After Miss Julie

GRADE: C+

A Version of Stridberg's Miss Julie By Patrick Marber, Directed by Mark Brokaw. At the American Airlines Theater. (CLOSED)

Earning everything from an A from David Cote to a rare F- from Terry Teachout, After Miss Julie is a case in which the critics agree about nothing. Sienna Miller is spellbinding and brilliant and delivers a harrowing performance! Or wait, no, she just walks around looking skinny. Patrick Marber's setting the play during the night that Labor took Parliament in 1945 and ousted Winston Churchill is a stroke of genius! No, wait, it simply mires the play in unnecessary class politics that obscure rather than enlighten. Even the reviews with similar grades disagree, with some praising the adaptation but not the acting, and others believing the acting saves a pointless update of the material. The only points of consensus: Mark Brokaw's staging, Marin Ireland's performance (when mentioned), and Allen Moyer's set design all come out with generally favorable marks.

NYMag A
(Stephanie Zacharek) August Strindberg’s 1888 play Miss Julie is lauded as a great work, but I’m not so sure about that. It’s a terse, cold play that examines an archetypal hysterical female, locked into rigid ideas of sex and class, as if she were a bug under a jar. It is scarily persistent, though, and Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie is the rare reimagining of a classic play that may actually improve upon the original. This passionate reworking shifts the setting to a country estate outside London in 1945—when the differences between lower and upper classes were supposedly dissolving—and strives to understand Strindberg’s confused characters instead of just diagnosing them.

Backstage A
(Erik Haagensen) After Roundabout's recent Bye Bye Birdie debacle, it's heartening to be able to report that the company has bounced back with a gripping production of Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie, his reworked version of Strindberg's classic...Film star Sienna Miller essays the title character. Though this is only her second stage appearance, she is clearly to the medium born. She wrings every nuance from her mercurial character and is particularly adept at suggesting the damaged girl within this restless and unhappy young woman. While Miller's beauty lights up the American Airlines Theatre, she doesn't rely upon it and is indeed fearless in abandoning it when necessary. When Miss Julie's fantasies of running off with John to New York to start a new life collapse, Miller turns her character's attempt to reassert her class privileges into a throbbing wound. Even when Miss Julie's actions threaten to destroy everyone around her, Miller makes her selfishness understandable and even sympathetic.

NY1 A
(David Cote) Of New York’s big nonprofit theaters, none has a weakness for star casting like the Roundabout Theatre Company. They seem incapable of mounting a show without a celebrity, however minor or unsuited to the task. But sometimes it actually works, as with "After Miss Julie," starring the lovely and unexpectedly potent Sienna Miller...Matching her for passion and rage is Jonny Lee Miller, athletic and forceful, but capable of shrinking into childlike terror as John. Together, they dance a toxic tango that’s sexy, dangerous and thrilling to watch.

Chicago Tribune A-
(Chris Jones) This is a very clever and consistently arresting script — Marber infuses the original drama with an upstairs-downstairs sense of social tension, but also recognizes that this was always mostly a play about sex. Thus this play...both captures the throbbing sensuality of its source and offers a juicy look at frustrated but ill-equipped Brits desperate to escape the post-war inertia of the grey world outside the manor. The eminently watchable Millers find two aptly contrasting modes of frustration — Sienna Miller's Julie is a spoiled self-hater with violent sexual desires (a danger of celebrity in any era), and a consequent need to switch at whim from aggressor to victim. Meanwhile, Jonny Lee Miller is like a caged animal, pacing the kitchen after being forced to switch from powerful soldier-killer to subservient shoe-shiner. No wonder he wants to sleep with his needy boss.

USAToday B
(Elysa Gardner) Julie's motives and her attraction to John (and his to her) are more complicated, though. As her personal background is revealed, Miller makes her desperation and desire palpable. She's at once willful and confused, sad and irritating. It is, for all its surface bravado — Miller speaks loudly and crisply, almost spitting out her lines at times — a nuanced performance. As John, British actor Jonny Lee Miller (no relation) is a worthy partner — a sparring partner. In character, the Millers can often seem poised to either kiss or punch each other, and it can be difficult to discern which. But if director Mark Brokaw milks the heated chemistry between John and Julie, he also allows them moments of sly wit and affecting tenderness.

AP B
(Michael Kuchwara) The Roundabout Theatre Company production, which opened Thursday at its American Airlines Theatre, demonstrates that Marber's updating and transplanting of the Scandinavian drama to post-World War II England works, for the most part, just fine.

Lighting and Sound America B
(David Barbour) If After Miss Julie must be listed under the season's misfires, it's a classy and fascinating one, put together by people of real talent. The problem is, what do we make of August Strindberg today -- and what of value does he have to say to us?

Hollywood Reporter B
(Frank Scheck) Certainly, Marber's version traffics in an erotic frankness at which Strindberg could only hint. But the updating really does the play no favors, as it only accentuates its less-subtle aspects. Hewing fairly closely to the original, "After Miss Julie" seems more like a footnote than a genuinely thoughtful reinvention. Still, the evening has its fascinations. In a more modern context, the psychological gamesmanship takes on an even deeper resonance. And Mark Brokaw's tense staging, though lacking the intimacy of the original Donmar Warehouse production, is very effective.

Theater News Online B
(Patrick Lee) The other two performances, under Mark Brokaw‘s direction, are consistently successful. Lee Miller brings a palpable, almost animal frustration to his portrayal of John that makes believable the character’s visceral attraction to Miss Julie. You can feel a lifetime of buried, hopeless ambition behind John’s every move. Ireland brings life to what could be a thankless “quiet dignity” role by emphasizing Christine’s intelligence. For the majority of the production, when all three actors are on the same page, After Miss Julie is charged, stimulating theatre.

NY Daily News B-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Miller, making her Broadway debut, is improbably beautiful, every inch the "fine-looking filly" John calls her. She's committed and competent, but her performance is a shade monochromatic, not modulated enough to make Miss Julie's jagged edges sharp. Jonny Lee Miller, whose résumé is studded with London theater roles plus TV's "Eli Stone," also makes his New York debut. He's a dynamic, striking presence as the servant whose post-coital glow turns to ice once reality bites. Marin Ireland completes the cast as John's pragmatic fiancee, Christine, the family cook. A Tony nominee for Reasons to Be Pretty, she adds sizzle with withering stares that could peel paint - or flay flesh.

TheaterMania B-
(David Finkle) Director Mark Brokaw production is initially quite effective, but as it proceeds -- especially after Miss Julie and John have gone to his room to consummate their relationship, and after Christine has discovered them and later confronts him (none of which Strindberg strictly specified) -- the mood switches from genuinely theatrical to histrionic. Among its more problematic moments are the killing of Miss Julie's pet bird and its bloody aftermath (real and symbolic), which require a dramatic delicacy not entirely brought off by its leading lady.

NYPost B-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Strindberg described his heroine as having a "weak and degenerate brain," a strain of misogyny that made his play devastating. This isn't the Julie of Marber, director Mark Brokaw or Sienna Miller. John doesn't feel brutal enough, either. (Only the brilliant Marin Ireland, in the thankless part of the cook, succeeds in playing varying emotions, which move across her face like shifting clouds.) It's this fear -- or inability -- of making the two leads as unhinged or as odious as they need to be that keeps "After Miss Julie" from taking off.

Entertainment Weekly C
(Jeff Labrecque) When the audience is finally willing to accept that John is merely the instrument for Julie's self-destruction, the play inconveniently asserts the lovers' long-suppressed pining for each other, which only underlines the performers' shortcomings. The two lovers trade verbal blows, while deciding whether to run away to New York City. ''The Americans are charmed by us,'' says poor, bland John. ''They die for the accent.'' I wish it were so.

North Jersey C
(Robert Feldberg) After Miss Julie is never dull, but the characters don't invite much involvement; you regard them as you would curiosities in a sideshow. More than crazy passion is needed for a drama to hit home.

NYTimes C-
(Ben Brantley) While Mr. Miller and Ms. Miller are undeniably attractive people, their Julie and John don’t seem terribly attractive to each other, a serious problem. There is one early moment of real erotic tension, when Julie extends her leg and asks John to kiss her shoe. Ms. Miller looks smug at first, then saucy, then distinctly uncomfortable and finally a bit frightened, as Julie wonders what she has let herself in for. Mr. Miller snatches at that pretty foot like a ravenous fish going after a hooked worm. Unfortunately, he — and we — are destined to stay hungry for the rest of the night.

Bloomberg C-
(John Simon) Logic, a bit stretched even in Strindberg, is out the window in Marber. Nevertheless, something of the original survives, and this, given also the occasional witticism (Julie: Do I shock you? John: Not as much as you’d like to) makes the play watchable. Mark Brokaw, the director, has observed almost too well Strindberg’s request for extensive silences when only one character or none is onstage, or when conversation is supposed to bog down awkwardly. This is unusual and impressive. Moreover, he makes good use of the large, well-appointed set, on which distance between characters and flurries of movement can be effectively exploited. Strindbergian naturalism is well served.

Newsday D+
(Linda Winer) And so it is with After Miss Julie, Patrick Marber's pointless and pretty toothless British update of August Strindberg's 19th century Swedish power-play about class and sexual warfare. To be fair, there is sort of a point to director Mark Brokaw's good-looking production - that is, the fan-mag matchup of young British celebu-stars Sienna Miller and Jonny Lee Miller (no relation) with characters intended to shock audiences since 1888. Both prove to be real actors - but especially he does, as he twitches and flips between being an upward-mobile hustler and a besotted slave to the landowner's overheated daughter, who hunts him down in the huge old kitchen of the estate (meticulously designed by Allen Moyer).

On Off Broadway D+
(Matt Windman) Mark Brokaw's production features so many pauses that it makes the short play feel too long. Still, it benefits from a very realistic set design depicting a large, cluttered kitchen and a generally impressive three-member cast. Tabloid starlet Sienna Miller, who is making her Broadway debut as the title character, enters the stage with aggressive sexual authority, enough to melt down any man who enters her path. But as the play progresses, her attempts to convey Julie's fragile emotions and sudden desperation feel forced and artificial.

Variety D
(David Rooney) That's some handsome country kitchen Allen Moyer has designed for After Miss Julie, with its chunky farm table, its sideboard stacked with Wedgewood and its oven range fringed by hanging copper pots and hissing steam. Pity there's so little cooking in Mark Brokaw's enervated production. Like Strindberg's play, Patrick Marber's blunt postwar-English update of the 1888 drama about class and sex requires an actress capable of negotiating wild swings and reversals. But Sienna Miller is out of her depth in the title role, making her dance of power and death an unaffecting tragedy.

TalkinBroadway D
(Matthew Murray) Can one determined cook save a broth spoiled by too many interlopers? As it turns out in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s underpowered new production of After Miss Julie, the answer is no - but it’s a close call. Were it not for Marin Ireland, who plays the kitchen worker Christine, Patrick Marber’s play at the American Airlines would be far too soupy for even diehard gourmands to digest. But her presence adds a dash of desperately needed seasoning to an almost parodically watery evening.

New Jersey Newsroom D
(Michael Sommers) Unless someone is an unconditional fan of either Miller, there's little reason to see Roundabout Theatre Company's so-what production, which, considering the questionable necessity for reviving the piece at all these days, might better be titled "Why Miss Julie?"

Wall Street Journal F-
(Terry Teachout) Mr. Marber claims that After Miss Julie is "in its way, truer" than the original play on which it's based, but all he's done for Miss Julie is tart it up with politics and vulgarize it beyond recognition. As for Ms. Miller, a model turned second-tier movie star, all she does is stalk around the stage striking vampy poses and looking really, really skinny. I almost felt sorry for her, but the truth is that she has no more business playing a classic stage role than I have posing for the cover of Vogue. The Roundabout Theatre Company should be ashamed of itself for asking her to do so.

NY A 13; BS A 13; NY1 A 13; CT A- 12; USA B 10; AP B 10; THR B 10; LSA B 10; TNO B 10; NYP B- 9; TM B- 9; NYDN B- 9; EW C 7; NJ C 7; NYT C- 6; BB C- 6; ND D+ 5; OOB D+ 5; V D 4; TB D 4; NJNR D 4; WSJ F- 0; TOTAL: 176/23 = 7.66 (C+)

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reasons to be pretty

GRADE: B

By Neil LaBute. Directed by Terry Kinney. The Lyceum. (CLOSED)

Neil LaBute gets a warmish welcome for his arguably overdue Broadway debut, with the majority of critics hailing this fraught, funny four-hander as a step in a more mature direction for the prickly playwright. Most agree that Thomas Sadoski, as a sensitive slacker reconsidering his life, carries the play in a breakout performance, and that Terry Kinney's direction is spot-on, while most of the disagreements center on comparisons between last year's Off-Broadway premiere of the play and the Broadway transfer. Meanwhile, it should be noted that a number of critics just didn't feel it; Elisabeth Vincentelli's headline at NY Post is "Many 'reasons' to be wary."

The New York Times A+
(Ben Brantley) Making his Broadway debut with a revised (and much improved) version of a play seen off Broadway last year, Mr. LaBute has exchanged misanthropy for empathy, reaping unexpected dividends...Mr. LaBute is writing some of the freshest and most illuminating American dialogue to be heard anywhere these days...I suppose that in the wrong hands reasons to be pretty could sound like a Sunday school lesson, albeit one with a most unchurchly vocabulary. But Mr. Kinney’s production, which features sets by David Gallo that convey a blue-collar bleakness in deft shorthand, never smacks of the pulpit. Even more than when I saw it last June, reasons flows with the compelling naturalness of overheard conversation.

Associated Press A+
(Michael Kuchwara) The complicated, often explosive relationships between men and women are a source of eternal, often contrary fascination for Neil LaBute, and they have been superbly realized in reasons to be pretty, his most compassionate, appealing work to date...Unquestionably, it's a highlight of the season, and in Thomas Sadoski, director Terry Kinney has found the perfect embodiment of the play's benighted hero, Greg, a blue-collar factory worker with serious woman problems. In a breakout, Tony-caliber performance, Sadoski lives and breathes this decent, down-to-earth guy...One of the special joys of "reason to be pretty" is its ambiguity, an ambiguity reflected most compellingly in LaBute's dialogue for Greg and Steph. It's particularly effective in the play's later scenes as the two tentatively try to salvage what's left of their tattered relationship. And special mention should be made of Kinney's precise direction, carefully balancing the play's considerable volatility with its quiet, rueful passages.

Talkin' Broadway A+
(Matthew Murray) Brutally beautiful...Neil LaBute has pushed aside the usual destructively dangerous he-she relations he normally documents in favor of revealing his softer-than-predicted heart. And what a dazzling trade he's made...Fueled by a star-making performance from Thomas Sadoski, [it] may be LaBute's tamest, but it's also his best...For the first time, both genders are equally matched - taking sides is not possible...The transfers of power do not cease until the last minute of the last scene - at which point it’s still not clear who the winners or losers really are. This is mature writing not just for LaBute but for anyone...You may think you’re not seeing a LaBute play, but in fact you’re seeing the most LaButian yet.

Variety A
(David Rooney) The real subject of this taut, unexpectedly affecting drama is a man forced to take a long, hard look at himself after a flippant comment about his girlfriend's appearance kills their relationship. Nobody's going to call Neil LaBute a redemptive playwright, and even in this reflective mood, he's not exactly forgiving about men's failings and women's weaknesses. But there's compassion and even tenderness running through this play that make it one of his best...LaBute makes plenty of gnawing observations about the different codes of honor among men and women. But it's when Carly -- a warehouse security guard and the one who blabbed to Steph about the incriminating comment -- turns to Greg, expecting the same degree of loyalty, that his bruising education becomes complete. The play's series of bristling confrontations and agonizing negotiations has a cumulative power...LaBute's writing also makes gains by abandoning his penchant for shocking twists, and by shifting from a cold professional sphere into a blue-collar environment.

Time Out NY A
(Adam Feldman) Insightful and absorbing...The contemptuous sneer so common to the playwright’s work yields to a more bittersweet expression: the tight-lipped, grin-and-bear-it mask of wisdom acquired too late...LaBute takes the old saw that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and gives it new teeth.

The Daily News A
(Joe Dziemianowicz) The bard of bad male behavior, Neil LaBute, is back with some ugly truths in his latest play, reasons to be pretty...In his Broadway debut, he rises above the formulaic to craft a play that's perceptive and believable. What makes this work different is that the author's main character learns something about himself...Since last year's run, the play, now a lean two hours, has had an excellent makeover. Gone are clunky and heavy-handed monologues, which puts the focus firmly on Greg. But the fierce observations, emotional fireworks and occasional thunderbolts of comic insight remain, making "reasons to be pretty" an incisive look at the tricky terrain of young relationships. Much of the accolades go to director Terry Kinney, who has deftly guided his cast through a minefield of feelings.

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) It takes a tender man to make plays as tough as Neil LaBute's. No contemporary writer has more astutely captured the brutality in everyday conversation and behavior; that kind of insight requires sensitivity and soul-searching. The empathy and moral conviction behind LaBute's cutting prose has never been more obvious than it is in Reasons to Be Pretty...Thomas Sadoski's wry, earthy Greg is certainly never a bore; there isn't a false note in his heartbreaking performance. The other actors also thrive under Terry Kinney's vigorous but careful direction...The playwright asks us less to judge these people than to consider what moves them, and us, to cause and feel pain — and why some of us are better at rising above it. None of this would matter, of course, if LaBute were a less entertaining writer. Reasons to Be Pretty is hardly a feel-good play, but it will make you feel, and think, more deeply about seemingly mundane things.

The Hollywood Reporter A
(Frank Scheck) Marking the playwright's belated Broadway debut, this lacerating and extremely funny work should appeal to younger theatergoers especially...LaBute's gift for comically nasty dialogue -- especially relating to the battle between the sexes -- is very much on display here...But the playwright also displays an unusually thoughtful side in this work while providing more complex characterizations than usual for him. While each of the four characters is given surprising aspects, it's the perpetually befuddled Greg, who alternates between typically jerkish male behavior and genuine vulnerability and sensitivity, who most fascinates. Credit must especially go to Sadoski, who invests his performance with a compelling soulfulness. Director Terry Kinney, repeating his chores from the play's previous off-Broadway production, has again elicited superb performances from his ensemble.

NY1 A
(Roma Torre) Even though it's not the prettiest of shows, "Reasons To Be Pretty" is looking awfully good on Broadway..."Reasons To Be Pretty" is a small, richly-layered work with a sharp focus on our obsession with beauty and all the ways that communication and truth can fail us...Once again, Thomas Sadoski is the main attraction and he is awesome, playing the comedy and tragedy of this sad soul for all its worth. Director Terry Kinney expertly mines all the nuances and humor embedded in every line of this insightful and mature work. Bravo to Neil LaBute - like his protagonist, the playwright has finally come of age.

American Theatre Web A-
(Andy Propst) Invigorating...For this Broadway incarnation of reasons, LaBute has streamlined his script, and although the initial scene might be off-putting for those encountering the piece for the first time (Ireland's fierceness during the play's opening moments makes Steph seems psychotic), reasons ultimately delivers a resounding emotional blow.

Bloomberg News B+
(John Simon) Ferociously funny...The dialogue couldn’t be snappier and psychologically more astute, as partings prove as fraught as pairings, with the bitterest resentment harboring nostalgic yearnings for reconciliation. This requires utmost versatility and agility from the young actors, who must be able to go instantly from fireworks to waterworks, as well as display emotional ambivalences with a prestidigitator’s skill. Under Terry Kinney’s clockwork direction, the cast spiritedly obliges...The now-omitted soliloquies, which seem to me LaBute’s only real Broadway change, are not greatly missed. The sophomoric yet provocative ambiguities are plentifully present in story and dialogue.

Bergen Record B+
(Robert Feldberg) Has its bumpy moments, including a scene in which Greg and Kent have it out physically, in a clichéd reversion to the boys’ world of previous LaBute plays. Ultimately, though, the playwright delivers the goods, in a work that’s lively and compulsively watchable and that offers a fresh take on the eternal matter of achieving adulthood.

Curtain Up B+
(Elyse Sommer) All four of those actors are terrific. Mr. LaBute rather extensive reworking of the script makes Thomas Sadoski's Greg even more the central character of this coming of age story. And Sadoski, who was excellent off-Broadway is even better now...The play has not, as rumors doing rehearsals had it, been cut to an intermissionless 90 minutes. However, it IS more streamlined with the thoughts expressed via audience-addressing monologues by each character now incorporated into the characters conversations. This makes for a more natural, less stage-y play...As always, LaBute has been blessed to have his story staged by a director (Terry Kinney) sufficiently attuned to his rhythms to keep things tense and surprising.

Village Voice B
(Michael Feingold) Two things hamper LaBute, though, as his story snowballs from the misreporting of an overheard remark into private quarrels, public scenes, adulteries, separations, petty revenges, and fistfights. One is that his preoccupation with life's minutiae seems to keep him from conveying the bigger matters involved more lucidly...The story shrinks, instead of gaining resonance, under the weight of so many reasons to be petty. Line for line, though, LaBute's writing is always vivid; you can see why actors go for it, and Terry Kinney's direction has evoked sharp, convincing performances from all four of his cast members. Only the play's constant search for effectiveness at the expense of meaning vitiates its energy: You're always distracted by wondering what would happen if the character exiting didn't pause at that exact moment to say or hear exactly the wrong thing.

Backstage B
(David Sheward) Why has it taken so long for the prolific playwright to find his way to the Main Stem? Putting aside economic factors, the main reason is probably his savage tone. Generally his characters rip each other apart in the relationship wars, but here he at least attempts a reconciliation between the sexes...Off-Broadway, under Terry Kinney's hyperrealistic direction, Reasons to Be Pretty had the feel of a documentary...In the transition to Broadway, there have been cast changes and script tightening—with mixed results....Still, the play remains a compelling look at hardscrabble lives, shallow perceptions, and the struggle for maturity. There are plenty of reasons to see Reasons.

Theatermania B-
(David Finkle) A "here-we-go-again" enterprise...Fortunately, its flaws are partially redeemed by its four-person cast: Thomas Sadoski, who has deepened his already probing performance as factory worker Greg, the intensely gifted Marin Ireland, who deserves to be kissed by the producers on the hem of her late-in-play asymmetrical skirt for immersing herself in the role of Greg's aggrieved girlfriend Steph, and Piper Perabo (the show's other holdover) and Steven Pasquale as married co-workers Carly and Kent, who also warrant kudos for their committed performances under Terry Kinney's acidly biting direction...The superb Sadoski, who makes Greg's self-examination painfully palpable right up to his fade-out look, is one of the main reasons that reasons is still worth watching.

Entertainment Weekly B-
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) An unsympathetic heroine saps the energy right out of rtbp, which marks the prolific playwright's Broadway debut and his third meditation on body image/beauty obsession...Though it wants for well-rounded characters, rtbp is still laced with LaBute's trademark acidity, not to mention fine performances. Pasquale is particularly impressive, the perfect rough-around-the-edges leading man. Let's hope producers remember him when they revive Fat Pig, the best of LaBute's body-image trilogy.

Lighting & Sound America C+
(David Barbour) As long as the invective -- a LaBute specialty -- is flying, Reasons to Be Pretty has a certain comic sting...Unfortunately, LaBute is unwilling to let us leave the theatre until we've all learned a lesson. Reasons to Be Pretty is meant to be the story of Greg's moral education, but, given Steph's insane overreaction to his remark, the real moral of the story seems to be that Greg needs to meet a better class of woman...LaBute excoriates his male characters for being obsessed with looks, but he doesn't seem to notice that his women are pathologically fragile and dependent on flattery...By the way, LaBute seems determined to preempt the charge that he is patronizing his characters. Almost defensively, he adds a program note, in which he discusses his deep empathy for them and their dead-end jobs. Next time, he might notice that not all of them exist in an emotional kindergarten.

AM New York C+
(Matt Windman) If you’ve seen one Neil LaBute play, you’ve more or less seen them all. All of his relationship dramas explore the same stuff – good people doing bad things, deceit, uncontrolled anger, misogyny, and violence – as told through a nonstop barrage of curse words...On the whole, the drama still feels flat and lacking. However, it does shun the cumbersome plot twists and turns that LaBute usually depends so heavily on...It must be admitted that Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder Terry Kinney has mounted a generally convincing and well-acted production. And LaBute deserves some credit for trying to engage in a cultural dialogue about our obsession with physical beauty.

Nytheatre.com C+
(Martin Denton) The soullessness of this serious comedy reflects the aloneness of this character...LaBute paints himself into a corner rather quickly, though; with only four characters in his play, and three of them utterly unlikable, the only thing that sustains us as we watch is Greg's possible triumph over his compadres. We root for him to escape, but he takes what seems to be a very long time to do so. The dialogue is sharply written, mostly nailing the casual Anytown, America sounds and rhythms of the blue-collar characters; the crowd-pleasing jokes feel inserted, though, and sitcom-like...Terry Kinney's staging is solidly naturalistic, except that he's apparently asked set designer David Gallo to provide a literalized representation of the Greg-is-trapped-in-Costco metaphor in the form of huge floor-to-ceiling shelves at the edges of the stage filled with boxes of products.

Newsday C
(Linda Winer) Almost shockingly slight and too eager for redemption to be provocative...The play is set somewhere grim in what the program calls "the outlying suburbs" and moves in short scenes from bedroom to factory lunchroom to food court. [Director Terry Kinney] wrings unbridled violent physicality from the hardworking cast. But for a guy who reads Poe and Hawthorne on his lunch break, Greg really should be deeper than this.

Wall Street Journal C-
(Terry Teachout) A kinder, gentler Neil LaBute, one who lets his hapless protagonist partway off the hook instead of letting him twist and turn all night long. That's what makes reasons to be pretty suitable for uptown consumption. It's Mr. LaBute's first semioptimistic play -- which turns out not to be a good thing...If you've never seen any of Mr. LaBute's plays, you might well find this one fresh, but this is the sixth one I've reviewed, and I'm sorry to say that his style has hardened into a set of tricks and mannerisms that he uses to say the same things over and over again.

New York Post D+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Underneath the profanity, hot-button issues and general hostility lurks a fairly conventional treatment of well-trodden themes. LaBute's plays would rock only the tipsiest boat -- which says more about American theater than it does about him...[A] climactic all-out fistfight is as expected and ultimately bittersweet as the hero's deflowering in a teen movie. Sadly, the scene doesn't quite pack the necessary punch (literal and otherwise), and neither does the play as a whole...In many ways, Greg is the physical materialization of LaBute's writing. Like Greg brawling with Kent in front of their softball teammates, LaBute is engaging in a public confrontation with his own macho past.

The New Yorker D
(Hilton Als) [LaBute is] more interested in the relationship between the two men than in those between the couples. (His first film, “In the Company of Men,” involved a similar dynamic.) Kent is the annoying alpha male to Greg’s more compliant sidekick—at first. And if there’s a touch of homoeroticism in Kent’s bullying big-brother approach to Greg’s more nuanced thinking, then Kent is the last to know it. He is a meathead who understands that his physical strength and his resistance to thought are terribly attractive to women—or, at any rate, to women who conflate masculinity with insensitivity, and enjoy being objectified. The women in Kent’s life get turned on by their own moral superiority as much as they do by his slablike fingers slapping their fannies. He’s a cuter Andrew Dice Clay, and, the night I attended the show, women laughed as uproariously at his sexism as they did at Steph’s cluelessness. It’s as if LaBute’s—by now canned and adolescent—“transgressive” point of view were what audiences needed in order to feel anarchic, to shed the boring safety of their lives.

New York F
(Stephanie Zacharek) Ostensibly mines some rich, complex subjects: the delicate nature of women's feelings about their own looks; men's capacity for deceit and selfish cruelty, or just plain cluelessness; and the inability of men and women to bridge the gap that eternally divides them. But for LaBute, subjects take precedence over people, and they circle this play...like hungry lions in search of characters to eat. What's left, in the end, are a pile of bones and a few indigestible scraps of something that sounds an awful lot like a master's thesis. Its title might be "Male-Female Relationships: The Dark Side"...LaBute wants us to face, with bitter laughter, the uglier aspects of human nature. But he doesn't love his characters, beyond the fact that they serve his purpose. It's no wonder the performers here—directed by Terry Kinney—have trouble fleshing out those characters. They're not acting, they're delivering material; and they have no chance of outrunning the lion.

The New York Times A+ 14; Associated Press A+ 14; Talkin' Broadway A+ 14; Variety A 13; Time Out NY A 13; The Daily News A 13; USA Today A 13; The Hollywood Reporter A 13; NY1 A 13; American Theatre Web A- 12; Bloomberg News B+ 11; Bergen Record B+ 11; Curtain Up B+ 11; VV B 10; Backstage B 10; Theatermania B- 9; Entertainment Weekly B- 9; LS&A C+ 8; AM New York C+ 8; Nytheatre.com C+ 8; Newsday C 7; Wall Street Journal C- 6; New York Post D+ 5; New Yorker D 4; New York F 1; 249/25=9.96 (B)

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