A View From the Bridge

GRADE: B+


Photo by Sara Krulwich
By Arthur Miller. Directed by Gregory Mosher. At the Cort Theatre through April 2010.

Scarlett Johansson gets raves for her Broadway debut. Even the dissenting opinion (Guardian, Financial Times) acknowledges that her work exceeds the celebrity-showcase standard set by other film starlets such as Jennifer Garner and Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, Liev Schreiber's meticulous, aggressively subtle style finds another match in Arthur Miller's working-class tragedy about a Red Hook dock worker whose desire for his niece leads him to betray everyone else. Critics acknowledge some weaknesses in the storytelling -- some want more of a tragic punch by the end while others find the story something-less-than-Greek in its scope and depth. That aside, most applaud Michael Christofer as the laywer-narrator-chorus device/character.

Wall Street Journal A
(Terry Teachout) The play itself isn't even slightly profound, but it is, almost alone in Miller's oeuvre, largely devoid of pseudopoetry and wholly to the dramatic point, and Mr. Mosher, who has returned at last to Broadway after a decade-long absence, has staged it with a lean, clean, deceptively soft-spoken intensity that pulls you straight to the edge of your seat and keeps you there until you get up to go home. Fold in the dead-center acting of a first-string cast led by Liev Schreiber and you get a production so hard-hitting that you'll want to see it twice—assuming that you can get tickets, which I very much doubt.

New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) I had wondered if “Bridge” really needed another revival. New York saw a first-rate production only a dozen years ago, directed by Michael Mayer, with Anthony LaPaglia, Allison Janney and the young Brittany Murphy (who died at 32 last year). But this latest incarnation makes the case that certain plays, like certain operas, are rich enough to be revisited as often and as long as there are performers with strong, original voices and fresh insights ... Mr. Schreiber is such a complete actor that he has often thrown productions into imbalance, highlighting the inadequacy of the performances around him. That is not a problem here. That the excellent stage veteran Ms. Hecht holds her own with Mr. Schreiber is no surprise. That Ms. Johansson does — with seeming effortlessness — is.

Variety A
(David Rooney) Sometimes it's high praise to call a stage director's work invisible. The compliment applies to Gregory Mosher's searing revival of "A View From the Bridge," though it by no means indicates any lack of craftsmanship or insight. Returning to Broadway after a considerable absence, Mosher has instilled in his outstanding cast an unconditional trust in Arthur Miller's text, evoking a time, a place and a 1950s blue-collar community with penetrating integrity. Each scene flows seamlessly from the one before in a production that expertly plants the seeds of inexorable tragedy yet grips with a tension and volatility that make every moment seem unpredictable.

Backstage A
(David Sheward) Now Liev Schreiber, one of the few American star-level actors to return to the stage on a regular basis, sinks his teeth into this meaty steak of a character and has a regular feast. His Eddie has a vulnerability and thoughtfulness often overlooked. You can tell he not only harbors sexual urges for his wife's niece Catherine but also loves her like a father. These conflicting emotions play across Schreiber's face as Catherine explains her growing love for Rodolpho, an illegal immigrant the family is protecting ... Scarlett Johansson matches Schreiber's intensity as the inexperienced but determined Catherine. This film star makes an impressive Broadway debut, clearly conveying what this girl wants—to be a grown woman—and pushing against the only obstacle in her path: her overly attentive uncle ... Director Gregory Mosher wisely keeps the staging simple so the dramatic fireworks blaze all the brighter. Set designer John Lee Beatty's row of brownstones towers over the players like a menacing giant as they enact this modern version of a Greek tragedy.

Time Out New York A
(Adam Feldman) The fateful plot unspools as it must, with a helpless lawyer (the superbly troubled Michael Cristofer) serving as the chorus; the surprises come not from the story, but from the way that Miller conflates the older strains of the plot with newer psychological insights about the strata of masculinity. (Eddie’s obsessive suspicions that Rodolpho is “not right” sexually are projections of his own impotence and guilt.) Johansson does fine work as the ripening apple of domestic discord, and the excellent Jessica Hecht is touching as Eddie’s hectoring wife, Beatrice. But this is ultimately Schreiber’s play, and his hooded emotionality—first guarded, then blubbering—is exquisitely matched to Eddie’s self-deflating sense of manhood: menacing in simmer but pathetic in boil.

Washington Post A
(Peter Marks) Surely the production, which had its official opening Sunday night at the Cort Theatre, is one of the most satisfying evenings of Miller in memory ... Schreiber is nothing short of remarkable as Eddie ... He manages to make Eddie's decisions -- whether to pick up a phone and dial immigration, or to lash out in an act of sexual frustration -- seem the explosive products of an urge beyond the control of the intellect ... The surprising achievement belongs to Johansson, who proves to be capable of far more than collaborating in eyebrow-raising star casting. She's got the broad vowels and engaging innocence for Catherine, and she makes you believe in the teenager's flickering awareness of Eddie's inappropriate attraction. And even after Catherine's allegiance shifts to Rodolpho, the actress allows you to appreciate fully the pull she still feels toward Eddie, how, perhaps, that might have deepened Eddie's confusion. The acumen on display raises the Cort's thermostat from what might have been coolly sobering to positively scorching. You'll leave, happy to have felt the theatrical heat.

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) Johansson disappears so completely into the role of Catherine, the plucky but naïve niece of a longshoreman, that you won't stop to consider the qualities that make her distinctly suited to the part. Only afterward will you likely realize the actress's youthful sensuality and capacity for good-natured goofiness constitute a perfect fit for this sheltered 17-year-old struggling to come to terms with her effect on men — her uncle, in particular ... Where some directors wax operatic trying to convey Miller's intricate morality and heated humanism, Gregory Mosher opts for a more naturalistic approach. Michael Cristofer, playing a local lawyer who doubles as the play's narrator, alternately participating in the action and reflecting on it, provides a tone that's at once conversational and theatrical ... Johansson and Schreiber make the tension between Eddie and Catherine excruciatingly poignant, by showing us there's still great affection between this misguided man and the woman he can no longer love like a child.

Village Voice A-
(Michael Feingold) Memorable Eddies have come in all shapes and sizes; the latest, Schreiber, ranks very high on the list. Everything's hidden; Schreiber's gift for letting you see what he's not showing matches this role perfectly, as does his burly physical presence. He gets especially strong support from Johansson, clearly an actress of skill and presence, not merely another two-dimensional puff pastry. Mosher makes one or two odd slips: He rushes the epilogue, slightly dampening the effect of Cristofer's intriguing, broken-rhythmed Alfieri, and he lets Hecht fall into the most common trap for actresses playing Bea, which is playing Eddie's negative view of her. Even so, the staging builds powerfully; John Lee Beatty's set and Peter Kaczorowski's lighting are exceptionally evocative.

New York Post A-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) While it may sound odd to say so of something featuring betrayals and brutal death, the show that opened at the Cort last night is wickedly entertaining: Those two hours fly by. There are flaws (John Lee Beatty's set is literally creaky, for one), but the toned-down approach of director Gregory Mosher and his cast pays off. Largely it's because the performances successfully look inward, avoiding cheap, crowd-baiting histrionics -- and "A View From the Bridge" certainly has potential for those.

New York Observer B+
(Jesse Oxfeld) As directed by Gregory Mosher, this View From the Bridge is intense, emotional, physical and moving. It’s impressively economical—every line, movement, reaction exists only to build the tension to what Miller, in a foreword to the script, calls Eddie’s inevitable “catastrophe.” The only times it slackens—and this is Miller’s fault, not Mr. Mosher’s—is when Mr. Alfieri, Eddie’s lawyer, shows up to once more explain what’s going on. It’s unnecessary, and it takes you out of the story. It also prompts the question: When an attorney follows you around all day to explicate the implicit, does he charge an hourly fee or a retainer?

Gothamist B+
(John Del Signore) Her performance feels wholly authentic and earned, and during her anguished love scene I could see tears streaking her cheeks. You can fake that on film, but not on stage. The rest of the ensemble has soft spots ... Thankfully, Schreiber's portrayal of Carbone is so lived-in, so visceral, that he more than makes up for the cast's weaknesses. Carbone does something despicable, but you never see Schreiber judging his character, and his empathetic take on the role humanizes Carbone's monstrous deed. I'm a standing ovation purist, and think the gesture should be limited to only the most phenomenal performances, but I jumped to my feet along with the rest of the audience when Schreiber took his bow.

The Faster Times B+
(Jonathan Mandell) It is the siren call of Catherine’s beauty that drives what Miller intended as a twentieth century American update of an ancient Greek tragedy, the story of a man who loves his niece in the wrong way, and it is the lure of Scarlett Johansson on the stage that makes “A View From The Bridge” worth seeing. She is not the only reason. The rest of the cast collectively transport us back to the working-class Brooklyn of the 1950’s. Liev Schreiber’s performance in particular is sure to get high marks all around, and there are a number of surprising performances (though at least one was not a good surprise). John Lee Beatty’s set, which shows a tenement skyline that is almost majestic in its grubbiness, and then revolves to reveal the modest interior of the characters’ home, helps to emphasize that this is a story of plain people caught up in high tragedy. In the end, though, it remains a struggle, if not a stretch, to consider this play the unassailable modern classic that some people seem to be proclaiming it.

Theatre Mania B+
(David Finkle) It's a large credit to Mosher that every one of Miller's down-to-earth, yet-larger-than-life characters -- including neighborhood lawyer Alfieri (Michael Cristofer), who narrates the unrelentingly downbeat tale -- is profoundly etched ... From the instant Schreiber's Eddie scuffs in to join a coin-pitching game with two fellow workers (Robert Turano and Joe Ricci), the actor has every nuance in place for his depiction of a morally conflicted man who is imprisoned by illicit desires but damned if he's going to cop to them ... While the play never packs less than a knock-out dramatic punch, it does have its weaknesses. It's one thing to use Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and colleagues as models, but it's quite another to keep calling attention to the tactic.

New York Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) If the play's overstated narrative structure and bald symbolism (including a girl fetching and lighting her uncle's cigar) keep it from being on Miller's A-list (and they do), those weaknesses recede in Gregory Mosher's exceptionally well-acted, well-staged revival ... It's an outer-borough tragedy, ancient columns not included. Schreiber may be playing a surrogate Greek hero, but it's down-to-earth honesty that makes his work so gripping. Johansson's acting is dynamic yet understated. Movie stars like her are summoned to Broadway because they draw attention to the box office. On stage, though, she blends in beautifully with the cast.

Financial Times B
(Brendan Lemon) Is there another New York-based actor who can talk tough on-stage better than Liev Schreiber? ... Making her Broadway bow, Johansson generates minimal inner life and looks slightly odd with dark hair. Yet she provides a headier dose of theatrical Viagra than did another Broadway debutante, Nicole Kidman, a decade ago in The Blue Room at this same theatre, the Cort ... Insisting that concerns of basic justice and honour be paramount, Mosher stages Bridge unfussily. His concept, in essence, is his casting. Fortunately for him, Michael Cristofer, as the lawyer narrator, sounds the right notes of tragic inevitability, and Morgan Spector, as the artistic Rodolpho, makes an impression.

The Guardian UK C+
(Alexis Soloski) the neighbourhood attorney Alfieri, played by Michael Cristofer, assures the audience that "this is Red Hook, not Sicily," and that its inhabitants "are quite civilized, quite American. Now we settle for half, and I like it better." Mosher appears to take Alfieri at his word, offering a lucid, no-nonsense version of the script that somehow doesn't give its all. It moves rapidly from scene to scene (though one wishes he didn't so often rely on tacky rotating scenery to get from one to the next), and checks actorly tendencies toward indulgence. Yet Mosher harnesses little of the show's power. One shouldn't fault Schreiber, who lends Eddie a lumbering sensuality, and portrays a man beset by emotions he can't acknowledge or articulate. He's best in his most physical scenes, channeling his malice and despair into violence. He's ably supported by Jessica Hecht, as his careworn wife, and by the grainy voiced Cristofer as his ineffectual adviser. Johansson, who sports tight sweaters and nipped-waist dresses, toils to master her character's speech and posture, ably capturing the flat tones and "wavy walk" of a working-class girl advancing on womanhood. But she never quite conveys Catherine's ambivalence and distress.

Talkin' Broadway C-
(Matthew Murray) [F]or most of the first act, when Catherine is longing to escape the oppression of poor Brooklyn, Johansson convinces as a ripe Italian girl unsure of what options she really has. But when Catherine meets Eddie’s distant relatives from the old country, Marco (Corey Stoll) and Rodolpho (Morgan Spector), and blooms in the light of Rodolpho’s apparent love, Johansson still seems like the same pre-wilted flower. In neither voice nor manner does she progress beyond the lost girl of the opening scenes, which throws the rest of the story into turmoil ... Schreiber cannot cite stage inexperience as an excuse for his own one-note portrayal ... as long as Eddie is no more than the loving but lumbering lout who’s sacrificing everything he is for his family’s future, Schreiber is in complete command of the character’s brusque devotion and resigned world-weariness. The trick of the play, however, is that isn’t the real Eddie. A bigoted nationalist whose feelings for Catherine constantly threaten to transcend avuncular affection, Eddie’s truly an ugly stereotype given skyscraper stature so that Miller’s warnings about the importance of United States unity may unfold unimpeded. Schreiber, unfortunately, never goes the full way. His Eddie gets angrier and darker, yes, but never becomes big enough to consume the whole country. By the end of the play, when Eddie must face down Marco for control over his family (and by extension his homeland), Schreiber’s glimmering smolder is simply not sufficient for consuming him - let alone us - in the mythic conflagration Miller intended.

Wall Street Journal A 13; NYTimes A 13; Variety A 13; Backstage A 13; Time Out New York A 13; Washington Post A 13; USA Today A 13; Village Voice A- 12; NY Post A- 12; NY Observer B+ 11; Gothamist B+ 11; The Faster Times B+ 11; Theatre Mania B+ 11; NY Daily News B+ 11; Financial Times B 10; The Guardian UK C+ 8; Talkin' Broadway C- 6. TOTAL: 194/17 = 11.4 (B+)

Read On »

Incident at Vichy

GRADE: B+

By Arthur Miller; Directed by Scot Alan Evans. At the Beckett Theater. (CLOSED)

Leaving aside The New Yorker (whose late breaking C- brings the show's grade down from A- to B+), The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) gets high marks for their revival of Arthur Miller's Holocaust drama. Initially dismissed (and heavily criticized) by critics in the 60s, reviewers this time around agree that the play is ripe for reevaluation, praising in particular Scott Alan Evans' tension-building direction and a solid cast.

Lighting and Sound America A
(David barbour) [A] taut exercise in existential terror... Much of the production's power comes from Scott Alan Evans' direction, which invests the action with a present-tense quality that vividly evokes the second-by-second tension of waiting to find out if one is going to live or die. He has assembled a cast that plays with fine restraint.

NYTheatre A
(Stan Richardson) The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) could not have picked a more relevant play for this damaged and distracted country where the most popular form of protest seems to be joining a sassy-named group on Facebook. Director Scott Alan Evans is at the helm of a stirring and stinging production that puts nothing in the way of the play itself. An extraordinary ensemble of 15 men share three benches—some, such as the Old Jew (John Freimann) and the Gypsy (Leif Huckman) sit in terrified silence; others, such as the painter Lebeau (Mark Alhadeff), can talk as much as the Federal Reserve prints currency, the value of his words decreasing with each breath. But every figure in this powerfully understated revival makes a distinct impression.

CurtainUp A
(Elizabeth Ahlfors) A stellar ensemble cast revives a stirring production of Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy. What happens to men when trapped in a terrifying situation? That is only the beginning of Miller's examination of guilt and responsibility...Director Scott Alan Evans adeptly builds the tension. He elicits individual portraits from each ensemble player, never losing his grasp on their mounting fear and flashes of hope. With lighting design by Mary Louise Geiger, he introduces them dramatically — first Lebeau, then a blackout. Then Bayard, another blackout. And so on. Tension is further heightened when each is called into the office. If he returns, it gives hope to the others. The anxiety mounts.

Time Out NY A-
(Pamela Newton) With its deep intelligence and high tensions, Miller's drama is quite stunning, if not very subtle. Scott Alan Evans's reverence for the text is evident in his sober direction, and the adept cast mines the humanity of their (sometimes sketchy) characters. Exchanges between a nervous painter (Mark Alhadeff) and an electrician with a proletarian dream (Ron McClary) are especially effective, and Gregory Salata is heartbreaking as an optimistic aesthete who refuses to accept the realities of war.

Backstage A-
(Karl Levett) Audience reaction to this 80-minute intermissionless drama is going to vary, with each viewer responding to different aspects on display. Let's call them the three faces of Arthur. Some will see a well-crafted, moving story of dramatic intensity, alive with contrasting characters, weighted with philosophical content. Others will see only a high-toned moral debate that overwhelms the drama as it juggles guilt, complicity, and personal responsibility and utters things like "We have learned the price of idealism." And for some (especially younger playgoers), on show will be a record of an intriguing, not-much-known historical event that throws a scorching searchlight on Jewish identity. Under Scott Alan Evans' sensitively streamlined direction, all three faces merge into an absorbing whole

NYTimes A-
(Neil Genzlinger) Riveting... Scott Alan Evans, the director here, starts with the tension high, thanks to a quietly chilling opening montage, and keeps it that way. His cast, given the difficult job of creating full characters with only the sketchiest of back stories, delivers expertly. Mark Alhadeff as a chatty artist, Ron McClary as an ardent Socialist and Gregory Salata as an actor who thinks a good performance in the interview room will set him free are particularly fine. Miller gave himself a lot to do in what is an intermissionless play: flesh out the stories of the detainees, develop some dynamics among the German and French interrogators, explore themes of personal responsibility and reluctance to stand up to authority, suggest (by placing a Gypsy among the prisoners) that even victims of racism can be racist. Perhaps that’s why his denouement involving the final two detainees, a psychiatrist (Christopher Burns) and an Austrian prince (Todd Gearhart) who has been swept up by mistake, doesn’t land with full force.

OffOffOnline B+
(William Coyle) There is no doubt that Incident at Vichy is a thorough and broad condemnation of inaction in the face of evil. Miller was unapologetic about making the audience uncomfortable. And, even with Leduc psychoanalyzing the rationales of the survival strategies of his fellow prisoners, Miller’s writing mostly avoids overt didacticism. TACT’s production is a potent and fitting return of this overlooked classic.

TheaterMania B+
(David Finkle) Much of the play registers as didactic as it depicts anxious detainees -- most of them Jewish -- hunkering on a detention-room bench and concerned their papers won't get them dismissed by the presiding authorities. The fevered opus frequently comes across as a moralizing debate as well as a patent use of the Holocaust to hold viewers emotionally hostage. Nevertheless, this production, directed by Scott Alan Evans with clarity and compassion and acted by a first-rate troupe of committed character actors, should go a considerable way towards a positive reassessment of the work, which -- running a pressure-cooker 85 minutes -- is truly Miller's most harrowing theater piece.

Village Voice B
(Michael Feingold) Reviewers puzzlingly undervalued it in 1964, despite the memorably taut stillness of Harold Clurman's original production, and it holds up handsomely today, though director Scott Alan Evans gets blurry results, inexplicably rushing his actors through pivotal moments. Still, Koenig makes a forceful impression, as does Christopher Burns, playing assimilation's intellectual spokesman (a Vienna-trained French shrink).

NYPost B
(Frank Scheck) There's a haunting Beckettian quality to the piece, now getting an excellent production by The Actors Company Theatre, that compensates for its more pedantic elements... Unfortunately, the play's power is reduced by the too-obvious hand of the author. The 10 prospective victims have the sort of representative range seen in bad war films: there's a Gypsy, an elderly Jew, a doctor, an actor, a blue-collar worker, a little boy . . . even an Austrian prince... Director Scott Alan Evans has elicited finely nuanced performances from the 15-actor ensemble, and his staging features many haunting touches.

The New Yorker C-
(Unsigned) As is typical of minor Miller, texture and true psychology are sacrificed in the name of rhetoric, and the end results, despite the affecting historical context, are transparently didactic and, sadly, lifeless. The able cast tries its hardest and proof of Miller’s genius is scattered throughout the writing, but the work feels like no more than an alluring museum piece.

CU A 13; LSA A 13; NYTR A 13 TONY A- 12; BS A- 12; NYT A- 12; TM B+ 11; OOO B+ 11; NYP B 10; VV B 10; TNY C- 6; TOTAL: 113/8=11.18 (B+)

Read On »

All My Sons

Grade: B-



By Arthur Miller; Directed by Simon McBurney. Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Through Jan. 11, 2009.

(Critic-O-Metered by Isaac Butler)

Simon McBurney's experimental (and multimedia) directing of Miller's classic Ibsonian morality tale of war profiteering manages to upstage Katie Holmes as the subject for reviewers to discuss. Some, like Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout are horrified, while others consider it the most exciting thing to happen to Broadway in a long time. The actors, meanwhile, get near-universal acclaim. Holmes, who reviewers can't help reminding us is married to Tom Cruise, is largely discussed like a kid sister you're proud of for being in the school play.

TheaterMania A+
(David Finkle) Breathtaking performances by John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and, yes, Katie Holmes in the revival of Arthur Miller's profoundly moving 1947 play All My Sons instantly tag the production...as an absolute must-see. And, make no mistake, the players' achievements are inextricably tied to Simon McBurney's direction. Most insightfully, McBurney has insisted that to establish the play's close-knit family-and-friends ambience, the actors must constantly touch, embrace, caress, spar, and just plain indulge in additional highly effective laying-on-of-hands.

The Journal News A+
(Jacques Le Sourd) This is an amazing piece of theater that will leave no one who sees it unchanged. It is a memorial to a great playwright, seen through the remarkable eyes of a major young director who knows how to make it vibrant for our time.

The Record A
(Robert Feldberg) One of the toughest challenges for a director is making a familiar play fresh -- either by staging it in a distinctive way, or finding something new in the text. In the breathtaking, fiercely acted revival of Arthur Miller's 1947 drama All My Sons...director Simon McBurney has done both. The result is one of the boldest, most exciting Broadway productions in years.

Newsday A
(Linda Winer) The real news...is the high-concept rethinking by director Simon McBurney. This should be a stylistic hodgepodge, but, miraculously, the fusion honors the Ibsen-inspired moral authority of early Miller, the distancing modern techniques of Brecht and the special effects of an old-time Hollywood melodrama.

Variety A-
(David Rooney) There's no playing it safe here on any level, yet the complex approach feels organic -- every unconventional touch serves to break open the drama, not simply to embellish it. Some no doubt will find the treatment overwrought, but like it or not, this is far more interesting than another reverential remount.

NY Daily News A-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Lithgow is outstanding as the conflicted family man whose self-interest proves his undoing...As his devoted wife, Wiest marvelously conveys steel beneath Kate's soft-focus eyes and deep-set denial, while Wilson shows he's more than just apple-pie handsome in his highly emotional and physical performance in the shattering showdown. Holmes... makes a fine Broadway debut.

Time Out A-
(Adam Feldman) A remarkable evening at the theater--lucid, bold, modern and emotionally wrenching...The explicit theatricality of McBurney's staging minimizes the play's flaws while deepening its impact. Since most of the acting involves a slight edge of artifice, one is less distracted by the lovely Katie Holmes's show-pony stiffness as Chris's girlfriend...All My Sons proves disturbingly germane to the shameful legacy of the Iraq War. McBurney's vision helps us see ourselves.

The Star-Ledger A-
(Michael Sommers) Revitalizing the drama with striking staging and forceful acting, McBurney delivers an All My Sons that registers directly with today's concerns about the accountability of business executives to the rest of us.

New York Press
B+
(Leonard Jacobs) As Joe, the aging manufacturer who guilt is submerged beneath bravado, Lithgow is transfixing. As his wife, Kate, unable to acknowledge their eldest son is dead, Dianne Weist is a psychological thrashing machine--furious and sweet, sarcastic and beneficent. The couple's younger, more idealistic son, Chris, [is] played with vivacity, wit and mood by Patrick Wilson...Ann...isn't played by Katie Holmes so much as she is heaved, shouted and hoisted around. Holmes has little stage experience and it shows. I didn't say she lacks talent: it's an on-stage security, an ability to dwell in dark places, not browse through them, that she really needs.

CurtainUp B+
(Elyse Sommer) This highly stylized and filmic staging in many ways suits the play's intensely melodramatic plot, but ultimately it's the inherent power of the play itself that makes it a welcome addition to the season's re-examination of dramas that have lasting substance.

Hartford Courant B
(Malcolm Johnson) McBurney...excels in innovative stagecraft, and immediately he shows his hand. He brings the entire company onstage at the start, and Lithgow talks to the audience, instructing them about cellphones and beepers, and setting the scene for the play. Then the stage darkens menacingly, and the deafening howl of a storm fills the theater...As acted by Katie Holmes, [Ann] is a graceful young woman, but has a few awkward moments when she seems to be trying to remember her direction.

The New Yorker B
(Hilton Als) The characters in All My Sons are essentially ideological constructions; one can barely feel the blood beneath the rhetoric. As a result, the show is a directorial challenge. It's a stretch to imagine anyone doing a better job with it than Simon McBurney does here. He draws out the play's emotional and intellectual content by removing it from its naturalistic fustiness.

TheaterMania B
(Peter Filichia) considering that all four previous productions of the play that I've seen in the last 11 years were by-the-book realistic, I rather enjoyed McBurney's playing around with All My Sons. That, though, is because I can "afford" to see an unorthodox production. People who are coming to the theater for the first time may assume that these atypical choices are business-as-usual in the theater. Some may well be intrigued, but many may well feel confused or even repulsed.

NYPost B-
(Clive Barnes) The fault lies not with them but with the play. Given the doings on Wall Street today, its underlying theme of the selfishness, greed and general chicanery of big business should give All My Sons a certain topicality. But it's so sludged in the aftermath of World War II, it even misses out on that.

Entertainment WeeklyB-
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) Yet McBurney's cinematic approach -- underscoring nearly the entire evening with ominous instrumental music, projecting photos onto the back wall -- isn't where this revival falls short; it's the acting. And I'm not talking about Broadway neophyte Holmes...Save Young's beautifully even-keel MD, the neighbors all seem to be in another show...And while Wiest and Lithgow are terrifically well-matched...Lithgow ultimately isn't believable as the blue-collar Keller.

USA Today B-
(Elysa Gardner) At best, [Holmes] exhibits a girlish exuberance that could serve her well in certain stage roles, provided she finds a director who can ease her obvious self-consciousness and get her to focus on the often-intricate process of character development. Sadly, Simon McBurney, who helms this production, is not that director.

AM New York C+
(Matt Windman) We have a lot to say about the artistic merits and drawbacks of Simon McBurney's revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. But we know what you want to hear: can Katie Holmes (aka Mrs. Tom Cruise) act in an intense Broadway play? And here's our answer: No!

Backstage C+
(David Sheward) McBurney pushes it too far. Too many thoughts and references are given literal stage life. When it is announced a character with potentially damaging information will soon arrive by train, all the supporting players and understudies rush on stage with folding chairs, snap them open and -- viola -- they become the train. Similarly, as in a Warner Brothers melodrama, every significant plot development is accompanied by an overwrought musical theme. Too many cast members respond to this busy activity and hyperactive aural background with overwrought acting.

Theater News Online C
(Patrick Lee) You can't kill Arthur Miller's All My Sons if you have a capable cast of actors. And a capable cast of actors is just about all that this misconceived revival has going for it...With this fine cast, it's regrettable that director Simon McBurney's production rejects the naturalism that Miller's play needs to achieve its full power.

The New York Times C-
(Ben Brantley) Mr. McBurney has staged Miller's tale of a self-deluding, guilt-crippled American family with the ritualistic formality and sense of inexorability of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Would that he could summon the primal power associated with those ancients.

Bloomberg C-
(John Simon) Even aside from the obvious crowd-pleasing strategies, All My Sons leaves me with the oft-repeated feeling: What does it say about the American (or perhaps even world) theater that a playwright of such manifest limitations is reckoned as one of its pinnacle-sharing mainstays?

Associated Press C-
(Michael Kuchwara) Miller's play, despite its potent message, is weighed down with enough symbols, not to mention its own awkward melodramatics. McBurney and company have, unfortunately, added even more of their own.

Chicago Tribune C-
(Chris Jones) Once this play loses its relationship with reality, once the actors start acting to type and playing the end of the play at the beginning, once the meta-dramatic, Thornton Wilder touches overwhelm the natural, All My Sons loses much of what made it such a great American drama in the first place.

Village Voice C-
(Michael Feingold) All My Sons vests both its emotional and its moral weight in its characters, trusting its actors to bear the double burden. It doesn't require the panoply of swirling projections, ominously throbbing music, ghostly parades of supernumeraries, and frantically artificial blocking that McBurney deploys. The result looks like an effort to duplicate Stephen Daldry's 1994 revival of J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, also seen on Broadway in 1947, which shares Miller's stern view of moral responsibility among the monied.

Talkin Broadway D+
(Matthew Murray) Here, the director's insipient [sic] playfulness, which suggests that of a filthy-rich teenage boy let loose in an upscale electronics store, is constantly at odds with Miller's story about assuming, accepting, and understanding responsibility. McBurney is always trying to transform this staunchly corporeal work into an airy, arty memory play, as if to tell us that though its lesson is worth heeding, we all have better things to do than actually pay attention to it.

Talkin' Broadway D
(Barbara & Scott Siegel) Sure, Katie Holmes is the weakest actor on the stage in All My Sons. But that is hardly the major problem of this revival of Arthur Miller's classic play...The show's director, Simon McBurney, has undercut its power with one foolish decision after another. At base, McBurney has attempted to change a naturalistic play of ideas into some sort of imagistic Our Town. It ain't happenin'...This is, to be sure, one of the most disappointing revivals of the season despite some fine work by Lithgow, Wiest, and Wilson.

Wall St. Journal:D-
(Terry Teachout) I could go on and on about the many things that are wrong with this production, but there's no point, since so little about it is right.

The Journal News A+ 14; The Record A 13; Newsday A 13;Variety A- 12; New York Daily News A- 12; Time Out A- 12; The Star Ledger A- 12; New York Press B+ 11; CurtainUp B+11; Hartford Couran B 10; New Yorker B 10; TheaterMania B 10; NYPost B- 9; Entertainment Weekly B- 9; USA TODAY B- 9; AMNY C+ 8;Backstage C+ 8; Theater News Online C 7; New York Times C- 6; Bloomberg C- 6; AP C- 6; Village Voice C- 6;Chicago Tribune C- 6; TalkinBroaday D+ 5; Talkin' Broadway D 4; Wall St. Journal D- 3; TOTAL = 232 /26 = 8.92 B-

Read On »