Race

GRADE: C


(Photo By Robert J. Saferstein)

Written and Directed by David Mamet. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater.

The bulk of the reviews land squarely in the C- zone. Critics generally agree that Race does not succeed on its own terms and grows increasingly thin as the evening goes on, leading to some poorly set up revelations at the end and another of Mamet's poorly constructed Feckless Woman parts. They still find it quite entertaining, however, and particularly focus on the performance of James Spader. The play's two unqualified positive reviews come from Matthew Murray and John Simon-- who himself has oft faced down accusations of racism and sexism.

Bloomberg A
(John Simon) Mamet, who also directs, has assembled four talented actors -- James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, Richard Thomas -- and a top-notch design team. We get a high-voltage melodrama that is unafraid to raise painful questions while dispensing prickly ideas and provocative dialogue amid steady suspense. Just as in Oleanna, Mamet latches on to a controversial issue, in this case the problem of race as it has affected American politics, jurisprudence, sexual relations and life in general. He has boldly asserted that our 230-year national experience has been a dialogue about race and that the theme of his new play is “race and the lies we tell each other on the subject.”

TalkinBroadway A
(Matthew Murray) This, then, is the most realistic play on the subject we�ve seen in a long time. It�s also a stunning return to original form for Mamet, who doesn�t abandon the show-biz savvy of his middle period (Speed-the-Plow, Oleanna) or the political awareness of his current oeuvre (School, November) while jumping headfirst in the acidic repartee of his earlier, most defining works (American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross). Race cuts deeper, and more frequently, than perhaps anything else Mamet has written.

Chicago Tribune A-
(Chris Jones) Race is wholly watchable. Gripping, actually. Don't believe anyone who argues otherwise. Granted, it is gripping within a dangerously narrow and familiar palette; Race is like a contrived composite of "Oleanna," "Speed-the-Plow" and a TV legal procedural. There are many holes in its dramatic logic. Mamet doesn't so much write plays driven by characters anymore. His shell-like characters are the whores of his ideas. And for all the dramatic provocations (and the brilliant matching of the richly contrasting Grier and Spader), there's a certain weariness that comes from watching the way that "Race" stubbornly ignores any and all differences in generational thinking and reduces its characters' loyalties to the color of their skin. It's a juicily argued reduction, sure, but also a very troubling one. Which is, of course, Mamet's point.

TheaterMania B+
(Dan Bacalzo) Admittedly, much of the first act seems like a string of talking points or jokes about race with very little character development. However, it does lay the groundwork for the terrific second act, in which things get far more personal for the lawyers. A confrontation between Jack and Susan is one of the production's most powerful scenes, and the rapid fire plot twists that develop as the play comes thundering to its conclusion are nicely handled.

New Yorker B+
(John Lahr) The plot, such as it is, demonstrates the contention of Mamet’s Times piece, that “just as personal advantage was derived by whites from the defense of slavery and its continuation as Jim Crow and segregation, so too personal advantage, political advantage and indeed expression of deeply held belief may lead nonwhites to defense of positions that . . . will eventually be revealed as untenable.” In reality, Mamet would be hard pressed to defend his weasel words; onstage, where his story turns on racial profiling by blacks, he can make it seem plausible, if not persuasive.

Village Voice B+
(Michael Feingold) More fluid than in some of his earlier directorial attempts, Mamet's staging keeps the action zipping along, and doesn't seem (as in those earlier instances) to inhibit his actors. Spader, suavely sardonic, makes a strong impression; the hint of smug mannerism that always goes with Thomas's air of injured innocence suits his role handily. The cast's weak link, not overly damaging, is Washington, who hasn't yet summoned the power to project her presence fully. (Mamet, who dislikes overt emotional display in his works, probably hasn't helped.) The evening's showpiece performance—grounded, forceful, funny, and smartly shaded—comes from Grier, swallowing unpalatable news and snapping out equally unpalatable opinions with flamboyant finesse.

USA Today B
(Elysa Gardner) Though Race can be bitingly funny, some of Lawson and Brown's comments threaten to veer into speechifying. Lawson, especially, seems at times to be venting on behalf of the playwright, whose disdain for the strictures of political correctness is well known...Mamet deserves credit for a briskly entertaining, if flawed, study. It is indeed a world full of misunderstandings, and Race offers an absorbing glimpse.

NorthJersey B
(Robert Feldberg) David Mamet has said his new play, Race, which opened Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, is his contribution to the country's never-ending dialogue on the relationship between black people and white people. But although he makes several provocative points, the racial discussion is one of the least involving aspects of the evening. What's most pungent — and terrifically engaging — is the old Mamet, the creator of sharp operators, men who are cynical, profane and morally flexible.

New York Magazine C
(Scott Brown) We open with an O.J. joke—an early indicator of the mid-nineties mindset that informs Race, David Mamet’s fleet, fidgety, focused little Sudoku of a “shock” drama. The facts of the case are these: A wealthy white man, Strickland (Richard Thomas), is accused of raping a younger black woman; he seeks counsel, and perhaps a measure of absolution, at a law firm captained by senior partners Lawson (James Spader, white) and Brown (David Alan Grier, brown). Assisting them is lovely, leggy, leery Susan (Kerry Washington), who is also brown but, suspiciously, lacks a highly symbolic surname—and may or may not have been a (gasp!) affirmative-action hire. (Cherchez la femme, Mamet fans.) “Race is the most incendiary topic in our history,” we are informed early on, lest we doubt the stakes. Yet the case itself is a bluff; what little we learn of it sounds remarkably pedestrian. All Mamet really wants to do is put white guilt on trial, which he does, with gusto, deploying the familiar man-man-woman triad he used in Speed-the-Plow and elsewhere. But the boils prodded here feel pre-lanced, the flash points all too familiar: Did Strickland use the N-word? Well, of course he did! The play is called Race.

Entertainment Weekly C
The shock is that the author (who previously staged a two-person dramatic tap dance about men and women, truth and lies in Oleanna) elicits little more than a shrug once all the thrusts and parries, revelations and reversals are toted up. The foursome bark out short, blunt, rhetorically provocative dialogue intended to demonstrate that black people and white people are doomed never to understand one another. But the arguments feel like moves on a game board, not words from the heart.

Time Out New York C
(Adam Feldman) For all the verve of its neo-Shavian back-and-forth, however, Race falters on its way to the finish line. Adept at articulating the play’s issues, Mamet is less successful at dramatizing them. The play is not unlike an 80-minute episode of a televised legal drama (on cable, where they can use the f-word). Its two lawyers are played well by Spader and David Alan Grier, but they have little dimension beyond their arguments; and the other two characters, who have more opportunity for development, register largely as a ciphers.

New York Times C-
(Ben Brantley) An assured craftsman, Mr. Mamet builds his structure with precision and with what feels like a certain weariness with his own facility. What’s lacking is the fusion of story, theme and character that lends bona fide suspense to his plays. In American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna (which received a less-than-exemplary Broadway production this season), the dialogue is fueled by the desperation of the characters. Much of the excitement in listening to them comes from hearing how their words, initially used as tools and weapons, become their prisons. In “Race” words accumulate less into portraits than attitudes. Obviously there’s a lot at stake for the people of Race, especially for Charles, whom Mr. Thomas portrays with a cunning air of masochistic martyrdom. But there’s only one real character in the play, a paucity you become fully aware of in the second act.

Backstage C-
(David Sheward) it's definitely a mixed bag: At times the dialogue feels like a debate between stick figures representing opposing points of view rather than real people in a situation reflective of our conflicted society. In addition, the setup is somewhat similar to earlier Mamet play[s].

Wall St. Journal C-
(Terry Teachout) The problem with Race is that it's a bit too familiar. Specifically, it plays like a cross between Mr. Mamet's "Oleanna" and his screenplay for "The Verdict." I can't say much more than that without giving away the "surprises" sprinkled throughout the plot, in which two lawyers, one white (James Spader) and one black (David Alan Grier), decide whether to defend a famous millionaire (Richard Thomas) who is accused of raping a young black woman—a decision complicated by the fact that one of their employees (Kerry Washington) is also a young black woman. But those who know Mr. Mamet's work more than casually will likely be able to guess many of the directions in which he takes this conceit, and that's a big part of what's wrong with "Race." In addition, "Race" is didactic in a way I didn't expect from a playwright like Mr. Mamet, whose normal practice is to dramatize the points he wants to make instead of embedding them in lectures delivered by his characters. "Race," by contrast, is full of lectures, most of which are delivered to the younger lawyer by her older bosses, which is logical enough but doesn't make them any less prone to slow down the play's momentum.

Variety C-
(David Rooney) As one of the characters in David Mamet's teasing faux-polemic on the subject says, "Race is the most incendiary topic in our history." The slender play that takes its terse title from that declaration seems hatched more out of an urge to inflame arguments easily triggered in the age of Obama than out of the need to tell this particular story or even to explore the issue with any real conclusiveness. This being Mamet, however, the dialogue is tasty, the confrontations spiky and the observations more than occasionally biting. Slick but hollow, Race entertains as it unfolds, but grows increasingly wobbly as it twists its way to an unsatisfying wrap-up.

NY1 C-
(Roma Torre) All the action in this play seems contrived to justify a convoluted premise. And while I can't give examples without spoiling the plot, I can tell you everyone says and does things that, from both legal and dramatic perspectives, don't make much sense. The good news is that it's very well acted... There's no denying the production under Mamet's direction is plenty entertaining and thought provoking. It's just that when you do think about it you realize, despite all the incendiary talk, they're not saying all that much.

Newsday D+
(Linda Winer) The subject, race, could not be more timely. And yet the confrontations have the urgency of pigtail-pulling provocations in the schoolyard. Are we really meant to be shocked to hear that trials are entertainment or that people of different colors get different treatment? The generalizations - blacks have shame, Jews have guilt - are as inflammatory as a routine by Jackie Mason. The real shock of this Race is that Mamet cannot take them and run.

LA Times D+
(Charles McNulty) The play somewhat misleads its audience into thinking that its plot will revolve around the discovery of Charles’ guilt or innocence. The actual story lies in the inter-office dynamics, which grow complicated (and not in a particularly involving way) when suspicions are raised about Susan’s role in the case. Unfortunately, this character — another of Mamet’s female subordinates seemingly out for retributive payback — isn’t well developed. Washington brings a cool and glamorous confidence to the part (costume designer Tom Broecker dresses her as though for a Vogue law-office spread, but there’s something contrived about her motivation.

The Faster Times D+
(Jonathan Mandell) There are a few plot twists, which are meant to keep the audience guessing at the answer to the question “Is he guilty?” and one or two more questions, such as “Whose side is she on?” They are also meant, more grandly, to show the differing perceptions of the world from black and white. But these twists would not withstand the scrutiny of an experienced dramaturg; they don’t make much sense, and are ultimately not very interesting. In any case, much of the 90-minute play is taken up with what are little more than cynical lectures about the legal system, and observations about race relations – about double standards, about what you can say and what you can’t in polite company, about the different perspectives of black and white in America... “Race” is performed by pros — the stand-out here is David Alan Grier; James Spader seems to be playing his “Boston Legal” character minus the humorous quirkiness, but there is a reason why that show lasted on television so long. I cannot find particular fault in the way that Mamet directed “Race” — quick, to the point — just in the way he wrote it.

NY Observer D
(Jesse Oxley) It's all rendered with Mr. Mamet's expected verbal pyrotechnics, but the inherent pleasure of virtuosity aside, the fireworks fall flat. The play is reveling in its subversive political incorrectness, but political incorrectness hasn't seemed flamboyantly subversive at any point in this new century.

Financial Times D-
With this world premiere on Broadway, Mamet continues his descent into smug cynicism. The characters are representative figures rather than people with personal lives – mouthpieces for Mamet’s ideas about the nature of confession, the difference between guilt and shame, and the lies we supposedly tell ourselves about the relationship between races.

NYPost F+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) The most stunning thing about the David Mamet play that opened last night is how clunky it is. The man's written books about drama and filmmaking, so you'd think his missile against a hot-button issue would at least be well put together. But "Race," which Mamet also directed, is a bewildering muddle. Audiences might expect this type of awkwardly constructed, flailing acrimony from a 15-year-old with a Twitter account, not from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

BB A 13; TB A 13; CT A- 12; TM B+ 11; TNY B+ 11; VV B+ 11; NJ B 10; USA B 10; NYM C 7; TONY C 7; EW C 7; NYT C- 6; NY1 C- 6; WSJ C- 6; BS C- 6; V C- 6; TFT D+ 5; ND D+ 5; NYO D 4; LAT D+ 5; FT D- 4; NYPost F+ 2; TOTAL: 167/25 =6.68 (C)

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Brighton Beach Memoirs

GRADE: B+

By Neil Simon, Directed by David Cromer. At the Nederlander Theater. (CLOSED)

In one of the few instances where reviews of a non-auteurist work actually discuss a play's direction in depth, critics debate the merits of David Cromer's naturalistic, non-shticky take on Brighton Beach Memoirs, with most agreeing that he uncovers previously-unseen depths in Neil Simon's massive 1983 hit. Yea-sayers dig the way the show wraps itself warmly around its audience like a snuggie, and are appreciative of Cromer's approach, which blunts some of the aggravating and overly ingratiating edges of Simon's script. The unmoved this time around are Stephanie Zacharek and John Simon: Simon doesn't like what he sees as a not-Jewish-enough production, while one suspects Zacharek wouldn't like Brighton Beach Memoirs if it contained a musical number midway through praising her by name.

Newsday A+
(Linda Winer) With his beautifully cast and calibrated production, Cromer keeps the pace and rhythm of Simon's humor while recognizing shadows more often seen in American tragedies by Arthur Miller. Narrator Eugene - played with astonishing maturity and affection by gifted newcomer Noah Robbins - doesn't miss the inbuilt jokes about the horrors of broiled liver and puberty, and diseases too scary to be spoken aloud. But we never are allowed to forget that the laughs are attached to a price.

TalkinBroadway A
(Matthew Murray) The real question about this production and the partner-in-crime sequel with which it’s about to run in rep under the title The Neil Simon Plays, Broadway Bound (slated to open next month), was whether its other-kind-of-visionary director would be able to match Simon laugh for laugh and tear for tear. The answer, I’m happy to report, is an emphatic yes.

TheaterMania A
(Brian Scott Lipton) As he's proved with his recent acclaimed productions of Elmer Rice's Adding Machine and Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Cromer's particular gifts as a director are to bring even the most theatrical characters to recognizable and fully-dimensional life and to establish a particular rhythm for the world they inhabit. And here, even when Cromer must embrace the occasional over-jokiness of Simon's mostly heartfelt script, he wisely downplays the work's sitcom-like qualities to focus on the human drama. In the production's best moments, there's a sense that we have dropped in, unobserved, on an endangered species in their natural habitat. (Cromer even encourages the actors at times to talk over each other or turn their backs to the audiences.)

Variety A
(David Rooney) It's easy to imagine Brighton Beach becoming either mawkish or sitcommy in the wrong hands. But Cromer has wisely opted not to direct it as comedy shaded by poignant moments, instead taking the more sober reverse approach of treating the play as a family drama leavened by humor. That choice pays off beautifully. The cast is on the exact same wavelength; they play the characters, not the jokes, so while there's plenty of Simon's trademark wisecracks and one-liners, they are not the engine. What drives the play is the humanity and compassion, virtues and failings of the very real people onstage, and the constant collision of love, anxiety and frustration that shapes their relationships.

Washington Post A
(Peter Marks) Cromer's meticulous approach to Simon turns on the day-to-day hardships of keeping food on the table for an extended lower-middle-class family in Depression-era Brooklyn. His strategy adds emotional weight to the performances, not only for the younger actors but also for such well-cast veterans as Laurie Metcalf and Dennis Boutsikaris, playing the boys' parents.

Backstage A
(Erik Haagensen) Cromer's clean, straightforward direction happily shuns all shtick. Even better, he has cast well. Of course, without a Eugene there is no play (the role made a star out of Matthew Broderick), and here we get the terrific Noah Robbins, making an auspicious Broadway debut at only 19. Robbins take control like a seasoned veteran. His rock-solid comic timing is nevertheless integrated into a detailed, finely nuanced characterization of this young man struggling to discover himself. He and the charismatic Santino Fontana as Stanley have excellent rapport: Their scene in which Stanley enlightens Eugene about sexual matters is a highlight. As their cousins, Gracie Bea Lawrence charms as the dutiful Laurie, who isn't as sure about her heart's flutter as her mother is, and Alexandra Socha makes a strong impression as Nora, showing us the inner seething resentment that could easily lead this bright young girl down dangerous roads.

Time Out NY A
(David Cote) You could call it Odets with titty jokes, but humor is desperately needed in the Jerome household. Cromer and a simply superb cast (including Dennis Boutsikaris as father Jake, Jessica Hecht as Aunt Blanche and Santino Fontana as the older brother) take the hardship of the Depression-era period seriously, and don’t lean on the script’s sitcomish rhythms. By not treating Brighton Beach Memoirs as one of the author’s typical yukfests, the drama ends up being that much more hilarious.

NY1 A
(Roma Torre) When I first saw Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon 26 years ago, it was a comedy with drama. In the current revival, it's a drama with comedy. While the script is essentially the same with topnotch actors in both productions, the difference is the direction. David Cromer, fresh from his unique, naturalistic off-Broadway staging of "Our Town," applies his now trademark directorial magic to the Neil Simon classic. The result is triumphant, as just as it was a huge hit back then, it deserves to be once again

USAToday A
(Elysa Gardner) Simon's unabashedly sentimental account of all this is not the kind of stuff that gets deconstructed in college literature courses. Still, with the right combination of comic panache and gentle insight, it can be extremely winning — and this cast, lovingly directed by David Cromer, has both qualities in spades.

Lighting and Sound America A-
(David Barbour) [The play] is such a funny and touching experience because Cromer has presented the play straight up, no chaser. His achievement -- and it's a considerable one -- lies in his ability to get his talented company to enliven the play with a beautifully realized design and any number of telling bits of business. Simon's play is a sentimental, sepia-toned snapshot of his family as it never was -- a hard-working, battling, wisecracking Jewish-American tribe who get through each day of the Depression on sheer grit and tough love. The first of a series of darkercomedies rooted in the author's past, it's a decidedly uneven piece of work. Cromer doesn't try to hide any flaws; instead, he deepens this sometimes cartoonish family portrait by filling out a bit of color here and extending a shadow there, bringing out dimensions that hardly seemed to exist before.

The Chicago Tribune A-
(Chris Jones) In his distinguished and, frankly, very moving Broadway directing debut, David Cromer mostly does what he has been doing for years in little theaters all over Chicago. He tackles a tired, second-tier play — Neil Simon’s autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs — that has become clouded with contrivances, cliches and the stamps of star actors, and, in this particular case, expectations over the efficient deliveries of iconic one-liners. He strips all that nonsense away like so much cheap Broadway bark, and he rediscovers the actual, vulnerable Americans underneath. Cromer unlocks a big-hearted and aptly autumnal drama about the agonies of parenting, the rewards of loving your brother, the hopes and desires of youth, the confounding difficulty of keeping food on your extended family’s table in 1937, with the world on the cusp of war.

Entertainment Weekly A- Laughs are, after all, Simon's stock and trade. There are plenty of them in this fine revival, easily the best show of a young Broadway season. A lot of things may have changed in the last quarter century, but this show's punchlines still work.

Wall St. Journal B+
(Terry Teachout) I'm not going to try to tell you that all this effort has turned Brighton Beach Memoirs into a theatrical masterpiece. It's still a commercial comedy into which a freshening dollop of vinegar has been stirred. But by steering clear of coarse trickery, David Cromer has made the Jerome family seem immeasurably more real without diminishing the play's still-considerable entertainment value.

NYTimes B+
(Ben Brantley) In trying to subvert the cliché of the screaming Jewish family dinner, Mr. Cromer hasn’t come up with an alternative connective sensibility. I was often aware of a host of individual performances — some of them very artful — that didn’t necessarily link into the others. And there were times I felt an intellectual distance between the performers and their roles...Yet if this Memoirs seldom sings rousingly in its choral scenes, it often makes lovely music in its duets. Mr. Boutsikaris and Ms. Metcalf have several throwaway moments, involving little more than exchanged glances and half-gestures, that say much about why their characters’ marriage flourishes. Ms. Metcalf and Ms. Hecht have a gorgeous, underplayed scene of reconciliation that is one of the show’s high points.

New York Post B
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) If this revival works at all -- and mostly it does -- it's largely thanks to director David Cromer and his cast. In last year's Our Town, Cromer stripped away decades of saccharine to reveal an Americana imbued with both joy and melancholy dignity. Simon's play isn't as good as Thornton Wilder's, but the ensemble here goes for a similar tic-free vibe. Metcalf and Hecht, in particular, find gradations of doubt, pain and hope in one-note characters, while Robbins saves Eugene from being a mere wisecrack.

NY Daily News C+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) One can imagine what drew Cromer to Brighton Beach. Like Our Town, its story reaches into the cosmos. Which is why the show curtain is a page from Eugene's journal, pinpointing his place in the world: "... Brighton Beach, Borough of Brooklyn, Kings County ..." The personal turns universal. One wishes that this revival had found a way to better personalize itself. It'd make the notion of visiting the Jeromes again next month — when the companion play "Broadway Bound" is set to run in rep — more inviting, especially at $110 a pop.

NY Magazine D+
(Stephanie Zacharek) This revival, directed by David Cromer (Our Town), clearly tries to ease up on some of the play’s aggressive broadness while preserving its raucous, slightly crude spirit. But that broadness, like a persistent jack-in-the-box, can’t be tamped down for long, and the result is a wearying evening of squeezed-out laughs. Simon’s alter ego, the hormonally charged 15-year-old Eugene Morris Jerome, isn’t the hero of the play—he’s the tummler, working overtime to coax a response from the audience. The actor who portrays him here, a newcomer named Noah Robbins, fulfills Simon’s intent to the letter. He’s playing to the house pretty hard, especially during the extensive narration.

Bloomberg D
(John Simon) What the evening sorely lacks is aromatic Jewish-American inflection and idiomatic gesticulation, somewhat deficient even in the original production, presumably from fear of being mistaken for patronizing caricature, instead of recognized as leavening authenticity.

ND A+ 14 NY1 A 13; TB A 13; TM A 13; TONY A 13; BS A 13; V A 13; WAPO A 13; USA A 13; LSA A- 12; EW A- 12; TCT A- 12; WSJ B+ 11; NYT B+ 11; NYP B 10; NYDN C+ 8; NYMAG D+ 5; BB D 4; TOTAL = 203 / 18= 11.27 B+

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Night Sky

Grade: C+

By Susan Yankowitz. Directed by Daniella Topol. At the Baruch College Performing Arts Cetner. (CLOSED)

The only consensus in this show's set of reviews is that Jordan Baker-- last seen in New York in Three Tall Women-- is the tops. Beyond that, reviewers detect alternately detect either creekiness from Yankowitz's script, lack of inspiration from Daniella Topol's direction, or meh work from the supporting cast. The fact that the play is about a brilliant astronomer who is stricken with aphasia and sponsored by the National Aphasia Association during Aphasia Awareness month has some breaking out the terms "public service announcement" and "after school special". All is not doom and gloom, however. CurtainUp, NY1, The Daily News and the Post all feel that the performances and staging overcome any other problems with the show, and Bloomberg's John Simon flat out loves it.

Bloomberg A+
(John Simon) Susan Yankowitz's best play yet... Daniella Topol has directed discerningly, and the acting of the principals could not be better. Jordan Baker, too long absent from the New York theater, is a heartbreakingly stunning, subtly compelling Anna. Jim Stanek, as her dedicated but sorely tested partner, is enormously affecting. The scene of their near-breakup may be the most shattering on our current stage. Tuck Milligan’s Bill lends staunch support. You could do yourself no greater favor than immersing yourself in this riveting, dark yet anything but cheerless, starry “Night Sky.”

CurtainUp B
(Elizabeth Ahlfors) Director Daniella Topol steers the story through short scenes that often provoke laughter through the tears. The production is forceful through the first act when Anna returns home to face the dizzying confusion of the outside world. Act II moves with fits and starts, overwhelmed with details of Jennifer's prom, Daniel's career, therapy, friendly advice, and recurring frustration. Anna's feverish determination to be ready for the Paris conference seems insurmountable as she stumbles through her struggle, words tumbling out incomprehensibly, like "elephants on tongue,"" before she fights again to restate her intentions. With the abrupt scenes and details, the emotional connection is sometimes loosened.

NYpost B
(Frank Scheck) While Night Sky lacks the artistry of Arthur Kopit's 1979 Tony-nominated "Wings" about the same subject, it's still powerful, thanks to the inherent drama of its subject matter and Baker's affecting and technically superb performance. Watching her character desperately struggle to express the simplest of ideas, one is brutally reminded of our fragility -- and how we take the most basic human abilities for granted.

NY1 B-
(Roma Torre) While Night Sky follows a fairly predictable course, this well-intentioned work is not without merit, namely a towering lead performance... The performances are uniformly strong, especially with the outstanding Jordan Baker, who was last seen in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women 15 years ago. Even when the writing turns cliche, Anna seems real. And there are moments when Baker's mastery of technique in playing this severely-impaired woman leaves the audience at a loss for words.

The Forward B-
(Gwen Orel) As a teaching tool, Night Sky works beautifully, and fulfills the National Aphasia Association’s mission to increase understanding of the disorder. Without hesitation I recommend it highly for anyone who has any contact with anyone with aphasia. In its own way, it offers a curative, talking loudly about something not often discussed: theater as tikkun olam. As a play, its appeal is more limited. Oddly, the straightforward sections dramatizing the condition and the process of recovery are so effective that they cast shadows over the more conventional family drama alongside them. Chaikin was known for innovative, highly formalized and often cutting-edge drama, but much of the play he commissioned feels schematic. Director Daniella Topol, a rising talent, mostly takes a conventional approach to telling the story, moving the characters around nicely on Cameron Anderson’s spare set. Original music by The Broken Chord Collective adds a yearning atmosphere to the story of recovery.

NY Daily News B-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Though the play follows a predictable path, Baker's excellent performance holds your interest during the show's two hours... Director Daniella Topol's straightforward staging keeps the action moving smoothly on the minimal set. But the play strains from the author's efforts to neatly link Anna's brain and the universe.

NYTimes C-
(Neil Genzlinger) Disguising a public-awareness campaign as a play is a tricky business, and Night Sky, a drama by Susan Yankowitz that focuses on the medical condition aphasia, doesn’t quite get it right. Despite a strong lead performance by Jordan Baker, the play is never organic enough to let the audience forget that one of its producers is the National Aphasia Association... the play often feels as if it’s running through a “Things People With a Disability and Their Families Have to Deal With” checklist. Acknowledge that a disability affects everyone in the family; e.g., a teenage daughter? Check. Note that friends and colleagues often become strangers when someone encounters misfortune? Check. Make fun of store clerks because they’re not aphasia experts and don’t know how to respond to a customer who has it? Check.

Variety C-
(Marilyn Stasio) While the stricken victim is delineated with care by Yankowitz and played with conviction by Jordan Baker, the shelf life of this inexpertly mounted oddity should expire come July... the bland visuals would have been better scrapped for some otherworldly tech effects that conveyed some sense of the infinitely dazzling heavens above -- and so out of reach of this earthbound production.

TheaterMania C-
(David Finkle)the play (which first debuted in 1991) is now best appreciated as a guide for families dealing with an aphasia-afflicted member. Furthermore, some of the dramaturgy -- including the Anna-Daniel argument that sends her racing out of the house into the path of an on-coming car -- is afternoon-special-creaky. Moreover, in her understandable eagerness to cover every aspect of a sufferer's dilemma, Yankowitz inserts ironic comments like Anna's declaring "I'm speechless" in one of the attenuated opening scenes. Also, she sees to it that other characters have their moments of temporary aphasia. At one point, Yankowitz even has another aphasic patient (Dan Domingues) reading from Chicken Little at the moment when Henny Penny decides the sky is falling. Still, the play's inherent problems are strongly offset by the successful efforts put into the proceedings by director Daniella Topol and the cast of six, each of them clearly sensitive to the gravity of the business at hand.

That Sounds Cool D+
(Aaron Riccio) By featuring it at the center of her latest play, Night Sky, Susan Yankowitz does a great service to the National Aphasia Association by demonstrating, time and time again, that aphasia is "not an impairment of intellect," and an even greater service to Jordan Baker (and vice versa), who plays--with boundless emotion--the central role of Anna, a brilliant and beloved astronomer whose ability to communicate is abruptly paralyzed. However, aphasia still ends up being Yankowitz's worst nightmare; despite her attempts to find a parallel in the dark matter of the sky, she talks her subject to death, latches on to an unoriginal foundation, and struggles with some really hackneyed moments. In other words, Baker's a blinding star, and without her Night Sky is rather barren.

BB A+ 14; CU B 10; NYDN B- 9; FOR B- 9; NY1 B- 9; TM C- 6; NYT C- 6; V C- 6; TSC D+5; TOTAL = 74 / 9 = 8.22 (C+)

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Becky Shaw

GRADE: B-

By Gina Gionfriddo. Directed by Peter Dubois. At Second Stage. (CLOSED)

Critics responses are all over the map for Becky Shaw. Heavy hitters from the Times and TONY love it, while Bloomberg and Theatremania hate it. The play is everything from a dark, cynical comedy filled with vim and vigor that brilliantly fillets class and sexual relations to a meandering, meaningless mess. And someone really does need to just say this: The last line of John Simon's review of the show is inexcusable for all sorts of reasons, but most importantly that he uses the fact that a character in the play uses the derogatory term "mongoloid" as an excuse to use it himself (he says in a paraphrase of a line from the play that a mongoloid will cure cancer before Gionfriddo writes a good play). Not that we shouldn't expect anything less from a critic who has used both race and attractiveness to deride subjects of his reviews in the past, but still, come on. Bloomberg ostensibly has editors, and there's no way they would let bullshit like that fly on, say, their politics or Wall Street beats.

Time Out NY A
(Adam Feldman) As the testy, candidly nasty Max, the excellent Barnes—who suggests a gene splice of early Kevin Spacey and late Steve Martin—gets the bulk of Gionfriddo’s acid-tipped one-liners, and there are many of them. (This may be the funniest play of the season.) The perfectly cast Parisse is equally impressive as Becky, a wounded bird whose beak is unexpectedly sharp. Both actors originated their roles at the Humana Festival last year. At Second Stage, under Peter DuBois’s astute direction, the rest of the cast is new and strong.

NYMag A
(Boris Kachka) Every bit as clever as... August: Osage County... What keeps you engaged and continuously rethinking your allegiances are the characters, all hilariously flawed without becoming caricatures. In particular, David Wilson Barnes plays financial analyst Max with such near-hysterical energy—all awkward lunges and trembling knees—that you glimpse the panic beneath the soulless douchebag exterior.


Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) Becky Shaw, which opened Thursday at off-Broadway's Second Stage, is a sharp social comedy of articulate anger laced with large helpings of angst and ambition. The perfect nourishment for theatergoers starved for a dramatic conflagration or two... Becky Shaw (the title comes from the play's most enigmatic character) deals with thirtysomethings trying to connect and having a hard time making the pieces fit. It was a critical and audience favorite last spring at Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. You can see why.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) Economic problem drama, vibrant comic soap opera, or both? Who knows and who cares? For the majority of Becky Shaw, Gina Gionfriddo's deliciously unclassifiable new play at Second Stage, it hardly matters whether you're immersed in a hard-boiled domestic page-turner or an acid-toned satire of values and finances gone impossibly awry. All that's relevant is the insinuating energy of the title character, the helpless people in her orbit who are being wrenched apart by her gravitational pull, and the delirious plot twists and barbed-wire dialogue that unite them all in an addictive theatrical frenzy.... Gionfriddo's suave way of creating the quintet's walking-on-ice interactions with each other amid the flames of disaster is as impressive as it is engaging. Suzanna's fling with Max, Susan's debilitating multiple sclerosis, and the pervasive liberalism under which everyone (especially secret soul mates Andrew and Becky) operate all play central roles in showing us how our attitudes and actions create the world that supports or crushes us. Structurally, there's very little waste here.

The New York Times A-
(Charles Isherwood) The gloom shrouding the theater district lifted a little on Thursday night as a corker of a new play, Becky Shaw, popped open on 43rd Street at the Second Stage Theater. Gina Gionfriddo’s comedy of bad manners, a tangled tale of love, sex and ethics among a quartet of men and women in their 30s, is as engrossing as it is ferociously funny, like a big box of fireworks fizzing and crackling across the stage from its first moments to its last.


Variety A-
(Marilyn Stasio) Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw is a blithely cynical and devastatingly funny play about ... well, it's hard to say what the point of it is, exactly. But scribe's witty observations on the emotional damage inflicted by neurotic people in the name of love is such a painful pleasure that probing for deeper meaning seems stuffy, as well as pointless. Besides, any charge of superficiality hardly counts as criticism, when character surfaces are so artfully defined by the savvy cast of Peter DuBois' slick production for Second Stage.

NYPress A-
(Leonard Jacobs) Scorching, satisfying... Becky Shaw may be a tapestry of clashing classes yet never feels didactic.

NYTheatre A-
(Maggie Cino) But in the end, this elusive missing quality only means that what could have been a transcendently brilliant production is merely extremely wonderful. The script, the actors, and the design gel beautifully and the script is as disturbing as it is funny. Gina Gionfriddo has sharp insight into some of the subtler greys of the human soul, and her skill exposes them for amusement and thrills, forcing us to confront the dark truth that no matter how hard any of us try or how much therapy we have, mixed motives and disappointment are simply a part of life.

Backstage B+
(David Sheward) It seems as though all the hot action in Becky Shaw takes place offstage. A daughter has a nasty confrontation with her mother's new lover in a hotel lobby. Newlyweds have their first serious fight. A Japanese businessman breaks down and confesses to being gay and having a longtime affair with his just-deceased male boss. But playwright Gina Gionfriddo manages to make the dissections and recriminations resulting from these unseen scenes fascinating. She is more interested in how people deal with the aftermath of dramatic confrontations. She also creates characters who are neither altruistically pure nor black-heartedly manipulative. They're a little bit of both. They occupy a gray zone, and that's where real people dwell.

CurtainUp B
(Simon Saltzman) A resounding success at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays, Becky Shaw is an amusing and craftily constructed comedy about ambition, the cost of being truthful, and the perils of a blind date. While the director Peter Dubois has kept just two of the original five actors, the current ensemble appears impeccably prepared for their roles. Yet what are we to make of a play in which there is not a single character for whom we can root or a contrived plot that is hardly worth a second thought? I’m not sure I know the answer. After two hours in the company of Gionfriddo’s five distinctively perverse and disingenuously dysfunctional characters, I was not sure what lesson I was to learn, what insight I might gain or what resolution I was to ponder. All that and I have to admit to having a good time, laughing a lot and when it was over still thinking about what I surely had missed.

The New Yorker B-
(Unsigned) Gionfriddo’s characters often come across as self-dramatizing, rather than as players in an artful dramatic scheme. But the play succeeds in blurring the audience’s allegiances: which of these neurotic souls, it cunningly asks, is capable of real empathy?

AM New York B-
(Matt Windman) It takes a while to see where exactly playwright Gina Gionfriddo is going in her slow-paced, verbose, yet intriguing black comedy Becky Shaw, which just opened at Off-Broadway’s Second Stage after a successful run at Kentucky’s Humana Festival.... Unfortunately, it’s not until the very end of the play that it actually makes sense thanks to some twists and turns in the plot. Until then, it feels too meandering and stale. Peter DuBois’ production has little physical staging and consists entirely of long, extended conversations... Luckily, at least one stinging one-liner is fired at the audience per minute.

Daily News B-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) A social study of haves and have-nots and the blurry line between the two, Becky Shaw is quite entertaining, at times emitting the sounds and rhythms of a sitcom. Characters don't so much speak to each other as exchange zingers and stingers, volleying the jabs back and forth like badminton birdies. Fun for a while, but it gets exhausting.

Financial Times C
(Brendan Lemon) I didn’t believe for more than a minute here and there that the five characters, or the actors playing them, were inhabiting anything approaching real life... Directed by Peter DuBois, the production is notable chiefly for Gionfriddo’s professional ear for dialogue and for the performance of David Wilson Barnes as Max. Barnes has an impressive suffer-no-fools abrasiveness. If there’s ever a movie version, the inevitable casting would be Kevin Spacey.

Show Show-Down C-
(Wendy Caster) Somehow the much ado doesn’t add up to anything—other than whining and squabbling—until Parisse appears as the female half of an ill-advised blind date. She’s one of those performers who seem to bring their own spotlight with them, and her every word and movement as the surprising (inconsistent?) Becky fascinate and intrigue. However, even she cannot make Becky Shaw really work

The Record C-
(Robert Feldberg) Thackeray's Becky was an energetic and irrepressible, if amoral, seeker of money and status, while Gionfriddo's Becky is an opaque, pathetically needy soul who tries to rise in the world by playing the victim card. The other characters in the modern-day comedy of manners, which opened Thursday night at the Second Stage Theatre, are just about as limited, if more clearly defined. The glib, intermittently amusing play presents two types of people: the strong, who lack feelings, and the emotionally aware, who lack strength... Lots of things happen in "Becky Shaw." Most of them, though, happen off stage, and what we see, under the direction of Peter DuBois, frequently has a static feeling... despite moments of wit and insight, it seems a rather pat and limited piece of theater.

New York Observer C-
(John Helipern) I feel sorry...that I don’t care for the new social comedy Becky Shaw as much as my enthusiastic colleagues. Gina Gionfriddo is one smart writer, and I would sooner join in the acclaim for a fresh voice than not. But I found myself agreeing with the muted half of the audience at the Second Stage Theatre who weren’t convulsed with laughter at the playwright’s worldly cynicism about love and marriage and, among much else, blind dates and white lies. (The other half of the audience, let it be said, had a whale of a time).


The Village Voice C-
(Michael Feingold) Partly, Gionfriddo's story loses focus because her characters don't convince; you're always asking yourself why or whether they would even bother making some of the excessive efforts they go through. (Max is so relentlessly hostile that it's hard to believe anyone would go to the trouble of fixing him up with a blind date.) And—as in far too many recent plays—the world outside the characters' largely cushioned lives never seems fully imagined. Instead, it's evoked in the kind of buzzword-laden comedy that owes its lineage to the sitcom. Gionfriddo's narrative thrust is aimed at people interested in human beings; her verbal displays often seem aimed toward those more interested in hipster yuks. You can't write, any more than you can walk, in two directions at once.

Theatermania D
(David Finkle) Becky Shaw -- now at Second Stage after a critically acclaimed run at last year's Humana Festival -- is as bogus as a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme, and made none the better by Peter DuBois' often poor direction and some surprisingly bad performances.


Bloomberg News D
(John Simon) The plot of Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw is inconsequential and the characters are mundane, but the talk is a blue streak verging on purple. Presented by New York’s Second Stage, it is a comedy that subsists on its sweaty dialogue alone. As so often is the case nowadays, the author has dreamed up a rather recherche basic situation and built a house of cards upon it. If we don’t stir up too much wind with shaking our heads, the fallible edifice precariously holds.

TONY A 13; NYM A 13; AP A 13; TB A- 12; NYT A- 12; NYTimes A- 12;NYPress A-12; Variety A- 12; BS B+ 11; CU B 10; AMNY B- 9; NY b- 9; DN B- 9; FT C 7; NJ C- 6; SSD C- 6; NYO C-6; VV C- 6; TM D 4; BN D 4. TOTAL = 186/20=9.3=B-

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