Present Laughter

GRADE:C+



By Noel Coward; Directed by Nicholas Martin. Through March 21

There's a lot of like-- and even a smattering of admiration-- but very little love in the crop of reviews of Nicholas Martin's Broadway remount of his Huntington production of Present Laughter, starring Victor Garber. Speaking of Garber, reviewers are positively dripping with self-loathing and gratitude that he's returned from a sojurn in Hollywood making money, with many reviewers making it seem as if Garber deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for taking a cushy gig at Roundabout. Martin's straight-up production gets largely high marks, with the most controversial element being Brooks Ashmanskas performance as Roland Maule. The critics are split, one camp praising his over the top antics, one camp saying he ruins the show and a third camp (occupied solely by David Cote) who argue that Ashmanskas' performance makes clear how anemically tasteful Martin's direction is in the first place.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) It's not easy maintaining the fizz in the frenzy known as "Present Laughter," Noel Coward's delightfully frantic comedy about a narcissistic actor and the chaos that inevitably erupts in his posh London household.

Village Voice A-
(Michael Feingold) In recent decades, stars of gigantic charisma (George C. Scott) or flamboyance (Frank Langella) have seized on the showy opportunities inherent in Garry's dilemma, but the play's elegant balance of neatly piled successive crises really only comes through when played by a more quietly glowing charmer like Garber. With help from Harriet Harris, acidulating sweetly as Garry's loyal secretary, and Lisa Banes, spreading adorable rue as his estranged but loyal wife, Martin keeps Garber spinning gracefully—style-setter Garry couldn't spin any other way—through the accelerating action. Only Ashmanskas, as the young loon, skillfully but unappealingly makes his craziness seem altogether too real in which everything needs to be touched lightly.

New York Magazine A-
(Scott Brown) Victor Garber, God bless him, can wear the daylights out of a dressing gown. He can even make an old one look...well, not new, exactly, but damned comfortable. And "comfortable" is the word that pops immediately into mind after experiencing the gentle, genial charms of the Roundabout's Present Laughter, a comedy about aging ungracefully, the silken pleasures of decompensation, and the people we choose to grow old with, to the extent that we have any choice in the matter. Under the steady, only occasionally leaden hand of veteran comedy director Nicholas Martin, this faultlessly acted, psychologically pristine, almost excessively grounded production fuses Noël Coward's most bohemian themes—the insupportable nature of marriage, the delicious hypocrisies of polite society—with his most boulevard instincts. It's a sex farce that dismantles its own flamboyance before our eyes and ends up feeling strangely, unaccountably plausible. Laughter is indeed present throughout, but it's a kind of background radiation.

NY Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) As the mirror-mad matinee idol, Broadway veteran Victor Garber, famous for films (he went down with the ship in "Titanic") and TV (he shot from the hip on "Alias") is droll and appealing. His Garry is as self-aware as he is self-obsessed. Sure, he sighs, groans and even sings about craving solitude, but we know he knows that he instantly wilts when he's not being coddled or cuddled. A cast of characters is on hand to do that. Harriet Harris is hilarious as Monica, Garry's secretary and sometime dragon-lady gatekeeper; Lisa Banes lends sophisticated calm as his not-quite-ex-wife, Liz, and Pamela Jane Gray plays Joanne, an oversexed omnivore who makes every word from her mouth, especially "latchkey," sound fabulously filthy.

New York Times B+
(Charles Isherwood) In this frothy production, which opened Thursday night at the American Airlines Theater, the stage stalwart Mr. Garber, who has lately traded the boards for a checkbook-swelling stay in Hollywood, eases back onto Broadway as if slipping into a bubble bath, Champagne coupe in hand. As a vehicle for former matinee idols on the wrong side of 40, “Present Laughter” is ideal, a purring vintage Daimler that simply requires a magnetic actor of finely honed comic gifts to work its considerable charms. Mr. Garber fits the role as neatly as those silk pajamas fit him.

TalkinBroadway B+
(Matthew Murray) Martin and Garber, who collaborated on this play in 2007 at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, elegantly modulate the way Garry navigates all this, as well as the slow-burn immolation he experiences as his compartmentalized affairs (in every sense of the word) begin to consume the world. If the first act could step a bit more spryly, the second and third unfold with the precise pacing and precision of a military invasion. Even the stately beauty of Alexander Dodge’s decadent, two-level set increasingly resembles a shadowy prison, and Jane Greenwood’s glimmering upper-crust costumes straitjackets, as Garry realizes he’s letting the inmates run his own personal asylum.

Financial Times B
(Brendan Lemon) Victor Garber, who portrays Garry in the current staging, is 60. Lost to Los Angeles and television salaries for the past decade, Garber makes a welcome return to Broadway. Gliding exasperatedly across Alexander Dodge’s deco set and inhabiting Jane Greenwood’s elegant dressing gowns, Garber wisely avoids making Coward ostentatiously sophisticated. Coward’s style seemed hopelessly outmoded in the 1950s and ’60s, but now his dialogue sounds less sophisticated than stilted. The revival of sophistication on television (Frasier, Stewie on Family Guy) makes Present Laughter seem laboured: it can take an eternity, verbally, to set up a joke.

Variety B
(David Rooney) The silk dressing gowns and suave airs of aging matinee idol Garry Essendine are a fine fit for Victor Garber in "Present Laughter," as are the quietly melancholy undertones of a charming but vain peacock, too self-absorbed and infantile to appreciate the pleasures life affords him. He's housed in the swankiest of London apartments in Nicholas Martin's elegant production, with its gorgeous, honey-toned deco wall treatments and cascading chandeliers, dominated by a portrait of Garry as Hamlet that leaves no doubt as to who's the center of attention. But those assets can't keep a certain windy fatigue from creeping into Noel Coward's comedy.

Wall Street Journal B
(Terry Teachout) If you've never seen "Present Laughter," go and enjoy yourself: It's a comic gem, and this production is much better than none at all. The set alone, an Art Deco orgy designed by Alexander Dodge, is almost worth the price of admission. If you know the play at all well, though, you won't need to be told what Messrs. Martin, Garber and Ashmanskas are getting wrong, and why it matters.

TheaterMania C+
(David Finkle) For the Roundabout Theatre's current revival, with suave-as-a-pair-of-kid-gloves Victor Garber in the focal role, director Nicholas Martin has ladled on the acting pyrotechnics. Out to pull maximum yuks from the self-deprecating Coward lines, the ensemble does everything short of cartwheels to achieve the sought-after results; but too often, the cast gives the impression they're at a noisy party where they have to exert extra effort just to be heard.

The Faster Times C-
(Jonathan Mandell) Present Laughter certainly had its moments, but Garber is too placid a presence to have kept my interest through a play that lasts 150 minutes over three acts, and while he’s attractive, it seems closer to a Woody Allen fantasy sequence than a Noel Coward parlor comedy that these beautiful women decades younger are swooning from love for him. Still, Garber’s steadiness is a welcome contrast to some odd and unsuccessful efforts to pump up the energy, most noticeably Brooks Ashmanskas, who plays a beseeching playwright in one of the most eccentric performances I have ever seen on Broadway — a herky-jerky whirling dervish who seems imported from the fringe festival. The women fare better, especially Harriet Harris as the wise-cracking secretary, Lisa Banes as his wife Liz and Pamela Jane Gray as the predatory wife of his producer (she is helped along by some eye-catching outfits by costume designer Jane Greenwood).

Time Out New York C-
(David Cote) Alas, this overly polite production’s strengths vanish when Maule literally bounces onstage. Too old for the role (we must intuit that Maule lies about his age), Ashmanskas does endless variations on the twitchy, self-adulating popinjay; somehow he manages to smuggle a grand jété into a stage cross. Ashmanskas doesn’t just steal the show; he locks it in a basement dungeon shackled to the wall and impregnates it repeatedly over 17 years. Such a power imbalance underscores Garber’s and the production’s general lack of comic nerve. Remedying that would require taking this splendidly funny play much more seriously.

New Jersey News Room C-
(Michael Sommers) Usually more dithering than dazzling in manner as Garry, the gray-headed Garber amiably goes along for the ride instead of driving the comedy as a genuine star would and should. This lack of high voltage makes most of the characters appear a bit dim since they are illuminated by Garry's brilliant personage.

NYPost D+
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) The Roundabout's revival of "Present Laughter" that opened last night hits all of these targets -- Alexander Dodge's lavish deco decor, in particular, gets applause -- and yet it almost never feels right. We're a far cry from "Brief Encounter," the warm-hearted British import that recently proved that one can be both innovative and true to Coward...The performances are fun to watch -- and Garber does have a smooth charm -- except that they belong to different shows.

Bloomberg D
(John Simon) The fine actor Victor Garber is miscast in the Roundabout’s Broadway revival. His problems are age (60 for Coward’s called- for 44), looks (an ingenuous, slightly corn-fed countenance) and a basic bland quality. He toils visibly at being bitchy, rather than having histrionic unnaturalness come naturally. Alexander Dodge, an expert in opulent stage design, provides a sumptuous Art Deco set, a trifle too lavish even for a stage star’s “studio” that Coward calls for. It overpowers a production based by director Nicholas Martin on his 2007, more modest Boston mounting.

North Jersey.com D
(Robert Feldberg) The revival of Noël Coward's "Present Laughter," which opened Thursday night at the American Airlines Theatre, is like a glass of champagne that's been sitting too long: Except for a few lonely little bubbles, there's no fizz. Instead of being a buoyant comic romp, the 1942 play slogs along without much verve or energy. It's frequently revived – it was previously done on Broadway in the 1980s and '90s — but its slightness has never been made more evident.

On Off Broadway D
(Matt Windman) While the play has potential to still pack a punch, Nicholas Martin's production is slow, flat, fake and devoid of any concept or inspiration. This leaves most of his cast desperately scrambling to mug as much as possible.

Backstage D
(Erik Haagensen) This "Present Laughter" is hyped and coarsened, as if Martin doesn't trust American audiences to get Coward's very English humor. An immediate warning is set designer Alexander Dodge's far-too-glamorous Art Deco apartment. Yes, Essendine is a matinee idol of the British stage, but as an upper-class Brit of a certain social standing, it's unlikely he'd be given to such opulent excess, particularly in the late 1930s after the Depression and with the war clouds gathering in Europe. Martin also overrides Coward's sophisticated comic rhythms, encouraging his cast to push as if driving a second-tier Neil Simon comedy. The show is shot through with an American idea of Englishness.

USA Today D
Stage and screen veteran Victor Garber is a dapper Garry, while Harriet Harris, another proven favorite, is a predictable hit as his seen-it-all secretary. Richard Poe, Marc Vietor and Lisa Banes are sturdy, if hardly revelatory, as other members of Garry's protective posse. The interlopers are more self-serving and irritating, particularly as represented here. Pamela Jane Gray's droning femme fatale and Brooks Ashmanskas' flamboyantly idiotic writer/stalker are especially grating. Little wonder that Garry seems exhausted by the end. "I'm sick to death of being stuffed with everybody's confidences," he tells his cohorts. Alas, he has no choice but to endure them. You, however, can avoid this Laughter altogether.

AP A 13; NYMAG A- 12; VV A-12; NYDN B+ 11; NYT B+ 11; TB B+ 11; FT B 10; WSJ B 10; TM C+ 8; TFT C- 6; TONY C- 6; NJNR C- 6; NYP D+ 5; BBD D 4; USA D 4; OOB D 4; BS D 4; TOTAL: 137/17 8.05 (C+)

Read On »

The Understudy

GRADE: B-

By Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Scott Ellis. At The Laura Pels Theater. (CLOSED)

You might have heard that Julie White is in this play. If you haven't reading any one of these reviews will remind you or that in big starry Technicolor: JULIE WHITE IS IN THIS SHOW! might as well be the blurb on the poster. The now-beloved comedic actress, who won a Tony for playing a high powered agent in The Little Dog Laughed, plays a stage manager at a put-in rehearsal for an understudy who also just happens to be the man who left her at the--oh, who cares, Julie White is in the show. Theresa Rebeck gets high marks from some, and everyone praises the Kafka parody that makes up a chunk of the show. Justin Kirk and Mark Paul Gosselar also are widely praised for their performances. Some detractors (and even some boosters) fault the play for being thin, for not making a lot of sense, and for plowing well-tilled soil. And even a couple of critics--notably Linda Winer and Elisabeth Vincentelli--don't particularly like Julie White's performance. Did I mention she was in this show?

TalkinBroadway A
(Matthew Murray) The Understudy is so sly a satire of Kafka’s writing, and so smart a comic exploration of how the famed German author’s output could apply to the existentialist musings of theatre folk just standing by life, that its playwright, Theresa Rebeck, may herself need to adopt a heretofore unfamiliar appellation: insightful comedienne.

Lighting and Sound America A
(David Barbour) By the time all three characters get together for an utterly pointless gesture of joy in the face of an uncaring world, Rebeck has long since won over the audience with her own brand of screwball hilarity. The Understudy is such an accomplished piece of fun that -- who knows? -- it might even make old Franz K crack a smile or two

Wall Street Journal A-
(Terry Teachout) I suspect that America's regional theaters are going to be seeing a lot of The Understudy next season. Not only is it pulverizingly funny, but the fact that it's a three-hander means that it can be done on the cheap. That's OK by me, though I wish that Ms. Rebeck had had the courage of her convictions: If she'd chosen to eschew sentiment and stay funny from curtain to curtain, The Understudy might have been comparable in quality to Michael Frayn's "Noises Off," the best of all possible backstage farces. But The Understudy works on its own switch-hitting terms, enough so that I wonder whether the Roundabout Theatre Company might want to move it to a larger house. Now that "Brighton Beach Memoirs" has crashed and burned, we could use a good, solid comedy on Broadway, and "The Understudy" fills the bill with laughs to spare.

The New Yorker A-
(Unsigned) Though the play is undermined by a few flaws, Rebeck’s script and the three excellent actors are terrific when the play hits its stride, delivering a clever indictment of contemporary theatre while making the characters’ personal circumstances ever more Kafkaesque: they are no more in control of the forces of celebrity, art, money, and Broadway than they are of their own fates.

NY Magazine A-
(Dan Kois) White’s loopy voice rises in panic and falls into sorrow, just as her hands nervously fly up to tie her hair into a ponytail, pull it free, and tie it up again. She’s the best of a thoroughly excellent trio, rounded out by Justin Kirk as the talented Harry, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Jake, the Hollywood action star for whom a bitter Harry is the understudy. All three expertly patch over the holes in Rebeck’s occasionally thin script, while handling the show’s well-written, soulful conclusion with grace. And director Scott Ellis makes great hay of the ridiculous, yet oh-so-believable, idea of Kafka on Broadway, complete with vertiginous sets, overwrought music cues, and onstage precipitation.

Backstage A-
(David Sheward) Still, The Understudy has plenty of pointed observations on the frustrations of trying to be an artist in a crassly commercial world. Directed by Scott Ellis with straightforward speed and economy, it's a fast, funny 90 minutes. Julie White, probably the sharpest comedian working on stage today, makes Roxanne a delightfully conflicted figure: supremely competent at putting a show together but a mess when it comes to her personal life. Watch her twisted dance of anger as she hides her head in her sweater when she realizes she must work with her former lover. And the way she brandishes her cell phone like a weapon when she threatens Harry with calling the producers to fire him if he doesn't straighten up and fly right is an acting lesson in itself.

TheaterMania B+
(Sandy MacDonald) The authenticity that the actors achieve also helps to brings out Rebeck's brilliant layering of themes. Much as she might make fun of Kafka -- she gives Roxanne a great scene skewering his view of women -- she gets him deeply. After all, what could be more Kafkaesque that an unsuccessful actor trying against all odds to be heard and seen -- or a supposedly successful one adrift in a wasteland of pop culture? Still, the charming closing scene leaves us with a glimmer of hope for this odd-lot trio and their quest for some kind of meaningful recognition.

NY1 B+
(David Cote) While Rebeck’s material is breezy and never too dark, taking easy potshots at Hollywood and Broadway, there’s admirable skill and intelligence in its execution, and sympathy for her struggling characters. Scott Ellis’s production is impeccably cast and paced, with White wringing big laughs out of the simplest inflection and a raised eyebrow. Kirk, a regular on the TV show "Weeds," specializes in smartass charm and understated punch lines. And Gosselaar keeps pace with the least flashy but most affecting part. All in all, The Understudy is a bittersweet portrait of people forgetting who they are in the mad rush to become something else.

Entertainment Weekly B
Pity that there's not more chemistry between White and Kirk, whose characters have a long and complicated romantic history; alas, there's even less between White and Gosselaar. (In the play's summer 2008 premiere at Massachusetts' Williamstown Theatre Festival — where EW named it one of the best shows of 2008 — Kristen Johnston was a better match with costars Bradley Cooper and Reg Rogers.) But when it comes to slapping guys or threatening to hit them with shovels, White simply can't be topped.

Variety B-
(David Roony) Funny but slight, clever but without any real depth, the one-act gains considerable fizz from Scott Ellis' punchy production and from the bristling interplay of its three fine actors, each of them exposing different shades of a profession that ricochets between glory and rejection.

AP B-
(Michael Kuchwara) The play is slight and not as funny as it should be. Please, no more Jeremy Piven-mercury poisoning jokes, for one thing. Yet director Scott Ellis has marshaled his ingratiating cast — Julie White, Justin Kirk and Mark-Paul Gosselaar — well. And they are a game group, giving spirited performances in this brisk 90 minutes of often noisy confrontation.

Hollywood Reporter C+
(Frank Scheck) There's much that the playwright gets right with her comic premise, including the imagined sections of Kafka's "play," which are a perfect imitation of the writer's style, and her depiction of the professional rivalries endemic to the acting profession. But there's just as much that falls flat or is repeated to the point of tedium: A running gag about an apparently stoned (unseen) tech manager quickly loses comic steam, the romantic complications of the three characters have a generic feel, and the fact that every conversation onstage can be heard via a loudspeaker system covering every square inch of the theater strains credibility. It also seems highly unlikely that Jake, one of the show's leads, also would be the understudy for his co-star.

OnOffBroadway C+
(Matt Windman) Scott Ellis' animated 90-minute production makes up for the underwhelming text by providing solid laughs, energized performances, and a strange scenic design that twists and turns to reveal ridiculously elaborate, Kafkaesque settings. The play even ends with a soft-shoe dance sequence.

Newsday C-
(Linda Winer) The 90-minute comedy loses steam when it abandons its sharp show-biz satire for soap-opera relationship stuff, but Rebeck's idea of a star-driven Kafka hit on Broadway is ridiculous enough to feel like truth.

NYDaily News C-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Despite some funny lines, a supercool cast and awesome sets by Alexander Dodge, the play-within-a-play built around a run-through of a long-lost Kafka epic comes off as an overblown sketch with a worthy message: Everyone's a zero-status standby at some point. Or, in Kafka-esque terms, everybody's a bug, squashed by circumstance, luck, even love.

NYTimes D+
(Charles Isherwood) the play is more blunt than barbed on this subject. The inevitable Jeremy Piven mercury-poisoning allusion earns a big, easy laugh, but Ms. Rebeck hasn’t bothered actually to write a joke about the kerfuffle. And the play’s mechanics aren’t particularly fine-tuned, as one or another character wanders offstage to go to the bathroom or take phone calls, conveniently allowing Roxanne and Harry to hash out their history, or Harry and Jake to spar over line readings. The Understudy is an unstable mixture of satire, sentimental comedy and a smidgen of farce. (An unseen crew member, befogged by smoking pot, keeps pushing the wrong buttons and scooting the wrong sets onstage.) Perhaps not surprisingly, the director, Scott Ellis, cannot seem to blend the styles very smoothly.

ShowShowDown D
(Patrick Lee) Although slight and weakly dependent on contrivances (you'll nearly use up fingers counting how many times the characters forget that their "private" conversations are being heard over the loudspeaker) this backstage comedy has the potential to be more diverting and fun than this production allows. The premise is tasty - we're at a put-in rehearsal where a legit actor has been hired to understudy a movie star - and there are fun if predictable barbs at how today's celeb-crazed culture has trickled down to the theatre biz. But the production is a non-starter with the actors steered toward choices that slow the show to a crawl.

NYpost D-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) The proceedings keep hitting contrived snags, the biggest being Harry and Roxanne's joint baggage -- he dumped her right before their wedding. The real issue, though, is that Roxanne seems to be written for a younger actress. White has no chemistry with either man. Amid forced entrances and exits -- staged in a needlessly frantic manner by director Scott Ellis -- everybody complains, grandstands, agitates, throws fits. The theater, Rebeck seems to say, is one crazy place. And she says it over and over again.

Village Voice D-
(Michael Feingold) Rebeck, far from creating her own world, dresses her nonsense up so that it seems to take place in this one, while slipping in such absurdities that you wonder what planet she's living on. Maybe on Mars, Broadway has understudy rehearsals like the one in The Understudy ...White works awfully hard to garner the play's meager laughs; she sounds, at times, understandably, like a woman trying to lift a 10-ton truck. Kirk's irritating mannerisms fit his irritating character handily; Gosselaar, stuck with the "feed" role, fills it amiably with charm and good looks.

TB A 13; LSA A 13; NYM A- 12; TNY A- 12; WSJ A- 12; BS A- 12; TM B+ 11; NY1 B+ 11; EW B 10; V B- 9; AP B- 9; HR C+ 8 OOB C+ 8; ND C- 6; NYDN C- 6; NYT D+ 5; SSD D 4; NYP D- 3; VV D- 3; TOTAL: 166 /19=8.73 (B-)

Read On »

A Man For All Seasons

GRADE: B-

By Robert Bolt. Dir. Doug Hughes. Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theater. (CLOSED)

Critics are divided about Robert Bolt's classic chronicle of the undoing of Sir Thomas More and not particularly complimentary of Dough Hughes' staging. But their enthusiasm for its star, three time Tony-Award Winning actor Frank Langella, is hard to overstate. Many critics agree that Doug Hughes' decision to cut the Brechtian "Common Man" device from the play (a sort of narrator who also assumes multiple roles in the show) was a mistake that flattens the play.

The Journal News A+
(Jacques Le Sourd) Like a big, juicy dinner from the days before anybody worried about fat, or knew about cholesterol. It stars the grand and wonderful Frank Langella as Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor who defied King Henry VIII and lost his head doing it...It's three hours long, and it deserves to be...All played in a stately kind of slow-motion that seems utterly appropriate.

CurtainUp A+
(Simon Saltzman) Splendid...The play, an accounting of one great man's unexpectedly steadfast dedication to conscience, country, and church, remains one of the 20th century's most lauded plays. As directed by Doug Hughes and starring Frank Langella as the titular Sir Thomas More, this production also speaks well of the indestructibility of Bolt's text, as well for the indistinguishable force of its theme.

Philadelphia Inquirer A
(Toby Zinman) Despite our knowing how it will all turn out, who the good guys and the bad guys were, the play remains deeply engrossing, full of impassioned language, clever legal arguments, and some terrific acting.

Wall Street Journal A-
(Terry Teachout) Mr. Langella's version of St. Thomas is all his own: urbane, world-weary, more public than that of his great predecessor, which makes it all the more moving when he collapses in fear and desperation...Better than Scofield? No—but just as good...Doug Hughes's staging...takes significant liberties with Bolt's original script...Taken on its own terms, though, the Roundabout's Man for All Seasons is an excellent and persuasive piece of work, in large part because the play itself is so masterly a piece of storytelling.

Theatermania: A-
(Brian Scott Lipton) Langella takes his artistry to new heights—and could easily earn his fourth Tony—with his consummate portrayal of Sir Thomas More in Doug Hughes' sturdy revival...This nearly-three hour talkfest can admittedly be tough sledding for some, as it favors intellectual debate over action and philosophical discussion over swordfighting. Yet, while certain scenes initially seem superfluous, most pay off in Bolt's careful construction, and despite a slight overabundance of words, many of them not only demand to be heard—but have gained relevance in these politically troubled times.

Theater News Online B+
(Bill Stevenson) Rather miraculously, Langella is nearly as good as he was in Frost/Nixon and inhabits the part as comfortably as Scofield did. Although the other cast members and the production as a whole don't reach Langella's lofty level, the Roundabout can be proud of this sturdy revival.

The Record B
(Robert Feldberg) Like a monthly dinner date with an old friend. You know it'll be comfortable, but excitement isn't in the cards.

USAToday B
(Elysa Gardner) Aside from More and, briefly, Henry, none of these characters appear on stage; had Bolt included them, his work might have had less of an arid, academic air. Instead, two long and hardly brisk acts are devoted largely to having More explain and defend his intellectual and moral philosophy to those who support, challenge and betray him. It's thought-provoking stuff but not always the most compelling drama.

Newsday B
(Linda Winer) Without the [Common Man] device, the play becomes a story of conscience and heroism and the break with the Catholic Church that led to the Church of England. The story is handsomely cast, lucidly delineated and extremely well-told. Without Brechtian distance, however, it is just an informative philosophical costume drama about how Thomas More, chancellor of England, failed to stop King Henry VIII (a joyously irresponsible Patrick Page) from defying the Catholic Church by taking yet another wife.

The Washington Post B 
(Peter Marks) The narrative in this production more closely resembles the structure of the acclaimed 1966 movie version (also written by Bolt) in detailing More's resistance to Henry's demand: that he recognize the king's right to divorce his queen and marry Anne Boleyn. I'd never seen the stage version before, so it's hard to gauge what's been gained—or lost. If anything, the piece asserts itself as a lesser follow-up to Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

Hartford Courant B
(Malcolm Johnson) For much of Act I, Robert Bolt's celebrated drama of the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More fails to assert itself as a play for all seasons. Even with the superb Frank Langella in the title role, the Roundabout Theatre Company's production too often feels like a turgid pageant...The liveliest moments...come when Langella's More, now chancellor, meets briefly with King Henry VIII. As acted by Patrick Page, the much-married monarch is a lively dictator who warns More against writing or speaking against his plan to shed Catherine of Aragon and to wed Anne Boleyn.

New Jersey Star-Ledger:B
(Michael Sommers) Fortunately, the imposing old-school sweep of Langella's beautifully-spoken performance relieves the repetitive drama's tendency toward stodginess. Initially depicting More as an urbane intellectual, Langella believably reveals the man's essential grace under increasing pressure and degradation.

Variety B
(David Rooney) Langella's performance, however, is sufficiently commanding to overcome the role's limited dimension. The actor's effortless authority is softened by a playful sense of irony that makes it seem only natural he would toss off a cutting remark even while being sentenced to die. Humility is not a major asset in Langella's arsenal, but a shot of arrogance adds color to his More, and the penetrating assessments he makes of both friends and foe come through loud and clear, often without words.

New York Post B-
(Frank Scheck) While its theme of individual conscience clashing with the demands of the state remains all too relevant, the drama is a somewhat static, talky affair that is only intermittently compelling. Fortunately, Langella is so mesmerizing in the lead role that he single-handedly overcomes the evening's more tedious passages.

Bloomberg B-
(John Simon) Yet with all this unevenness, this is still a play that is both literate and theatrical, and able to hold our interest. There remains an arresting clash of ideas, as well as More's gripping attempt to make his rigorous silence, as opposed to voiced disapproval, protect him within the law, a law his enemies manage to twist to their purpose.

Associated Press B-
(Michael Kuchwara) The play itself doesn't wear as well in this stately, slow-paced revival, that the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Tuesday at its American Airlines Theatre. The production, directed by Doug Hughes is Masterpiece Theatre reverential...Even with Langella gloriously emoting...Roundabout's A Man for All Seasons can't quite shake a sermonlike feeling.

Backstage B-
(David Sheward) This usually precise director, who has brought fire and ice to such memorable productions as Doubt and Frozen, is guilty here of "plodding," as one character describes More's approach to statesmanship. The stakes of private conscience versus public duty are never made entirely clear and vital until that final trial. Perhaps it's because Hughes has cut Bolt's Common Man character, a narrator figure who assumes multiple roles....Without the Common Man casting the light of historical context and raising the question of what More's stance means outside Tudor England, Bolt's script loses much of its impact.

Talking Broadway C+
(Matthew Murray) Can a radiant star compensate for a swelling black hole? If the star in question is Frank Langella, the answer is almost, even when he's up against the destructive gravitational pull present—or, perhaps more accurately, absent—in the Roundabout's new revival.

The Daily News C
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Doug Hughes...a Tony-winning director with a proven track record, seems at a loss for fresh ways to make Bolt's wordy warhorse feel urgent...Langella gives a characteristically intelligent and sensitive performance, but while we see More's plight, we don't feel it—largely a result of Bolt's script. Only during a final, emotional jail scene with his wife (Maryann Plunkett) and daughter (Hannah Cabell) does the price of More's steadfast honor register.

The Hollywood Reporter C
(Alexis Greene) The production that surrounds Langella is not up to the star's charismatic performance. Bolt's drama won the Tony for best play in 1962, but these days the piece, while relevant, feels a bit thin. It needs more than a star turn, and it also needs deft direction and a supporting cast that lends heft to characters that are mostly one-dimensional.

The New York Times C-
(Ben Brantley) Starlight needs to flicker and sputter if a complex character is to emerge from all that radiance. And Mr. Bolt's script—which clearly and intelligently outlines Henry VIII's epochal war with the Roman Catholic Church over matters marital—neglects to include several essential ingredients for a compelling dramatic hero. Like conflict, doubt, vacillation and change.

AM New York C-
(Matt Windman) Sure, it's nice to have Frank Langella back on Broadway less than two years since his Tony-winning performance in Frost/Nixon...Langella delivers a solid, committed performance as Sir Thomas More...But to be frank, Doug Hughes' straightforward production is as dull and lifeless as it is altogether unnecessary.

Time Out NY C-
(David Cote) I'd rather watch a tough-minded mounting of Brecht's Galileo: Now there's a complex treatment of authority and personal morality. Alas, what we get is the ethics weepie A Man For All Seasons, starring grand, elegant Frank Langella. There are really only a handful of scenes worth seeing.

The New Yorker C-
(John Lahr) As More, Frank Langella lets virtuosity substitute for humanity. More's love is for his soul ("A man's soul is his self," he says); Langella's love is for his sound. He cants, he booms, he confides. It's a seductive, even imposing, display, whose command rushes the audience swiftly past any ideas. More had gravitas; Langella has grandiosity. With his external playing, he can't connect to More's scrupulous internal rigor. Whether he's inspecting a silver goblet, holding his cuffs to slip into his robe, or fiddling with his fingers as he reads a book, Langella's decorative filigrees of gesture telegraph vanity, not spirituality, making him, more precisely, a ham for all seasons.

New York Magazine D
(Scott Brown) The first thing you notice about Doug Hughes's production of A Man for All Seasons is the pitilessly rectilinear set: great mission-minded timbers from the pages of Architectural Digest, lit like a high-end McMansion. Turns out design is destiny: This Man, like its carpentry, is square, sterile, and wooden—a cigar-store Indian with a painted tear.

Village Voice D
(Michael Feingold) Doug Hughes's heavy-handed production seems determined to enshrine its title character, Sir Thomas More (Frank Langella), as a Romantic-era hero-martyr, Sydney Carton in a Tudor doublet...Hughes omits [the Common Man] character, which is roughly like doing Threepenny Opera without the songs...Lacking him, [the play] feels shabby, pompous, and monochrome.

The Journal News: A+ 14; CurtainUp: A+ 14; Philadelphia Inquirer: A 13; WSJ A- 12; Theatermania: A- 12; Theater News Online B+ 11; The Record: B 10; USAToday: B 10; Newsday: B 10; The Washington Post: B 10; Hartford Courant: B 10; New Jersey Star-Ledger: B 10; Variety: B 10; New York Post: B- 9; Bloomberg: B- 9; Associated Press: B- 9; Backstage: B- 9; Talkin' Broadway: C+ 8; The Daily News: C 7; The Hollywood Reporter: C 7; The New York Times: C- 6; AM New York: C- 6; Time Out NY: C- 6; The New Yorker C- 6; Village Voice D 4; New York Magazine D 4 TOTAL: 236 / 26 = 9.1 (B-)

Read On »