow yourself to get lost a bit, relish the complexity, be thankful that questions come up and that you don't know what will happen next." Critics are also kind to the actors, especially Olympia Dukakis and Jonathan Groff, who they say do the most they can with the material.

Nytheatre.com A+
(Stan Richardson) Lucas needs every moment of his three acts to show you how this fragmented family—and certain of their lovers and colleagues and patients—end up in Loë's Klimt-cluttered apartment. I find the twists and turns nothing short of exhilarating, and many of the performances are delightful, such as Mark Blum as the conniving boob Oliver, and Jonathan Groff (who, after his exquisite turn in Prayer for My Enemy this past fall, is becoming a definitive interpreter of Lucas's work) as Gray, a non-inward-looking young actor who gets caught up in this mess in several ways that I cannot possibly describe here. Also noteworthy are John Gromada's sensitive sound design and haunting original music, and John McDermott's clever and magnificent set, both of which corporealize an entirely captivating world that Mark Wing-Davey and his actors have conjured from Craig Lucas's fascinating new play.

Backstage A
(Erik Haagensen) "There are no coincidences" is not just the mantra of Craig Lucas' dense and deeply felt The Singing Forest; it's also the three-act play's organizing structural principle. That leads to one of the most unusual instances I've seen of dramatizing theme through form. The play is a bracing, unflinching attempt to accept that the damage human beings do to themselves and one another is often permanent and ever-present. Learning to live successfully with that and each other is the task we all face... Lucas initially lets his audience piece together the characters' connections. Then the past breaks through, intermingling with the present as we learn the toll events have taken and watch everyone grapple with it. Act 2 climaxes with a sequence in which Lucas momentarily accelerates the play into farce as all the "coincidences" pile up, bringing everyone together. The switch in tone dramatizes the theme: Everyone arrives because of something he or she has done that then affects somebody else. No coincidences. The silliness of the sequence reflects the foolishness of the characters' belief in their autonomy. We are all connected.

NYMag A-
(Stephanie Zacharek) This is an ambitious, gangly work, spanning decades and exploring thorny questions about gay identity and even thornier ones about human identity. Sometimes you wish Lucas hadn't tried to pack so much in—he’s juggling so many ideas that some of them emerge only as murky, indistinct silhouettes. But director Mark Wing-Davey deftly guides us through the mishegoss, and in the end the expansiveness of the material works in its favor. Leave it to someone else to write small, intimate, tasteful plays about the complexity of relationships; Lucas prefers the crazy spectacle.

The Village Voice A-
(Michael Feingold) In this turmoil of interlocking stories, which regularly splurts up into either violent confrontations or door-slamming farcical mixups, the prevailing tone is, surprisingly, compassion. Lucas's underlying notion seems to be that, in a world as terror-filled as ours, everyone needs to be forgiven everything before it all becomes much worse. If this flies in the face of reason, it's a natural outgrowth of a narrative whose multiple strands variously rebuke common sense, history, and chronology. Like the sex-farce tone and the Holocaust subject matter, the play's ideas and its tactics simply don't merge. Yet their constant friction steadily produces dazzling showers of sparks, and director Mark Wing-Davey's devoted cast achieves some mighty effects while setting them alight. Dukakis, fiercely acerbic, rides commandingly over the action; Blum and Campbell, twin icons of epic haplessness, are especially moving. Best of all is Groff, who now perfectly incarnates the Craig Lucas hero: sweetly vulnerable yet indomitably determined, venturing bravely forth, wide-eyed with terrified wonder, into the crazy world that will force him to figure out who he is.

Associated Press B+
(Peter Santilli) This ambitious, three-act production, which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's Public Theater, is difficult to pin down. It is part mistaken-identity farce, part family drama, part historical fiction, among a mix of other things. Lucas crams so much into the cerebral, cross-generational allegory, it seems scattered at times. Despite this minor hindrance, which actually adds an unexpected aesthetic, the play proves thoroughly provocative, thanks to a compelling story, a strong cast and novel stage direction.

Variety C
(Marilyn Stasio) The centerpiece of this modern-day fable is Loe Rieman (Olympia Dukakis), one of those quick-witted, sharp-tongued older women who navigate the city like they own it. Although nothing gets past them and nobody goes unnoticed, such women are largely invisible to the rest of the world... Loe is a marvelous character, and Dukakis is altogether splendid in the role; she plays Loe with an earthy goodness that conveys all of her wit and wisdom without masking any of her pain. The "singing forest" she carries in her head is made up of all mankind, voices raised in "cries of death, keening, loss, terror."... But in his determination to find farcical humor in one aspect of Loe's girlhood trauma -- her guilt over failing to defend her homosexual brother -- Lucas has concocted an elaborate subplot involving two gay shrinks (nice comedy chops from Mark Blum and Rob Campbell) lusting after the same straight patient. The situation is amusing enough on its own terms and rather sexy given the genuinely sweet appeal of Jonathan Groff ("Spring Awakening") as the prize they are fighting over.

CurtainUp C
(Elyse Sommer) Like the lives it depicts, The Singing Forest is messy, sprawling play. It's top heavy with credibility challenging coincidences and in need of trimming. But, while it's a play that will have you walking out a touch unsure whether you really loved and understood what you saw, you won't be bored watching it and you'll probably find yourself thinking about it after you leave. For one thing, attention must and will be paid, if only to figure what's going on and who's really infuriated with who, and why. Then there's Olympia Dukakis as the locus of the Rieman family's dysfunction. This is her most unique role since the TV mini-series Tales of the City. She may be the focal character, but this is an ensemble play and Dukakis is supported by eight eminently watchable actors, each of whom play two roles. That adds up to a total of seventeen intriguing personalities, which include Dr. Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna.

American Theater Web C-
(Andy Propst) The play's bifurcated nature is only exacerbated in Mark Wing-Davey's unevenly conceived staging. With the scenes in New York, there's an edgy, sort of over-caffeinated pacing to the production, but when the play shifts back in time, it seems almost like a set of theatrical brakes has been pulled, and the show jars into a slower, more dreamy realm, certainly appropriate for the action, but theatergoers experience a kind of whiplash nonetheless. And thus, despite some terrifically conceived performances – particularly from Groff and Dukakis – theatergoers watch "Forest" with interest and a bit of skepticism, but never find themselves pulled into the story emotionally. John McDermott's scenic design – a series of sliding coarse wooden panels that simultaneously bring to mind dingy New York apartments and perhaps German boxcars in the 1930s – proves consistently surprising, and can even become some what hauntingly beautiful under an assured lighting design from Japhy Weideman. Gabriel Berry's costumes capture character and period flair throughout, and ultimately, one can't help but watch in fascination wondering what will come next in either era. At the same time, though, one can't help wish that somehow the play, with its high-charged parallel plots, were somehow more emotionally involving.

The New York Times D+
(Charles Isherwood) Mr. Lucas, a wildly uneven playwright who inspires respect for the eclectic reach and emotional depth of his best work, has retooled the play somewhat since its debut four years ago at the Long Wharf Theater, in a production directed by Bartlett Sher. But the changes seem mostly cosmetic. The director of this staging, Mark Wing-Davey, brought out the emotional riches in a similarly complex but far better play by Mr. Lucas, “Small Tragedy,” which considered some of the same themes about the chains of pain that link people together. Here he mostly has to settle for arranging traffic patterns smoothly, and he does not always succeed even at that. (And I wish he’d sped by the lingering scene in which Ms. Dukakis, as the younger Loë, is raped by a Nazi.) Still, the cast members do what they can to humanize the characters, purportedly real people dropped into the machine of farce, scrabbling like hamsters in a maze... “There are no coincidences,” one of the overanalyzed characters says, by way of explaining the absurdity. But in art coincidence must be used sparingly. When indulged recklessly, it can only be called contrivance.

Time Out New York D+
(Adam Feldman) Craig Lucas's new play is in many ways a disaster, but so willful and ambitious a disaster that it commands your staggered respect. In nearly three hours, with two intermissions, Lucas takes Marx's maxim that history repeats itself first as history, and then as farce, and smooshes it into a strange, sticky ball.

New York Post D+
(Frank Scheck) If ambition counted for everything, Craig Lucas' supremely loopy "The Singing Forest" would be a masterpiece -- a nearly three-hour, genre-bending, time-jumping comedy/drama that mixes Nazi atrocities with boulevard farce. It's as if the playwright was suffering from a serious case of "Angels in America" envy.

Theatermania D+
(Dan Bacalzo) Unfortunately, Wing-Davey has not found the proper tonal balance to go easily from a scene in which a multitude of characters farcically hide out in bathrooms, closets, and trunks to one in which the gut-wrenching facts about Loë's past are revealed. It's also a little difficult to tease out what the playwright is attempting to say about the practice of psychoanalysis. With five practitioners of the discipline in the play -- including both Sigmund and Anna Freud -- it's not incidental, and yet, all of the 21st century analysts in the piece behave in such a horribly unprofessional manner that it's difficult to take any of them seriously. And while many of the characters are subject to analysis at some point or another, the results are presented as either insightful keys to a person's state of mind or mere comic fodder -- and in one instance towards the end of the play, Shar's summing up of what has just been revealed is meant to be both. John McDermott's cluttered and rather unattractive set does little to help smooth transitions and only barely suggests changes in location (and sometimes it doesn't even do that). This job falls more to Japhy Weideman's often moody lighting, which is effectively coupled with John Gromada's original music and sound design to create the proper atmosphere in key scenes.

Just Shows To Go You D+
(Patrick Lee) You sense that the dizzying swirl of interconnected characters and the overarching theme of identity are aiming for something larger, even epic, but the play’s moments remain small and isolated from one another: this is a play that adds up to less than the sum of even its best parts.


That Sounds Cool D+
(Aaron Riccio) "It's disgusting to use the Holocaust to distract from your own sins," shouts Laszlo (Randy Harrison), upset with his shrink-turned-lover, Oliver (Mark Blum). As it turns out, Oliver's finally being honest about his mother, Loë (Olympia Dukakis), and his billionaire nephew, Jules Ahmad (Louis Cancelmi), so he shouts back "Sometimes life just is preposterous, you know?" These two liberties end up forming the crux of Craig Lucas's latest play, The Singing Forest, a slovenly three-act play that aims to be about the farcical coincidences of serious drama but is instead a seriously inconsequential farcical drama... On the positive side of things, the cast is also swept up in this tide of performance, and director Mark Wing-Davey makes the most of the ridiculous to stage an amusing showdown in Staten Island. Characters hide in bathrooms, dressers, trunks, and under benches, brandishing guns and breaking down doors, though what this stands for or has to do with the overall theme of Freudian therapy (and the somewhat symbolic and only occasional use of Nazism to that end) is anyone's guess.

Theater News Online D+
(Matt Windman) It is unlikely that any director could have brought a sense of clarity to the play. While Mark Wing-Davey sincerely attempts to direct the ongoing flow of traffic on an ugly urban set, the production only feels powerful in a handful of short well-acted scenes. Dukakis excels at playing the protagonist, who is dry and witty but is also dealing with deep and uncomfortable emotional scars from her past. Groff, who is now appearing in his second Craig Lucas play this season, makes a firm distinction between his modern-day character, who is youthful and confused, and his historical counterpoint, who is unashamed of his sexuality and individuality. There is a good play somewhere inside The Singing Forest. The real question is whether Craig Lucas can find it.

The Daily News D
(Joe Dziemianowicz) One can imagine the better work that would have sprouted had the author pruned this three-act that strives to be serious and seriously funny and ends up missing both marks. The story begins in a pre-9/11 New York City and flashes back to 1930s Vienna and 1940 London. It follows three generations of a damaged clan and how unresolved wounds fester decades later. That's a worthwhile exploration, with some occasionally striking moments — including the title reference to a forest filled with the music of suffering voices. But it's all so convoluted, it taps your patience.

Talkin' Broadway D
(Matthew Murray) Lucas has locked onto an interesting underlying concept in comparing the horrors of Holocaust Europe with current America’s treatment of and approach toward homosexuality; given the ever-simmering issue of gay marriage, this sort of examination couldn’t be more timely. But he deals with it so obliquely and randomly that it never has the chance to cohere. By the time Lucas introduces a full second cast of characters from Loë’s youth to help develop the background of his plot, he’s already juggling so much that he doesn’t have the time to devote to them, either. Considering that the play’s climax involves the full company spending the better part of 10 minutes sorting through their jumbled relationships, it’s fair to say there’s just too much going on. Wing-Davey does not discourage this in his staging, which treats much of New York as a cacophonous, drunken fever dream punctured by only tiny pockets of lucidity. John McDermott’s set, which lurches between post-modern minimalism, Molière-ready, and full-out Viennese conservatory drama, doesn’t help center the action. In fairness, The Singing Forest probably can’t be centered in the traditional sense. It wants to explore so many angles to so many questions that finding a single conceptual foundation is probably not possible. But without it, this feels like a collection of short, unrelated plays rushed through by actors who don’t understand how any of what they do affects the show as a whole.

Lighting & Sound America D-
(David Barbour) It's really, really hard to know what to make of The Singing Forest; my best guess is that the play is itself an expression of neurosis. The script is loaded with incidents of repetition compulsion -- with certain conflicts repeating themselves across generations -- and of hysteria. A cure is dispensed when Loë finally tells the truth and a feeling of resolution -- if not happiness -- descends on one and all. As somebody remarks, "Symptoms are caused by secrets." It's around this time that one begins to suspect that The Singing Forest, for all its skepticism about the couch, is an enormously complex contraption designed to deliver bite-sized, easily digestible, bits of Freudian theory. Repression is a terrible thing, you know. Given the play's frequent hairpin turns and brusque tonal shifts, it's something of a director's nightmare, and, indeed, Mark Wing-Davey's staging runs the gamut from gripping to goofy. Dukakis' natural authority and her devastating way with a wisecrack allow her to dominate the proceedings throughout, but even she is hard-pressed to make sense of the scene in which her home is invaded by the supporting cast. (She is absolutely priceless, however, when, taking a call from the son she hasn't spoken to in 32 years, she shouts, "Stop pestering me!") In a role that seems designed to strip him down to his underwear as often as possible, Jonathan Groff does his best, but Gray is defined by his lack of definition.

Bloomberg News F-
(John Simon) There are voyeurs known as ambulance chasers, and then there is a subset known as theatrical ambulance chasers, who boast of having seen such monumental fiascos as “Moose Murders,” which closed almost before the final curtain. To them I heartily commend Craig Lucas’s “The Singing Forest,” which should close after Act One, before, amazingly, things manage to get even worse in the New York premiere at the Public Theater.

Nytheatre.com A+ 14; Backstage A 13; NYMag A- 12; The Village Voice A- 12; Associated Press B+ 9; Variety C 7; CurtainUp C 7; TONY C- 6; American Theater Web C- 6; The New York Times D+ 5; New York Post D+ 5; Theatermania D+ 5; Just Shows To Go You D+ 5; That Sounds Cool D+ 5; Theater News Online D+ 5; The Daily News D 4; Talkin' Broadway D 4; Lighting & Sound America D- 3; Bloomberg News F- 0; TOTAL: 127/19 = 6.68 (C)

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Desire Under The Elms

GRADE: C+

By Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Robert Falls. St. James Theatre. (CLOSED)

The reviews for this elms-less Desire Under the Elms range from A+ to F-. The only thing critics agree on is that Carla Gugino and Pablo Schreiber are sexy together, but they do not agree on whether this has to do with acting ability or just good looks. In general, Gugino gets more positive notices than Schreiber, and there are a few raves for both of them as well as Brian Dennehy. Those critics not won over note that the actors spend most of the play yelling. Other aspects of the play that receive much attention but no consensus are an anachronistic Bob Dylan song and Walt Spangler's set design consisting mostly of boulders.

Backstage A+
(David Sheward) But there's nothing melodramatic or phony about this intense, sizzling revival. Falls wisely eschews naturalism and sets the play on a desolate rock-strewn heath. A triangle of greed and sexual rivalry is played out in this forbidding environment under an enormous suspended farmhouse, which hangs over the action like a crushing weight ready to drop at any moment. Designer Walt Spangler deserves full marks for creating a hellish setting that works as both a metaphor for the characters' struggles and the world in which they eat, sleep, and—to put it delicately—fornicate. That last-named activity is the driving force here, defying O'Neill's reputation for writing too many long monologues. The running time is a swift 100 minutes, and many of the passions are conveyed without words.

Chicago Tribune A+
(Chris Jones) There is no question that the performances in this arresting, audacious deconstruction of Eugene O’Neill’s 1924 drama of family passion and possession—a “Desire” without elms and sans a good slice of the original text—have deepened significantly. As Ephraim Cabot, the play’s patriarch, Brian Dennehy has now mastered much more of the role’s magnitude, and fills out the existential dilemma at the heart of Falls’ production.

Time Out New York A+
(David Cote) Rejoice: It is possible to revive Eugene O'Neill to spectacular effect. Robert Falls proves it with his sensational and sexually charged Desire Under the Elms. Muscular, lusty, elemental and pitched to operatic heights, Desire will restore your faith in O'Neill's admittedly turgid early melodramas, which marry Freudian obsessions to a received Greek-tragic aesthetic... Walt Spangler's monumental set—the Cabot farmhouse spends periods suspended high in the air, counterbalanced by massive boulders hanging from ropes—almost overpowers the humans. (The menacing sound design by Richard Woodbury is also impressive.) But Falls wisely encourages his cast to play it to the heavens.

Theater News Online A
(Andy Buck) Falls elicits strong performances from all three of his leads. When Schreiber and Gugino first confront each other in that kitchen scene, the electricity is so hot you can almost hear the hum of the power lines. Schreiber brings a dynamic sense of danger to every role he performs, whether it's the wounded son in the Tony-winning revival of Awake and Sing! or the raging misogynist in last year's original off-Broadway premiere of reasons to be pretty. Here his powerful connection to his character's yearnings goes a long way towards overcoming O'Neill's more purple passages... But the most thrilling element of this revival is the set designed by Goodman veteran Walt Spangler, who works seamlessly with Richard Woodbury's other-worldly sound design to create an unpredictable, Expressionistic terrain of tragic longing.

The New York Times A
(Charles Isherwood) First seen at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where it was the centerpiece of a winter festival devoted to O’Neill, this visually spectacular production wraps his powerful but problematic 1924 play in a big bear hug, making no attempt to throw a blanket of soft naturalism over its sometimes glaring flaws... Rarely has sexual passion been depicted with such tense, animalistic ferocity on a Broadway stage. After a somewhat ponderous start, during which we have a little too much time to marinate in the stagy, countrified dialect O’Neill employs, the temperature rockets upward when Abbie and Eben meet and exchange a long glare in the farmhouse kitchen. Mr. Schreiber, with a backwoods face and beefcake body, radiates a febrile, simmering fury in a performance of taut intensity... With Ms. Gugino, Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Dennehy giving performances of unflagging commitment and exposed feeling, the production manages to transcend the play’s flaws to transmit the penetrating truth of O’Neill’s underlying vision, of the ineradicable human need to possess and be possessed.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) The production from Chicago's Goodman Theatre is big and booming, almost operatic in its intensity and expansiveness. And it's stocked with oversized yet effective performances that hold their own against a gargantuan setting of rocks and a giant farmhouse that literally hangs in the air for much of the evening. That forbidding structure is the centerpiece of designer Walt Spangler's grandiose set design. "Desire Under the Elms" is a challenge for any director and cast. Fortunately, director Robert Falls and a terrific cast headed by Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino and Pablo Schreiber are at the top of their game.

Nytheatre.com A
(Michael Criscuolo) Fans of serious drama will most likely find themselves satisfied and thrilled by The Goodman Theatre's Broadway transfer of Eugene O'Neill's classic tragedy, which is brilliantly conceived by Falls and his design team, and just as brilliantly acted (for the most part) by its fiery and relentless cast... There are many different kinds of the titular emotion on display, but it's the desire for ownership—of both the farm and each other—that drives the characters the most. They view ownership as the ultimate manifestation of personal freedom, none of them the wiser that their single-minded pursuit turns each of their lives into a prison. Falls conveys this idea forcefully with Spangler's set design, a rock quarry that surrounds the playing area and makes escape difficult. Some boulders create walls dozens of feet high, others hang behind a scrim as if sinking into the ocean. The set mirrors O'Neill's language, which is rough and flinty throughout ("It's spring and I'm feeling damned!" one of the characters recalls), and the overall effect is powerfully unsettling.

New York Post A-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Robert Falls' production of the Eugene O'Neill drama, imported from Chicago, unfurls at a fever pitch. The set, the sentiments, the accents -- everything is dialed up to 11 and played completely straight. Leave your sense of irony at home and embrace the insanity, and you won't find a more intense experience on Broadway.

The New Yorker A-
(Hilton Als) While Falls makes exceptionally strong theatre, this production at times teeters on the edge of another kind of bathos—albeit a postmodernist one. Falls intends to get to O’Neill’s essence. The language matters less to him than the master’s underlying intentions, and he has cut the play from three acts to one, eliminating both intermissions. For the most part, this is helpful; Falls’s script is tighter and clearer than O’Neill’s, more openly erotic, and less biased against the character of Abbie (Carla Gugino), the new bride whom Ephraim brings home, and whom Eben takes to and against from the first. It’s a measure of Falls’s inventiveness as a director that Abbie and Eben’s desire for each other is rarely spoken.

Entertainment Weekly B+
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) Compared with her costars — particularly two-time Tony winner Brian Dennehy, our generation's foremost interpreter of the plays of Eugene O'Neill — Carla Gugino is a theatrical tenderfoot. She has made as many professional stage experiences as she has Spy Kids movies (three). Yet the minute Gugino's untamed Abbie — the 35-year-old trophy wife of Dennehy's 75-year-old Ephraim Cabot — strides into this steamy if not scorching revival of Desire Under the Elms, she stakes claim to more than just the Cabot farm: ''It's purty — purty! I can't b'lieve it's r'ally mine.'' She owns the show.

Newsday B+
(Linda Winer) The plot is still ludicrously overheated. The heavy New England dialect is still silly and self-conscious, sprinkled both with "ay-ups" and pronouncements about "goin' to Californ-ay-a" that sound like bad dialogue in a gold-rush Western. But these powerful actors buy it, which makes us willing to suspend vast stretches of inevitable disbelief. Gugino has a visceral lusciousness as the new bride. Schreiber has a sensitive undercurrent to his brutal hunger. With flowing white hair and shiny teeth for his stony grin, Dennehy captures both the cruelty and the isolation of a man made harder by his own self-justification.

CurtainUp B
(Elyse Sommer) This is certainly an ambitiously nervy, sexy and invigorating production. However, as it takes a while to acclimate one's ears to the heavy accents, the rocky landscape and that dangling house make the viewer too aware of the directorial conceit at work to get immediately caught up in the desperate mix of emotions at the heart of the play. Fortunately, there are enough striking scenes, many without words, to overcome the fascinating if somewhat too stage-y setting: Eben's taking a bath as Abbie hangs out the wash and each seemingly aware of the other's nearby presence. . .the uncommunicative family locking hands across the dining table in silent pre-dinner prayer. . .Abbie and Eben's redemptive climb up the rocky farm road to meet the town sheriff. Best of all, the actors get us caught up in this tale of hate, passion, redemption and dogged survival and they do lead us to what Larry Bommer (Chicago production review) aptly describes as a thrilling end.

Variety B-
(David Rooney) One of Falls' most unconventional touches is an anachronistic musical montage set to Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet," in which Abbie cleans and takes possession of the house, pegging out laundry while drinking in Eben's muscled body as he steps in and out of the bathtub. "It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there," sings Dylan, articulating a despair that's about to get uglier. Equally audacious is the torrid mime sequence in which Abbie's and Eben's burning souls are drawn together while blowhard Ephraim boasts of his Herculean achievement in turning a pile of rocks into the coveted farm. Embellishing a production pruned to an intermissionless one hour 45 minutes, these florid directorial strokes might be inorganic and to some extent take the audience out of the drama, but they're nothing if not arresting.

American Theater Web C+
(Andy Propst) In Gugino's spirited, yet ever so close to the vest performance, one's never quite sure as to Abbie's true motivations, and once the affair has gone awry, Gugino's subtle turn adds another layer of mystery to the whole thing – has Abbie lapsed into a kind of all-consuming madness. These questions – along with Dennehy's blisteringly intense portrayal of Ephraim and Schreiber's equally vivid portrayal of the tortured (and torturing) Eben – are what pull theatergoers through "Desire," which is otherwise, unfortunately, simply a pretentiously overwrought melodrama from a young playwright still finding his voice. There are glimpses here of the greatness that follows in O'Neill's canon. Ephraim, certainly, is an early incarnation of the paternal ogre found in Long Day's Journey Into Night, and there are echoes of the love affair of the sad misfits of Moon for the Misbegotten in Abbie and Eben's attraction to one another. But the elements and alchemy in "Desire" are handled clumsily at best.

NYMag C
(Scott Brown) With its portentous dimensions and almost comically priapic atmosphere of dread, Desire cries out for either unself-conscious energy or ironic, Wooster-style dismemberment. Falls delivers something in between: a soft-core meditation on Want that pinches off the energy. Thus gelded, Dennehy and Schreiber both come off weak, restrained, a little strangled in speech and affect. (A uniform approach to New England dialect might’ve helped.) But this is Abbie’s show, and Gugino, an underrated actress in full possession of her considerable gifts (just listen to her form the word “mine”), bestrides it like a goddess.

The Bergen Record C
(Robert Feldberg)Rather bravely, director Robert Falls has stripped down O’Neill’s 1924 play – scenes and secondary characters have been scrapped – and reshaped it into a tightly focused 100 minutes that attempt to render the melodrama, set on an 1850 New England farm, as O’Neill envisioned: as a Greek-style tragedy... Falls wants us to experience the raw, insatiable feelings the young lovers have for each other. And if the theater were more intimate, that might work. But the St. James is a huge house, meant for musicals, and the distance between actors and audience is too great to share the characters’ reckless abandon. The heat dissipates before it reaches us.

NY1 C
(Roma Torre) Eugene O'Neill's lengthy text has been condensed, characters cut and the volume ratcheted up to operatic heights. Eye-catching as it all is, this stylized production seemed to be more about the style than substance. Perhaps because "Desire Under The Elms" doesn't quite rank in the same league as O'Neill's better known masterpieces, Falls and his designers felt the need to jazz it up – and so it starts with a literal bang, followed by a lengthy bit of stage business complete with the gutting of a pig carcass. There's plenty of moody music and even a montage sequence set to a Bob Dylan right out of MTV. But that's not all. This play, inspired by Greek tragedy, is all about passion. And that prompted Falls to whip his company into overdrive with an emphasis on the sensual. Translation: expect to see a lot of skin and sex.

Just Shows To Go You C-
(Patrick Lee) Falls seems to play the characters as archetypes in a grand operatic tragedy, but he revels in the young ones’ lust so salaciously that it’s hard to take it any more seriously than As The World Turns. Brian Dennehy does fine, commanding work as the old contemptuous farmlord, but Falls pulls focus from one of his most dramatic monologues by simultaneously staging a hot and heavy pantomime for the lovers.

AMNY C-
(Matt Windman) In spite of the over-the-top emotions, what really keep this production grounded are the cast’s convincing performances Carla Gugino oozes with a Maggie the Cat sexuality that is eventually tempered by guilt and desperateness. Paolo Schreiber erupts with an overreaching anger ready to erupt. Their accents are occasionally difficult to understand. Brian Dennehy is commanding as the proud and stubborn patriarch. Robert Falls’ direction is unnecessarily conceptual. Instead of pastoral elms, the set consists of a huge rock quarry, obviously meant to symbolize how the play’s characters feel trapped. The family’s house is a massive set piece that ascends and descends from above.

The Village Voice D
(Michael Feingold) Falls wants too many incompatible things: This mini-Stonehenge, in which the erotic struggle of father, son, and stepmother will be fought out, also has to partake of deconstructionist chic, so Walt Spangler's set has to feature boulders that float against the New England sky; and it has to be faithful to O'Neill's realist vision, so the Cabot house has to float, too, while its master bedroom sprouts from a rocky cave. It's tough trying to walk, or design, in three directions at once.

Theatermania D-
(David Finkle) In contrast with the maternal feel that O'Neill requires for his throbbing melodrama, Falls substitutes paternal oppressiveness. Moreover, while large-scale passions are definitely the order of the day, Falls equates them with the actors shouting at the top of possibly diseased lungs. Abbie and Eben hold their initial shared gaze for long, wordless seconds -- to notify spectators that lust-at-first-sight has struck meteor-like -- but it's one of the few moments throughout the 100-minute play when he doesn't insist the characters yell out of rage or sheer spite. The misguided emphasis on volume takes its toll on the performances by these five clearly accomplished actors. Gugino, who gets to flash her breathtaking legs, and Schreiber, who has a body ripe for the cover of Men's Health, may circle and grope each other like animals in heat, but the unchanging decibel level precludes much sense of their interior lives. Dennehy has the same problem, although his abrupt aging at the denouement is impressive. Still, this is a rocky production in every sense of the word.

The Daily News F+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) No trees. No subtlety. Lots of concepts. And rocks. In a nutshell, that's Broadway's new "Desire Under the Elms," Robert Falls' second baffling revival of the season. First came "American Buffalo," David Mamet's tale of petty thievery, which was underdone. Now it's an audacious interpretation of Eugene O'Neill's Oedipal 19th-century farm melodrama, which is overcooked.

Lighting & Sound America F
(David Barbour) You know the director means business when the curtain goes up on a lengthy pantomimed sequence, set to nerve-wrackingly percussive music, in which two minor characters -- the older sons of the tyrannical New England farmer Ephraim Cabot - slowly, painfully drag oversized rocks across the stage. Next, they gut a trussed-up hog, removing its entrails with their hands as the shrieks of pigs in agony rend the air. Apparently, we're meant to understand that the characters endure a subhuman, hardscrabble existence; I'd love to know who thought any play by O'Neill -- who never makes a point fewer than five times -- needed this kind of extra emphasis... there's a difference between unbridled passions and unhinged direction, and Desire Under the Elms leans too far in the direction of the latter. By emphasizing everything that is overheated about the script, Falls takes it right into the territory of self-parody. All three leads seem engaged in a shouting match. Schreiber has trouble coping with Eben's instantaneous mood shifts -- he hates Abbie, then he loves her, then he hates her, then he loves her -- but this is always a challenge for actors playing O'Neill. Carla Gugino unleashes her full repertory of vocal tricks, trying to turn Abbie into an unstoppable force of nature, but, too much of the time, you can see the actress consciously deploying her technique. Brian Dennehy strikes poses and pitches his lines to balcony, trying to act Biblical and patriarchal, but the performance is oddly lacking in impact.

The Hollywood Reporter F
(Frank Scheck) When Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" began blaring through the speakers, while actors Pablo Schreiber and Carla Gugino went through a series of silent activities, the production confirmed its wrongheadedness. It's easy to see what director Robert Falls is aiming for with his production, which garnered much acclaim at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. His Expressionistic staging clearly seems designed to accentuate the stylized aspects of this problematic, Greek tragedy-inspired work. Unfortunately, his choices too often call attention to themselves, rather than enhancing the emotional impact of the overheated melodrama.

Bloomberg News F
(John Simon) Dennehy, a fine actor, cuts an imposing figure as the looming Ephraim, but one misses some of the drivenness that a George C. Scott, for example, could have conveyed. As Eben, gangly Schreiber, who must be both a mama’s boy constantly bemoaning his dead mother, and a demon lover and hater for Abbie, is not up to the complex, contradictory emotions. Gugino is more delicate than the Abbie whom O’Neill envisioned, but she does not stint on the requisite steaminess. Daniel Stewart Sherman is a spectacularly gross Simeon and Boris McGiver, as Peter, hops about semidementedly. The play runs to 100 tortured, and torturing, intermissionless minutes, perhaps to deny us a respite during which we might speculate about just how lucrative the trade in boulders could have been in 1850s New England.

Wall Street Journal F
(Terry Teachout) Enter Robert Falls, a director who never met a trendy idea he didn't try. The "King Lear" that he staged in 2006 for the Goodman Theatre opened with a scene set in a men's room. "Desire Under the Elms" isn't as fat-headed as that, but it comes close. Unwilling to tell O'Neill's tale on the modest, tightly focused scale envisioned by the playwright, Mr. Falls has instead turned it into a self-parody in which every effect is loud and every gesture broad. The trouble starts with the script itself, which Mr. Falls has cut with abandon, excising an entire scene and several minor characters. Not content to stop there, he has transferred the action of the play from a rundown New England farm whose most distinctive feature is a pair of "enormous elms" that "brood oppressively over the house" to the aforementioned quarry, a barren landscape designed by Walt Spangler in which nothing grows. (Symbolism! Symbolism!) The rubber pig is one of Mr. Falls's bright ideas, and so, I suspect, are the preposterous performances of Mr. McGiver and Mr. Sherman, who are mistakenly portrayed not as objects of pity but figures of fun.

Talkin' Broadway F-
(Matthew Murray) The way the actors alternately blare, mumble, spit, and swallow their lines, often into utter incomprehensibility (Schreiber is particularly poor in this regard), is not an identifiable attempt at communication - with each other or with us. It doesn’t matter much: The cuts and the atmosphere of suffocating abstractness ensure O’Neill barely has his say anyway. But there is still some meat here. The Westward Expansion, the allure of California gold, and the debilitating effects of living a life of want are vibrant topics for exploring how souls are discovered, stripped bare, wounded, and healed, even when they seem their most untouchable. The romantic triangle at the center of the show may be silly on the surface to our eyes, but it’s the pulsating heart of America at its greediest and grabbiest, the reminder you can’t (and shouldn’t) always get everything you crave. That’s the essence of Desire Under the Elms. But Falls and his actors are so obsessed with playing its symbolism - another example: The cabin’s kitchen table (the emblem of home) is profusely fondled, rubbed, and sweat on - that they forget to just play the play. The result is one of the most overwrought and underthought ensembles with major names that I’ve ever seen on Broadway.

Backstage A+ 14; Chicago Tribune A+ 14; TONY A+ 14; Theater News Online A 13; The New York Times A 13; Associated Press A 13; Nytheatre.com A 13; New York Post A- 12; The New Yorker A- 12; EW B+ 11; Newsday B+ 11; CurtainUp B 10; Variety B- 9; American Theater Web C+ 8; NYMag C 7; The Bergen Record C 7; NY1 C 7; Just Shows To Go You C- 6; AMNY C- 6; The Village Voice D 4; Theatermania D- 3; The Daily News F+ 2; Lighting & Sound America F 1; The Hollywood Reporter F 1; Bloomberg News F 1; WSJ F 1; Talkin' Broadway F- 0; TOTAL: 213/27 = 7.89 (C+)

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The Philanthropist

GRADE: D+

By Christopher Hampton. Directed by David Grindley. Roundabout at the American Airlines Theatre. (CLOSED)

When the highest grade a show gets is a C+, you know the knives are out. This time they're aimed squarely at lead actor Matthew Broderick, as a bland philology professor conceived by playwright Christopher Hampton as an inversion of Moliere's Alceste (from The Misanthrope). Critics vary in their generosity to Hampton's 1970 play, and toward supporting actors Jonathan Cake, Steven Weber, Anna Madeley, and Jennifer Mudge, but most agree that Tim Shortall's set is mistakenly vast and David Grindley's direction altogether too genteel. Critics are unusually unanimous on one point: Broderick is miscast and underperforming in the role.

Variety C+
(David Rooney) With Matthew Broderick reducing the title character to a cartoon, performing in his own hermetic space that excludes everyone else onstage, the play sits inertly, its poignancy lost and its clever dialogue hollowed into empty banter...Hampton sketches the airless world of these self-absorbed academics and artists with a poison pen, setting their decadent insularity against a climate of escalating violence and anarchy, reflecting the time of political ferment in which the play was written...Grindley and Broderick get comic mileage out of Philip's quiet panic as aggressive Araminta makes her move and he obliges more out of politeness than desire....The lack of texture in the central performance sucks the life out of everything else in the play, dulling down even some of the wittiest stretches of dialogue. However, Madeley (the sole holdover from the London cast) finds a pulse in flinty Celia, notably when she's bordering on spitefulness; Weber is appealingly at ease as a man proudly dedicated to idleness; and Cake has fun with an overstated role.

Associated Press C+
(Michael Kuchwara) "The Philanthropist" needs a crackerjack collection of performers to get across Hampton's sly, often quite witty and dark dialogue. It's particularly important for the actor playing Philip, who's intellectually nimble (the man loves anagrams) but psychologically and socially flat-footed. And Matthew Broderick doesn't quite fill the bill as an Oxford don determined not to offend -- but does...What's missing in Broderick's performance is the man's emotional destitution, the extra oomph that pushes Philip from being a sad-sack cartoon into a man bereft, a human being with no convictions except to please. It's a big hole to fill, and this production, directed by David Grindley, seems more stodgy and talky than it should be as it strains to fill that void...What transpires next is some sharp cocktail chatter, much of it supplied by a successful but overbearing novelist who has sold out for the big bucks. His narcissism has been perfectly captured by Jonathan Cake in what is the evening's most showy and consistently satisfying performance.

USA Today C+
(Elysa Gardner) The play, which addresses the limits of civil contemplation, requires a more complex protagonist. Even with gray hair and a tentative English accent, Broderick can't convey sufficient weight or weariness. That's a shame, because the ensemble here generally thrives under the thoughtful direction of David Grindley, who helmed a production of this play for the U.K.'s Donmar Warehouse in 2005. Anna Madeley, the one holdover from Donmar, is a pert, winning Celia, and Steven Weber brings a convincing ennui to Philip's more comfortably cynical colleague, Don. Jonathan Cake nearly steals the show from everyone as a smug, flamboyantly miserable novelist.

Talkin' Broadway C+
(Matthew Murray) Demonstrates the perils of casting to name rather than ability, appropriateness, or even basic type...Because the role is the center of the play, Broderick’s flabbiness of lack-of-personality is an insurmountable problem, regardless of how good everything else surrounding him may be. Unfortunately, everything else is pretty good. In his recent revivals of Journey’s End, Pygmalion, and The American Plan, Grindley has demonstrated a knack for digging into period delicacy (and sometimes indelicacy) and unearthing a recognizable, if often battle-scarred, humanity. He does that here as well, squeezing plenty of emotions from Hampton’s blistering critique of academic and political insularity that, because of Broderick, ultimately become the blood and guts of this easily cynical outing...It’s all intricately clever as written and intelligently (if traditionally) staged; and the supporting performances - particularly from Weber, Madeley (an import from the Donmar), and Cake (doing work even more glitteringly guttural than usual) - make things as real as they can be in this hopped-up comedy-of-too-many-manners.

New York C+
(Stephanie Zacharek) After a terrific, wicked opening scene, director David Grindley tries to keep the dialogue brisk, but he can’t prevent the material from feeling like a dozy lecture. The performers work hard but can’t hide the fact that they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting. Broderick shows the least strain, playing a docile thinker who has no illusions about what his flaws and capabilities are. When he explains, with unblinking resoluteness, “The truth is, I’m a man of no convictions—at least, I think I am,” he cuts to the heart of self-doubt, and you feel something for him. He opens a small breathing hole in this otherwise sealed-off play.

Newsday C
(Linda Winer) Whatever possessed the Roundabout Theatre Company to revive this mild little British satire about apathy during the most hyped-up politically engaged time in recent American history? Perhaps, if David Grindley's modest production of this talky play had filled the large stage with irresistibly attractive and articulate performances, we might have been swept up in the linguistic brilliance and never questioned its befuddling irrelevance. Then again, maybe not...It isn't easy to make a passive character interesting. Broderick, a career specialist in alienated innocents, knows just how to look lost at a party. He walks with a studied lack of affect, as if trying to balance a book on his head...Things only come alive, however, when Jonathan Cake - resplendently '70s in a purple striped velvet suit - strides into the party to be appalling as the successful novelist who kicks down facades of social concern and defends selfishness. I'm glad Cake keeps working until someone realizes that he's a star.

Wall Street Journal C-
(Terry Teachout) At once clever and aimless, "The Philanthropist" can't decide whether to be funny or serious, and never quite manages to be either. It doesn't help that the increasingly predictable Mr. Broderick gives more or less the same performance he gave four years ago in "The Odd Couple." Anna Madeley is pleasingly prickly in her Broadway debut as Celia, his exasperated fiancée, and I'd very much like to see her again -- in a better production of a better play.

Backstage C-
(David Sheward) Philip is played by Matthew Broderick in a retread of his Leo Bloom–Felix Ungar pathetic-nerd persona, only this one has a slight British accent. It's an almost impossible role to bring off. You have to garner sympathy for a dry-as-toast intellectual whose passions are limited to words...Even so, Broderick fails to display much of Philip's inner life, and his witty dialogue rings hollow. In the other major male role, Steven Weber has a similar burden. The central dilemma of Philip's colleague Donald is his disgust at his own ennui. Like Broderick, Weber does not find the vital urgency inside this man bored by life. The rest of the cast are not hampered by Hampton with these insurmountable acting tasks and fare much better...Director David Grindley delivers a proficient enough production, handsomely designed by Tim Shortall to resemble a university library. Tobin Ost dresses the cast in the flashy duds of the period. A visit to this Philanthropist is like playing word games with a group of unpleasant new acquaintances. You get some mild mind exercise, but you don't really want to know your fellow players.

Village Voice C-
(Michael Feingold) Drifts away into dramatic nothingness, leaving no feeling behind, despite the many clever devices with which Hampton has tried to tighten it...This pallid setup generates some amusing theatrical games, but no drama. The minimal plot (will hapless hero get spunky girl in time for final clinch?), an old-fashioned standard model, works very well for Accent on Youth, of which The Philanthropist sometimes resembles a fogged mirror image. But it can't energize a work in which the hero is so pleasantly passive. Earlier productions, to dodge this defect, cast lead actors whose inner fire belied Philip's outward placidity, but Broderick's genius lies in the comedy of solipsism. He lures you into his dream world rather than stepping out into yours, but contentedly passive Philip has no such place.

Theatermania D+
(David Finkle) There's no question that playing a passive figure...poses challenges for an actor, but, Broderick simply doesn't meet enough of them. What is slightly strange is that the revival's director, David Grindley, had no trouble making this play work at London's Donmar Warehouse four years ago with Simon Russell Beale performing triumphantly. Is it the English accent that hobbles Broderick? Maybe...A missed opportunity for both Broderick and the audience.

American Theatre Web D+
(Andy Propst) "Philanthropist" is by no means a rollicking comedy, but in Grindley's laborious production, clever turns of phrase and cutting bon mots barely elicit wry smiles. The abstraction of the scenic design – which never grounds the action firmly – may have something to do with a distance that theatergoers feel from the action and its humor. Similarly, the bombast of liturgical music that punctuates scenes jars. Equally troubling is Broderick's performance – which seems like an Anglicized version of likeable wimps he's previously played. It never sparks to life so that audiences can find simultaneous bemusement in the predicament that Philip's genuine decency and goodwill causes and empathy for the pain it ultimately induces. The production does spring to life while Cake, wearing a gloriously showy purple striped leisure suit (just one of the terrific period ensembles from costume designer Tobin Ost) is center stage.

Bergen Record D
(Robert Feldberg) Watching a dull character who's front-and-center in a play can get tedious pretty quickly. And Broderick, playing it straight, doesn't offer the audience anything offbeat, some kind of humor, that might make Philip's passivity less irritating. "The Philanthropist" is a free-ranging satire that was written in 1970 by Christopher Hampton, when he was, remarkably, just 24. It has lots of tenuously related things going on, most of which were strikingly fresh and clever at the time of its premiere. They have less impact now because other playwrights have followed in Hampton's path...Whatever potential the material might have, this production doesn't make the most of it. Good-heartedness has seldom been less compelling.

Curtain Up D
(Elyse Sommer) A sleeper, and that's not in the sense of it being a sleeper hit...Strip Hampton's drawing room farce transported to a London university setting of its barrage of bon mots and the clever prologue...and all that's left is a talky play that does show its age...Broderick seems to have turned into a parody of himself...Entertaining as Philip's guests are, Broderick's out-to-lunch performance in the pivotal role has cast a dysfunctional pall over the entire production. It's as if Mr. Grindley had rowed rather than flown his production across the pond and in the process gotten stuck in a slow staging mode that makes the two hour play feel like the 24-hour period it covers.

Lighting & Sound America D
(David Barbour) Christopher Hampton apparently set out to build a comedy around a truly boring man. I'm afraid he has succeeded only too well...David Grindley's staging has been unable to clear away the cloud of smugness that hangs over the action like so much stale cigarette smoke. Most of the reviewers fingered Matthew Broderick as the culprit for infusing the title role with his trademark mannerisms. It is true that once again he's dragged out the stagy English accent that he used in The Foreigner -- the first time you hear it, you think it has to be joke -- as well as the glassy stare and disengaged line readings that have informed so many of his recent performances. But if The Philanthropist had some snap in its wit, these qualities probably would come across as assets...Given the thinly conceived characters, the dated attempts at provocation, and the remarkably witless dialogue, it's hard to see how The Philanthropist could be made to work under any circumstances...Matters aren't helped by Tim Shortall's enormous set.

The Daily News F+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Unfortunately, it's hard to be generous about this zzzz-inducing Roundabout revival, which fails to flatter its star, director or the play...Although Broderick has patented his own brand of bland, from Broadway's "The Producers" to the big screen's "You Can Count on Me," he's out of his depth. He lacks the inner sparkle and quirkiness needed to make the innocuous Philip fascinating. Making matters worse is his veddy irritating "Masterpiece Theatre"-style accent. The staging by David Grindley ("Journey's End"), who directed the play in 2005 in London, is uniformly dull and coaxes little humor out of the script...Hampton's comedy hits one sharp note: Philip's chronic kindness is as harmful as Alceste's nonstop blackness. Beyond that, the notion that academics and eggheads are cut off and cocooned in their own world isn't so illuminating.

Bloomberg News F+
(Jeremy Gerard) I’ve rarely seen a star so wholly taken with a character’s social anemia that he drains an entire production of vitality and passion. No matter how dry the wit Hampton provides, Broderick is cold rain on the kindling. No sparks ignite...Grindley previously staged a revival of this play at London’s intimate Donmar Warehouse. Here, he’s thwarted not only by a designer (Tim Shortall) who emphasizes the vastness of the American Airlines Theatre stage, but by a cast that struggles mightily but failingly, to connect...Anna Madeley, as the brittle fiancee and, especially, Jonathan Cake, looking like a Vegas crooner in full plumage as a massively self-loving pop novelist, inject a trace of oxygen into the proceedings.

Time Out NY F+
(David Cote) Is Matthew Broderick on a deranged one-man mission to reduce theater's snappiest comic roles to mush? In the 2005 revival of The Odd Couple, he squandered laughs with the stiff-moving, squeaky-voiced, passive-nerd shtick that seems to be his default acting mode...Now he applies his method (do little, look uncomfortable) to a lesser-known but potentially rich part: painfully literal and anxiously ameliorative philologist Philip in Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist. The 1970 academic satire is unabashedly talky and lacks action, which isn't a problem if you have actors who can juggle ideas and fill out the characters' inner and outer lives. Director David Grindley revived the piece at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2005 with Simon Russell Beale in the lead, and we can only imagine how bittersweetly hilarious it must have been. For this remarkably dull Roundabout version, Grindley retains the same set designer (Tim Shortall) and one actor from the U.K. production (pertly appealing Anna Madeley as Philip's frustrated fiancée). But Broderick's comatose line readings dilute the intellectual zest and dampen opportunities for humor. When Jonathan Cake swaggers on as a cynical novelist wearing a tight velvet suit, there are merciful chuckles, but too late.

AM New York F+
(Matt Windman) The play has not aged very well...Matthew Broderick, displaying a horrendous English accent, delivers a slight variation of the same one-note performance as a boyish, blissfully ignorant male that we’ve already seen in “The Producers” and “The Odd Couple”. Jonathan Cake, as a lecherous author, easily steals the show during his few moments onstage. While this production might have worked as a farce, David Grindley’s gentle direction does little to hide the play’s inadequacies.

The New York Times F
(Charles Isherwood) For sheer dullness, this putative comedy, directed by the talented David Grindley (“The American Plan”) for the Roundabout Theater Company and starring the talented but increasingly mannered Matthew Broderick, beats just about anything on Broadway this season...The bloodlessness of the writing is not wholly to blame; so too is the bloodless performance of Mr. Broderick in the central role. Offering little more than a British variant on the baby-faced milquetoasts he has portrayed on Broadway in “The Producers” and “The Odd Couple,” Mr. Broderick seems to be in his own play, some sort of sendup of a crummy farce from the British provinces circa 1930. The absurdly plummy accent is in bizarre contrast to the other performers’ natural ones, and Mr. Broderick’s moist eyes and stiff, dainty shuffle, meant to suggest emotional constipation, make him resemble a turtle with mutton chops. (Among the few pleasures of the production are the cheeky 1970s costumes by Tobin Ost.)

New York Post F
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) It's baffling to see marquee names like playwright Christopher Hampton (who just translated Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage"), director David Grindley ("The American Plan") and Matthew Broderick ("Inspector Gadget") land with such a resounding thud. And yet here we are, scratching our heads in bored disbelief...The first fundamental problem is Tim Shortall's preposterously oversize set. The actors look lost in it, and Grindley makes matters worse by keeping them huddled on and around a couch plopped at the center. About half of the first act is dedicated to the most boring dinner party ever held in the British Isles, and the cast sits, yakking, for the entire duration. Did Grindley direct this by phone from London?...The third and most lethal issue is Broderick. By now, it should be clear to all that he needs a foil: He's never as good as when he plays the straight man, whether it's opposite Reese Witherspoon in "Election" or Nathan Lane in "The Producers."

Variety C+ 8; Associated Press C+ 8; USA Today C+ 8; Talkin' Broadway C+ 8; NY mag C+ 8; Newsday C 7; WSJ C- 6; Backstage C- 6; VV C- 6; Theatermania D+ 5; American Theatre Web D+ 5; Bergen Record D 4; Curtain Up D 4; L&SA D 4; The Daily News F+ 2; Bloomberg News F+ 2; Time Out NY F+ 2; AM New York F+ 2; The New York Times F 1; New York Post F 1; TOTAL: 97/20 = 4.85 (D+)

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Kooza

GRADE: B+

Directed by David Shiner. On Randall's Island. (CLOSED)

Cirque du Soleil have worked with clown prince David Shiner before, but this time they've turned over the reins to him, and critics range from dazzled to charmed by the edgier, more chaotic spin Shiner puts on this acrobat-and-clown-packed fiesta--a departure, they say, from Cirque's usual fairy-tale whimsy. Everyone marvels at the gasp-inducing Wheel of Death, even Nytheatre.com's Martin Denton, who is otherwise unenchanted by the spectacle.

The New York Times A
(Jason Zinoman) Cirque du Soleil, the juggernaut from Montreal, consistently delivers the most stunning big-top stagecraft and talented acrobats on earth, but in recent years the whimsy has gotten to be a bit much. After so many magical landscapes filled with adorable animals and punishingly innocent children, a little burp of bad taste can be refreshing...What is special about this new production is that Mr. Shiner introduces some carefully choreographed chaos and old-fashioned sideshow spark to the rock-solid formula...Cirque du Soleil has always shown a willingness to give ambitious artists with eccentric visions (like Robert Lepage) lots of money and the space to do what they please. But allowing Mr. Shiner to run wild a bit, the global producer displays flexibility that will benefit it as Cirque apparently inches toward a greater presence in New York.

Theatermania A
(Andy Propst) Thanks to director David Shiner, this new-to-New York offering from the Canadian-based company has a big surprise in store: the piece has a decidedly American edge to it...The centerpiece acts of Kooza belong really to neither time nor place, but simply exist to thrill spectators...The show's finale is a raucous acrobatics sequence that proves to be a fittingly delightful end to this marvelously satisfying show.

Variety A-
(Sam Thielman) The breathtaking show mixes wonderful clowning routines with sleight-of-hand, dance and some astonishing aerial stunts, including a "Wheel of Death" centerpiece that defies description...The danger is what makes the show so much fun to watch. After a Tim Burton-esque number with dozens of dancing skeletons and a natty-looking Death (the high point of a particularly beautiful set of costumes by Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt), the scariest and best act descended from the ceiling: the Wheel of Death, a long contraption with a cage on either end that spins in a huge circle...The second half of "Kooza" is by far the stronger...Any minor design quibbles take a back seat to the show's laudable ingenuity. Shiner's circus is always about the abilities of his performers, not the money spent on the production. As lovely as the costumes and Stephane Roy's set are, the director always keeps the energetic cast front and center.

New York Post A-
(Frank Scheck) Something of a return to roots for the hugely successful Montreal-based company, whose offerings have becoming increasingly pretentious. Created and directed by master clown David Shiner ("Fool Moon"), it thankfully stresses its talent...Thanks to Shiner, there's more clowning than usual, with several audience volunteers ("involunteers" is more like it) recruited into the action...At times, the show stoops to cheap effects: A large costumed "dog" raises its leg and wets the front row; a cannon blasts confetti you'll be pulling from your clothes for the rest of the day. But the staging is generally enthralling.

Time Out NY B+
(Adam Feldman) Conceiver-director David Shiner...keeps the clowning as elegant and pleasing, in its own way, as the exotic athletic episodes that have made this troupe's name. Kooza's humor and acrobatics are balanced as confidently as the tightrope walkers who end the first act on two levels of high wire. The most dramatic of the new routines is a thrilling bit called Wheel of Death...The overall design has a hint of Indian spice, but this is basically a mild curry, suitable for most palates. All the world, pretty much, loves Cirque du Soleil.

Backstage B+
(Tom Penketh) Written and briskly directed by David Shiner, who brings a nice balance of bawdy fun and touching emotion to the performances. A highlight includes the New Orleans–tinged skeleton dance choreographed by Clarence Ford to a vivacious score by Jean-François Côté. The magnificent array of colorful costumes, which serve the dual purpose of being both functional and eye-popping, were designed by Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt. With Kooza, the Quebec-based troupe adds another success to its long line of entertaining spectacles.

Nytheatre.com D+
(Martin Denton) An awkward amalgamation of good-to-spectacular acrobatic/aerialist acts and coarse, un-funny clowning. The latter element surprised me, as much for its incongruity amongst the pretense to elegance that otherwise characterizes the piece as for the fact that the production's writer/director is David Shiner...There is nothing on the bill that I hadn't seen somewhere before, which was disappointing. And with the exceptions of the Wheel of Death and Gatto the Juggler, there was nobody who wasn't visibly working very very hard on stage...At a show like this, I want to be so jealous of these people because I know I can't do what they've just done. But through most of Kooza my reaction was: why would I ever want to do what these people have just been made to do?

The New York Times A 13; Theatermania A 13; Variety A- 12; New York Post A- 12; TONY B+ 11; Backstage B+ 11; Nytheatre.com D+ 5; 77/7=11 (B+)

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The Norman Conquests

GRADE: A

By Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Matthew Warchus. Circle in the Square. (CLOSED)

Director Matthew Warchus (God of Carnage, Boeing Boeing) has another critical hit on his hands. Critics unanimously praise his ability to direct hilarious farce and bring out its darker undertones. Even those who never cared much for Ayckbourn's plays find new depth and humor in them thanks in large part to the direction. Though a few critics grew tired by the third play, most agree that all three should be seen. There is some debate by critics as to whether the order of the play matters, but there is no debate about the excellence of the ensemble cast (all from the Old Vic production). Dan Kois's New York Magazine diary of the marathon was a little hard to grade, but his enjoyment of the plays was pretty clear, and he sure loved those peanut M&M's at the concession stand.
Note: The Village Voice's Michael Feingold has weighed in and has no use for the trilogy or this production, no matter how talented the actors.

The New York Times A+
(Ben Brantley) Has there been a better season on Broadway for ensemble acting? This six-character work, which arrives from the Old Vic Theater Company under the mighty Matthew Warchus’s direction, joins the swelling list of comedies, dramas and musicals in which performers connect and balance like ace trapeze artists...That the theater is in the round is not, for once, a disadvantage, because the backs and shoulders of these performers are as expressive of these bottled emotions as their faces are. As for what happens when the decanting comes (three times), via some homemade wine, I’ll gallantly refrain from diluting the pleasure of your tasting it. I know the question you want to ask. If you see only one of these plays, which should it be? Let me put it this way: You can’t lose with any one, but you win big if you go to all three. Seeing the entire trilogy in one day, as I did, allowed me the luxurious privilege of getting to know characters in a way that only fat novels allow. I wouldn’t have sacrificed one “oh,” “aah” or pause of those seven hours.

Bergen Record A+
(Robert Feldberg) Seeing the story three times isn't at all tiresome, as the more we know the characters, the funnier — and more touching, in their disappointments — they become. The six-member British cast, which honed its ensemble performance in London, is brilliantly expressive. The actors nail their characters' essential personalities right from the start — aided by Rob Howell's dead-on costumes — and then cleverly fill in the often-unexpected details. They are also delightfully adept at physical comedy, both broad (wrestling with a folded garden chair in a hopeless attempt to open it) and subtle (after rejecting Norman, a woman makes a barely perceptible move toward him before stepping back).

American Theater Web A+
(Andy Propst) Director Matthew Warchus (who demonstrated his flair with farce in his staging of Boeing Boeing last season) deftly balances the most raucous elements of "Conquests" with its more bittersweet elements and the deep wellsprings of emotion that are tapped during the family's weekend together. It's astounding how fluidly the plays' tones shift and often one can have the urge to laugh and wince simultaneously as the characters are placed into exceptionally funny situations that reveal insecurities or sting emotionally. The hairpin twists and turns of Ayckbourn's plays and the comedic highs that they scale are executed by a sextet of indefatigable actors who, after their run in the production at London's Old Vic, are delivering pitch-perfect performances.


Bloomberg News A+
(John Simon) The six actors -- Amelia Bullmore, Jessica Hynes, Stephen Mangan, Ben Miles, Paul Ritter and Amanda Root -- could not be better, and Matthew Warchus (of “Boeing-Boeing” and “God of Carnage” fame) conclusively establishes himself as one of our era’s supreme farce directors. Production values are up to snuff, notably Rob Howell’s costumes and David Howe’s lighting, and the writing is consistently superb. Ayckbourne’s greatness lies in deriving humor not so much from outrageous plotting and streams of one-liners, a la Neil Simon, as from deep insight into human foibles, affectionate kidding of erotic fantasies and verbal pratfalls, and unerring evocation of human folly and flailing. In short, his unsurpassable understanding of our fragile, fallible human condition.

Backstage A+
(Erik Haagensen) Director Matthew Warchus' brisk in-the-round staging is consistently attuned to the script's dark subtext while never stinting on its hilarity. And that's the secret to Ayckbourn's success: This isn't a mere farce; the nearly seven-hour combined running time justifies itself by providing the space to reveal the characters in all their maddening humanity. These people can be foolish, petulant, wasteful, wounding, and sad. But you'll only see that if you see all three plays. The producers would have you believe you can experience them in any order, but I would recommend putting Living Together, which seems least able to stand on its own, in the middle. And as the dramatic climax of Table Manners is not the end of the story, it should go first.

The Daily News A+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) The show, direct from London's Old Vic, is a real treat. Not just because of the sheer size, but because Ayckbourn's ability to crack you up is consistently on display - zinger after zinger, scene after scene, play after play. The show, direct from London's Old Vic, is a real treat. Not just because of the sheer size, but because Ayckbourn's ability to crack you up is consistently on display - zinger after zinger, scene after scene, play after play. Much of the success owes to Matthew Warchus ("God of Carnage," "Boeing-Boeing"), a director with a Midas touch for comedy who's steered a wonderful, well-oiled cast from across the pond. The six actors draw you irresistibly into their exploits.

NY1 A+
(Roma Torre) Ayckbourn gets human foibles better than almost anyone and it's the highest compliment to say that his humor is entirely organic. And with the phenomenal British cast intact from the celebrated London production, we get an added bonus. It's as if they were born to the roles. Just watch how these incredible actors plumb every juicy nuance embedded in their characters. Stephen Mangan's manic rogue womanizer Norman; his wife, the cynically hardened Ruth played by Amelia Bullmore; her sister, the dowdy, unfulfilled Annie and hen-pecked brother Reg played by Jessica Hynes and Paul Ritter respectively; Reg's nagging, prudish wife Sarah played by Amanda Root; and their neighbor, the vacuous, vacant-eyed vet Tom in the person of Ben Miles.


Associated Press A+
(Michael Kuchwara) Ayckbourn's dialogue crackles with the wit of fine British drawing-room comedy, often stinging but anchored in the sharp observations of a playwright who has a generous, forgiving heart for human frailty. Well, at least for everyone except Norman. And, not unexpectedly, a feeling of Chekhovian sadness, floats over the proceedings, too, a realization that life most often doesn't turn out the way you want it to... In London, the Old Vic's legendary proscenium auditorium was converted into an in-the-round theater, something already in place at Circle in the Square. The plays fit snugly into the space, bringing the audience almost into eyeball proximity with all the addictive, onstage tribulations.

The Hollywood Reporter A+
(Frank Scheck) Shifting effortlessly from broad farce to Chekhovian poignancy, the plays feature not only an endless series of hilarious one-liners but also some of the most brilliant physical clowning to be seen on Broadway. But despite all the hilarity, we're constantly reminded of the humanity of the characters -- even Norman, who remains wonderfully endearing despite his utterly amoral behavior. Credit for this must go not only to the writing but also the brilliance of the entire ensemble -- who thankfully have been brought over here despite their relative anonymity on these shores -- and the superb direction by Matthew Warchus, who, on the evidence of not only this production but also "Boeing-Boeing" and "God of Carnage," has established himself as the pre-eminent director of theatrical farce.

Theatermania A+
(David Finkle) For the prolific Ayckbourn, other people's marriages have often been a source of amusement, torment, and possible atonement. In these three works (the other plays are Table Manners and Round and Round the Garden), Ayckbourn takes approximately seven jolly hours to look at what happens over a sour weekend to two knot-tied couples and one not-yet-hitched pair (who may or may never get hitched). Throughout the plays, Ayckbourn never lets up on the hilarity while sending his implicit, absolutely unsentimental message that while relationships are fraught, they're all we've got at the end of the day. As might be expected, Ayckbourn has built this comedy cabinet with the consummate skill of a master carpenter. He places the three parts in -- as the disparate titles imply -- the dining room, living room and garden of a Victorian country house, with each play unfolding in one of the in-the-round settings Rob Howell has designed with appropriately unprepossessing middle-class detail. Some of the action is simultaneous and some sequential; so much of the fun is seeing how the plays dovetail from one to the next.

CurtainUp A+
(Elyse Sommer) To begin, a word about Ayckbourn's appeal to American audiences. His plays do indeed epitomize " Englishness." However, it's more than likely that The Norman Conquests' first appearance on Broadway was rather short-lived because it featured an American cast to portray these so distinctly English characters. When Ayckbourn's plays arrive on our shores with an English cast (like Private Fears Public Places and Intimate Exchanges, both part of the popular Brits Off-Broadway Festival at 59e59th street-- see link below) audiences respond both to Ayckbourn's clever structural gimmickry and the darkness that adds depth to his humor. Luckily, this new but hilarious and poignant as ever Norman Conquests has come to Broadway with the terrific British cast and director from the much lauded Old Vic production on board. While Mr. Warchus has made quite a name for himself as the director of of Yasmina Rez's plays, most recently God of Carnage none of the cast members are likely to be as well known as were their 1975 American counterparts (Richard Benjamin, Ken Howard, Barry Nelson Estelle Parsons, Paula Prentice and Carole Shelley). But, no matter. This is a simply superb ensemble. Their timing is sheer perfection— whether individually or in concert, whether in landing a punch line or coming out of some of the meaningful pauses that punctuate this family's idiosyncratic behavior. Their body language and facial expressions are fraught with meaning so that you'll often find yourself laughing even when not a word is said.

Talk Entertainment A+
(Oscar E Moore) You will be hooked on these characters and want to know what happens to them over this long, illuminating and catastrophic weekend. In fact after seeing Garden I made sure to see the other two installments. Is is quite the theatrical event of the season. An incredible feat of theatrical engineering. Not since the original PBS series Brideshead Revisited have I been so intrigued to the point of becoming addicted to a group of English characters. The production has been brought over from London with its original Old Vic cast and directed with sardonic glee and finesse by Matthew Warchus – in the round - at Circle in the Square Theatre for a limited engagement of 16 weeks. It is not to be missed.

New Yorker A+
(Trish Deitch) Wilder and farther outside the box than your average drawing-room comedy, this sophisticated, hilarious, and ultimately profound trilogy, masterfully directed by Matthew Warchus, takes shtick about as far as it can go in nearly seven hours—which is to say, unusually far. A lot is owed to the six actors, who bring their characters’ vulnerabilities to life in fresh and vivid ways.

Lighting & Sound America A
(David Barbour) Under Warchus' keen-eyed direction, these comedies of acute embarrassment are all played for real, not for laughs, the result being that the laughs are huge; he also lets the action pause every now and then to reveal just how deeply unhappy six people can be. "I think other people's marriages are invariably a source of amazement," says Ruth, in one of her more charitable moments; here they're a source of endless amusement. The production also benefits from an ingenious design. Rob Howell's circular set is topped by a disk depicting the local countryside in miniature; it rises to reveal the setting of each play. David Howe's marvelously subtle lighting creates thoroughly believable interior and exterior effects, as well as bright morning sunlight and moody moon-washed looks. Howell's costumes are models of mid-'70s middle-class taste. Simon Baker's sound design includes birdsong and a cat's meow (a key plot point), as well as reinforcement for Gary Yershon's incidental music and a playlist of period pop tunes, including "Here Comes the Sun."...Even if you see only one, rest assured that you'll be experiencing Ayckbourn's work as it is meant to be done. The Norman Conquests is more than the most amusing attraction on Broadway -- it's a master class in truthful comic acting.

TONY A
(David Cote) We all know that 2008–09 has been the Season of the Star: An unusually high number of marquee names—from Daniel Radcliffe to Jane Fonda—have scattered stardust across the boards, goosing box offices and earning unwarranted praise in some quarters. With the arrival of The Norman Conquests (hot on the heels of last week’s Mary Stuart), you can forget such slumming celebritude. The sextet that drives this unique treat offers the proverbial master class in meticulously crafted seriocomic performance. Here’s hoping some of those big names take a night off from their shows to learn a trick or two.

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) The angst is more exhilarating, and abundant, in The Norman Conquests (* * *½), now at the Circle in the Square Theatre. This splendid new staging of Alan Ayckbourn's comic trilogy, imported from London's Old Vic, runs just under seven hours, including three 20-minute intermissions. But director Matthew Warchus and his expert cast make the time fly, even if you see the plays in succession, as they're performed on Saturdays and select Sundays.

Entertainment Weekly A
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) The perfection of Conquests' construction isn't evident until you view all three — each a slice of a single weekend-in-the-country life cut from three spots (a dining room, lounge, and garden). For proof of the trilogy's expert craftsmanship, read them in sequence, as Ayckbourn wrote them: Begin with scene 1 of Round and Round the Garden, then scene 1 of Table Manners, then scene 1 of Living Together, and so on. You'll find yourself flipping between the scripts mid-scene when actions occur simultaneously. It's masterful — an impenetrable dramaturgical fortress. Not a crack to be found. (The British author's easy way with a laugh, not to mention his sheer productivity — the 70-year-old has penned 72 full-length plays — often belies his skill.) Similarly, only upon the completion of the trilogy is the depth of these six characters revealed.

Wall Street Journal A
(Terry Teachout) Alan Ayckbourn writes funny plays about sad people. It's an unsettling combination, which may explain why England's most popular and prolific playwright isn't as well known in this country as he ought to be -- but if anything can put Mr. Ayckbourn at the center of our theatrical map, it'll be the Old Vic's razor-sharp revival of "The Norman Conquests," which has come to Broadway after a triumphant London run. This 1973 triptych of plays about the travails of a suburban family is one of the 20th century's comic masterpieces, and the Old Vic's production is as good a staging as you're likely to see in your lifetime... All six members of Mr. Warchus's ensemble cast also appeared in London, and their well-honed performances snap together with crisp precision. Ms. Hynes is not as subtle as her colleagues -- Finnerty Steeves' performance in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's equally fine 2007 revival of "The Norman Conquests" was quite a bit more poignant -- but she holds her own.

Variety A
(David Rooney) Ayckbourn's Chekhovian ability to reveal brooding depths without relinquishing humor has never been sharper. Each character gets more than one moment of self-revelation, but the playwright and director linger on the pathos just long enough, pulling back to show the funny side of even the most melancholy insights. What makes the plays so enjoyable is the tangy balance of bitterness and compassion; the characters are maddening and their relationships deeply frustrating, but they seem destined to endure. Even their most brittle exchanges bear traces of tenderness. The play's observations may occasionally show their roots in the mid-'70s -- a period evoked with crisp understatement by the director and designers -- but the material and its endless volley of jokes have aged remarkably well. Nobody does escalating mayhem like Warchus, but no matter how farcical the situation, the superb actors remain anchored in a naturalistic style that keeps the characters' quirks believable.

AMNY A
(Matt Windman) Matthew Warchus, who also directed “God of Carnage” and “Boeing-Boeing,” is truly a master when it comes to staging comedy. And in this absolutely hysterical in-the-round production with an impeccable cast, “The Norman Conquests” turns out to be one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences in an already overstuffed spring season on Broadway.

NYMag A
(Dan Kois) 6 p.m. Living Together, which ends on something of a melancholic note, is weaker than Table Manners. It would be fun to watch a Norman’s Greatest Conquests show collecting the five funniest scenes of the trilogy. It’s the iTunes era; why not customizable theater as well?... 10:15 p.m. As Garden ends, I realize all three plays have already melted in my memory into one delicious theatrical experience—the longueur fading away, the comic high points even funnier in retrospect. Though all of my dates have been suitably entertained, I’m pretty glad I ran the marathon. “I just want to make you happy!” Norman tells his women throughout the trilogy. Bless his ridiculous heart, he did.

The Observer A-
(John Heilpern) The premise of The Norman Conquests is deceptively close to a typically English farce like No Sex Please, We’re British... Still, The Norman Conquests goes beyond the norms of boulevard comedy. Mr. Ayckbourn’s recent Private Fears in Public Places (2004) touchingly reveals the playwright’s real intentions—should there have been any doubt. He’s hilariously serious. His comedies are sly portraits of human folly. But I disagree with those critics who acclaim Mr. Ayckbourn as the British Chekhov. True, Chekhov also wrote comedies set in country houses—but does that make him the Russian Alan Ayckbourn?

New York Post A-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) A merry British sprite has been sprinkling magic dust all over Broad way. No, it's not Mary Poppins: It's Matthew Warchus. After last season's "Boeing-Boeing" and, more recently, "God of Carnage," the director's just spun comic gold out of another good-not-great play. Warchus' main asset is his sense of the way timing and spatial relationships work together. He's like a chess master mapping his moves several turns in advance, a gift that comes in handy when tackling the intricately plotted "The Norman Conquests."...Warchus understands on a visceral level the seemingly contradictory importance of abandon and precision when drawing laughs: You have to let loose but always remain in control. Here this translates into utmost clarity (you always know who's doing what where) and actorly fireworks.

Talkin' Broadway B+
(Matthew Murray) If you can only swing one play, it should not be Living Together, which it offers the least as an individual entity and derives the most from the happenings in the other plays. If you can manage all three, the Trilogy Day order is tops: Table Manners, then Living Together, and finally Round and Round the Garden. The first is the best at establishing the emotional baseline for events, and the characters' lunch and dinner badinage (punctuated by the most uproarious salad-eating and alcohol-drinking you're ever likely to see onstage) makes it the funniest overall. The second is transitionally written, affectionate, and the most dependent on everyone's comings and goings. The last, containing the earliest and latest scenes in the chronology and the heaviest dollops of sight gags and farcical humor, will resonate louder and longer once you've come to intimately know everyone. That said, The Norman Conquests is no Coast of Utopia. It lacks that work's majesty and sense of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and because its chapters happen essentially simultaneously rather than sequentially, seeing all three chapters is not that much different than merely seeing one. And although there are some secret pleasures to be had by those who conquer the full trio, they're not exactly powerful, profound, or prurient in any earth-shaking way. You'll leave the theater entertained, but not changed - this is one theatrical outing where the memories don't burn as brightly as the during-the-event moments.

Nytheatre.com B
(Martin Denton) This is absolutely an ensemble piece, and the company that a flock of producers has imported from London's Old Vic Theatre is top-notch and works together brilliantly. My personal favorites are Ben Miles, who plays the ponderous Tom as a man with a slow wit and a good heart, and Paul Ritter, who is utterly convincing and quite likable as lazy, lonely, make-the-best-of-everything Reg. Stephen Mangan is appealingly goofy as Norman, but the more time I spent with his character the more I sensed a manipulative streak that I found unattractive. Amelia Bullmore is spot-on as Ruth, and her adventure with a folding chair in Round and Round the Garden was the highpoint of the trilogy's hilarity for me. I found that I warmed to Jessica Hynes's scruffy, sometimes abrasive Annie more with each new play. But Amanda Root's Sarah didn't always work for me—I thought she missed the authority and rigor of the character, replacing it with a weak whininess that put me off (in Root's defense, I have very fond memories of Penelope Keith's Sarah from the TV version of The Norman Conquests, which I saw quite a few years ago). Rob Howell has given the trilogy a design as ingenious and clever as Ayckbourn's structure for it, and David Howe's lighting and Simon Baker's sound support it beautifully, providing useful clues about where we are within the weekend during any given scene. Gary Yershon's music feels less evocative, though, and the choice to use Nina Simone's cover of "Here Comes the Sun" for exit music, though period-appropriate, puzzled me: I never knew what I was meant to be feeling as I left this crazy family weekend for the relative safety of the Manhattan street.

Newsday C+
(Linda Winer) Are these three plays worth almost eight hours of precious life (not counting breaks) at precious Broadway prices? Based on the 360-degree wraparound of laughter around me, I assume that, for many theatergoers, the investment can bring comparable payoff. For the rest of us, however, this is a heavy commitment for such light entertainment. And, though dots are ingeniously connected by seeing the same relationships lived out in three locations of an English country house, the slim story does not get hefty enough - or the characters, interesting enough - to justify such endurance. Still, it is a pleasure to watch six first-rate actors have their way with the comic hazards of emotional connections on a disaster-filled country weekend.

The Village Voice F
(Michael Feingold) Funny for five minutes, the event's unaffecting pointlessness makes a stupefying seven-hour sit-through. The British cast, under Matthew Warchus's direction, plays it all extremely well; why they or anyone else would bother is the incomprehensible part. The one clue I could garner, from the audience's laughter at certain non-funny moments, is that Ayckbourn makes the ordinary public feel intelligent by showing them how the pieces fit together. That the effort is pointless and the resultant picture uninteresting makes no matter; the busywork of assembling the puzzle is enough. It seems a terrible waste of the theater's resources.

The New York Times A+ 14; Bergen Record A+ 14; American Theater Web A+ 14; Bloomberg News A+ 14; Backstage A+ 14; The Daily News A+ 14; NY1 A+ 14; AP A+ 14; Hollywood Reporter A+ 14; Theatermania A+ 14; CurtainUp A+ 14; Talk Entertainment A+ 14; New Yorker A+ 14; Lighting & Sound America A 13; TONY A 13; USA Today A 13; EW A 13; WSJ A 13; Variety A 13; AMNY A 13; NYMag A 13; The Observer A- 12; New York Post A- 12; Talkin' Broadway B+ 11; Nytheatre.com B 10; Newsday C+ 8; Village Voice F 1; TOTAL: 340/27 = 12.59 (A)

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