Wishful Drinking

GRADE: B+


By Carrie Fisher. Directed by Tony Taccone. Studio 54. Through January 3, 2010.

There is some question as to whether Carrie Fisher's autobiographical Wishful Drinking is theater or stand-up comedy. Though most critics find Fisher to be an entertaining stage presence, they write that the evening is not fully satisfying as theater. Critics would like the show to be shorter and more cohesive. The least successful bits, according to the reviews, are the audience interaction and the most successful is the Hollywood Inbreeding 101 chart.

Show Showdown A+
(Cameron Kelsall) No, there's nothing disgusting onstage--unless the sight of a slightly zaftig fifty-three year old woman trying to dry hump a young male audience member doesn't exactly do it for you. Rather, the reason that you should refrain from food prior to Fisher's two-hour confessional is that, if your reaction to the show is anything like mine, you'll be heaving so heartily in your seat that by the end of the evening you find yourself on the verge of nausea... All of this material is inherently dramatic--most of these plot-points could easily make their way into a play by Martin McDonagh or Tracy Letts--which is all the more reason to praise Fisher and her comedic prowess. She throws up her hands and laughs at her pain, and you'd better believe we're laughing with her.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Though cursed with an addictive personality and, it turned out later, bipolar disorder, Ms. Fisher was blessed with a sense of the howling absurdity built into fishbowl lives. And long before she created “Wishful Drinking,” which was first seen in Los Angeles in 2006, she had channeled that sensibility into wry, autobiographical novels, most notably “Postcards From the Edge.” I wasn’t a big fan of that book or the 1990 movie it inspired. It had a smart-girl-among-the-philistines smugness that got on my nerves. But if Ms. Fisher had read it to me herself, I might have loved it. What you don’t sense in her books is the disarming, entre-nous presence that she brings to live performance. Barefoot in pajamas and a robe, lounging in a kitsch-filled sanctum-in-outer-space designed by Alexander V. Nichols, Ms. Fisher makes you feel you’ve arrived for a slumber party to swap confidences. Never mind that she does most of the talking. She has the gift, possessed by only the smartest and most charming of narcissists, of making you think that it’s somehow all about you when of course it’s all about her.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) Confession may be good for the soul, but does it make for good theater? Yes, indeed. Especially when the author and star is Carrie Fisher, daughter of showbiz royalty, "Star Wars" icon, manic-depressive, alcoholic and astute observer of the Hollywood scene. Fisher is a raconteur in the best sense of the word. She knows how to tell a story. And "Wishful Drinking," her hilariously perceptive journey through a world of celebrity and self-destruction, is chock-full of funny, fascinating tales. It helps that Fisher has enormous rapport with the audience at Broadway's Studio 54, where her autobiographical one-woman show opened Sunday.

Lighting & Sound America A
(David Barbour) "My name is Carrie Fisher, and I'm an alcoholic," she announces, clarifying the situation for those two people in the audience who haven't heard. And we're off, as, with the acuity of anthropologist, she guides us through the bizarre practices of the beautiful, famous, and self-destructive. As she notes, "When you're a survivor, you have to get into trouble to show off your gift." Her real gift is for turning her life's low points into sparkling high comedy... These hair-raising tales are served up in the soothing tone of a nanny reading selections from Mother Goose to a roomful of sleepy children, an approach that only adds to their comic impact. Some have groused that Wishful Drinking isn't much more than a glorified stand-up act; okay, fine, but when the words are as glittering, as dagger-sharp as they are here, you'll get no complaints from me.

TheaterScene.net A
(Eugene Paul) Say what you will about Carrie Fisher, she’s said it all already, louder, cleverer, wittier and much worse, up there on the stage, night after night or strolling down in the audience sprinkling ersatz stardust, a perfect metaphor for her far from perfect life. The only thing missing is a very long clothes line on which she hangs all the dirty linen – and polyester – from adorable childhood to much larger than desired middle age. Carrie lets it all hang out and makes you want to hang with her because she’s so goddam funny and a helluva performer as she stomps all over the clay feet of many an idol, all of them tangled up on the crass-cross webbing of family and friends, very intimate friends. One of Carrie’s achingly amusing demonstrations is her explication of relationships among a welter of familiar faces displayed on a large lecture board so that we do not miss a thing as she tries to establish that the child of one set of marriages may be related to the child of still another of the Fisher connected marriages. Or not. It’s beyond complicated, it’s hilarious, and a good dose of vicious, the kind we love so to dwell on. Carrie obviously can take it and, baby, can she dish sit out. She might well have called her show “Dishful Winking”. (There. I’m glad I said it.)

Entertainment Weekly A-
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) Alcoholism, manic depression, death, divorce, and Star Wars — they're all fodder for Carrie Fisher in her breathlessly witty one-woman show Wishful Drinking. Padding around barefoot in silky black pajamas on her shabby-chic set (area rugs, twinkle lights, furry throws), Fisher looks like she's about to float off to a meditation session with Shirley MacLaine. Then the artist formerly known as Princess Leia uncorks her martini-dry wit and unleashes a stream of impossibly funny, just-a-bit cruel one-liners, each funnier than the previous one.

Just Shows To Go You A-
(Patrick Lee) In her wryly entertaining solo show, essentially a stand-up routine with theatrical elements (including an intermission), Carrie Fisher reveals a thing or two about her parents Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, her ex-husband Paul Simon, and her “Star Wars” director George Lucas. The material wouldn’t be more than sarcastic navel-gazing were it not for Fisher’s sharp wit and self-effacing personality: her tart one-liners sometimes recall vintage Fran Lebowitz, and she delivers them judiciously for maximum acidity.

TheaterMania A-
(David Finkle) Admirably, her consistent humor isn't simply built on the funny-now-but-not-so-funny-then chapters from her book of the same name. Still, as polished as the proceedings are, they lack some of the gravity that her book possesses -- especially in its discussion of Fisher's experience with electroconvulsive therapy.Throughout Fisher has an ability to use words like Play-Doh, manipulating them to her clever advantage. For example, on the subject of remarrying -- which she's seen a lot of going on around her -- she coins the term "the triumph of nostalgia over judgment." On the subject of substance abuse, she juggles Karl Marx's "Religion is the opiate of the masses" pronouncement to report she took "masses of opiates religiously." There's no denying what Fisher is doing is a stand-up routine; but as directed by Tony Taccone and designed by Alexander V. Nichols, that aspect of its origin is craftily disguised.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) The earlier sideshow moments too brazenly pinpoint the show’s stand-up-comedy roots, and Fisher’s later admissions of humanity swing too far in the other direction for even her usual lighthearted manner to completely absolve. (Of her manic depression, Fisher variously says, “One mood is the meal, the next mood is the check,” “When you’re manic, every urge is like an edict from the Vatican,” and “Losing your mind is frightening, especially if you have a lot to lose.) Fluid transitions between key points in life may be less important in comedy routines, where the joke is the thing. But they really do help for larger-scale theatrical outings, which usually need a bit of extra weight to fill out a full-size house. That, however, is all that’s undersized. Fisher may be best known for her movies and books (including her 1987 novel, Postcards from the Edge, and its subsequent film version) but she’s a stage natural. If her voice has lost a little of its supple clarity since her earliest days, its new smoky brightness is the perfect match for her ever-upward outlook. Whether singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” (at the beginning and end of the show), engaging the audience in everything from Q&As and spirited barbs to psychological evaluations and even bringing one gentleman onstage to test out a Princess Leia sex doll (don’t ask), or merely narrating her life in a more straightforward (if cockeyed) fashion, she always owns the room and never loses her indomitable, self-deprecating spunk. Even if this show is, as Fisher insists, a self-serving vehicle that’s merely “a pathetic bid for the attention I lacked as a newborn,” her talent and inventiveness prove she’s earned it.

Backstage A-
(David Sheward) This is more than a juicy tell-all. Fisher dryly delivers her observations on aging ("I haven't been naked in 15 years and I haven't been sleeveless in 20"), finding love ("I knew as I got older my chances for romance would get slimmer, but the people haven't") and the strange coincidence that her image has been used as both a Pez dispenser and in a text book on abnormal psychology. She frankly discusses her bouts with manic depression and substance abuse, observing that time has permitted her to see these trials with a comic eye. The only segments that fall flat involve audience participation. Unfortunately, Fisher is no Dame Edna. You can practically feel the discomfort in the air as an unlucky theatergoer reluctantly climbs on stage to try on a Priness Leia wig with the bagel-size hair coils. Apart from these awkward interludes, Tony Taccone's staging never flags and Fisher never fails to keep us from chuckling at the insanity of her life and admiring her resolve to survive.

Newsday A-
(Linda Winer) Grotesque? Yes, but in a smart-cookie way. You see, Fisher is the sort of person who makes sure she mocks herself before anyone else can. She also knows a good story when she lives it. Drugs and alcohol? Rehab and mental institutions? Divorces from Paul Simon and from a Hollywood agent who left her for another man? And a dead gay friend in her bed? As Fisher sees it, this is material begging to be confronted and enjoyed in public - not just postcards from the edge, but live onstage with glitter and an R2D2 throw pillow on the divan. The show, tenderly directed by Tony Taccone and developed at his Berkeley Repertory Theatre, does teeter on the uh-oh edge of self-help inspiration during the meandering second act, and the audience-participation bits are pretty stale. But the visual aids are bliss, including a blackboard for Fisher's merciless Hollywood Inbreeding 101.

CurtainUp A-
(Simon Saltzman) Fisher gets plenty of mileage out of these weirdly turbulent relationships but she pulls them together entertainingly and without resorting to blame or resentment. Easily exploitable considering her pedigree, Fisher also appears to be allowing her "manic depressive" history to serve her therapeutically. She has proven herself a gifted writer (Postcards from the Edge et al.) and now stands up with commendable resolve to let the facts speak for themselves. — none more comically than how she uses a blackboard for a session she calls "Hollywood Inbreeding 101." Attempting to answer her daughter Billy's question whether she is related to her boyfriend Rhys Tivey, Elizabeth Taylor's grandson, Fisher uses a pointer to take us through a maze of well-known celebrity faces, affairs, marriages and divorces to show the eventual connection. The answer: "You are related by scandal." Although Fisher's life has proven to be eminently readable in book form, her amiable stage performance makes it clear how important personal connections are and have always been to her. The audience at the performance I attended certainly seemed amused by her wittily conceived anecdotes, but they also seemed obliged to play the role of a support group. Is Fisher sport enough to recreate a scene from Star Wars? You bet, and to the audiences delight. There is an irony in that Fisher is performing at the one-time infamous disco Studio 54, which she admits to having frequented (in her wayward past) but and that's now the home of the Roundabout Theatre Company, known for its classic revivals. It's true that Fisher's life has been gainfully revived. But is she really ready to be considered a classic?

NYMag A-
(Stephanie Zacharek) Fisher has a light touch: Her zingers are sharp, but she always stops short of cruelty. (When Mike Todd, her father’s best friend and Liz Taylor’s husband, died in a plane crash, Eddie Fisher “flew to Elizabeth’s side—gradually making his way slowly to her front.”) She’s toughest on herself, and the show’s second half, focusing on her rehab and treatment for mental illness, veers close to self-help platitudes. But Fisher, padding around the stage in black silk pajamas, doesn’t stand still long enough to feel sorry for herself.

The Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) The show shares similarities with other solo works. Like Bea Arthur, Fisher performs barefoot. Like Elaine Stritch, she spills about her destructive alcohol addiction. Like Dame Edna, she sings a bit and has silly audience participation, which, like the intermission, could be jettisoned. If you've read any of Fisher's best sellers or seen "Postcards from the Edge," much of the material will be familiar and you may be wishful that revelations ran deeper than swimming pools (she grew up with three) and Pez dispensers (her face tops one). But with Fisher's winning wit and gift for gab you're glad to sit around and laugh with her for a couple of hours.

On Off Broadway B+
(Matt Windman) Though the show belongs in a more intimate theater, Fisher and Studio 54 are both fondly remembered as 1970s sex icons. Its two-and-a-half hour running time could also be trimmed, perhaps by removing some of the more disturbing details of Act Two. On the whole, Fisher deserves much credit for her extreme honesty and good humor (i.e. likening her current physical appearance to Elton John). She's laughing at herself, but the audience is definitely laughing with her.

USA Today B
(Elysa Gardner) Two hours and change is a long time for any autobiographical performance piece, let alone one whose subject's personal and professional history has been, as she acknowledges, tabloid fodder. But Fisher solicits attention with such brazen vitality and earthy, self-deprecating humor that she never loses us completely... Fisher enlists her fans' interaction in other ways. Questions are tossed out freely; at a recent preview, a woman was awarded a medal for answering an especially obvious one. Though Fisher's foibles — her failed relationships, her struggles with alcoholism and manic-depression — are the focus, the effect is less one of navel-gazing than wry commiseration.

Variety B-
(David Rooney) Nobody needs another poor-little-me solo piece about overcoming personal demons, even from a writer-performer as witty as Fisher. But from its title to its first spoken line, "Hi, I'm Carrie Fisher, and I'm an alcoholic," the show suggests a cathartic cleansing in the manner of "Elaine Stritch at Liberty." In that benchmark for solo vehicles, Stritch was disarmingly frank about her years as a messy drunk and, occasionally, a raging bitch. But it's as if Fisher got all the dark, destructive stuff out of her system in her semiautobiographical novel (and screenplay) "Postcards From the Edge," leaving this older, wiser first-person account feeling like the diet version. As far as low-calorie foods go, however, this is pretty delicious. The first act, especially, is studded with zingers as Fisher recaps her birth in Burbank to "blue-blooded white trash," Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, through the role -- and the bagel-bun hairdo -- she spent 30 years trying to shake off, Princess Leia in "Star Wars." Whether she's lecturing (with visual aids) on "Hollywood Inbreeding 101" or reflecting on being some teenage dweeb's masturbation fantasy, Fisher gives this snappy scripted material an agreeably loose, off-the-cuff feel... There are incisive observations about mental illness (on the tidal shifts of bipolar disorder: "One mood is the meal; the next mood is the check"), and Fisher milks comedy out of the standard psychology questionnaire taken by patients like herself, by quizzing the audience and establishing how few New Yorkers pass the test unblemished. But it's precisely when the material should dig deeper into self-exposure that Fisher frustrates by continuing to skate along the jokey surface, thus reducing the emotional stakes and robbing the show of a strong narrative arc.

NY1 B-
(Roma Torre) "Wishful Drinking" is a lot of fun -- a dry martini with extra olives that offers a potent escape. But the high is short-lived. And anyone looking for a more meaningful experience may be disappointed. Carrie Fisher is a product of Hollywood who's learned how to turn adversity into punch lines and she's a master at it. Just don't mistake candor for soul-baring. It's got just about the best opening sequence in a solo show that I've ever seen. Deadpanning through "Happy Days Are Here Again" she half heartedly tosses confetti in the air while projected behind her are headlines trumpeting the many lowlights in her life -- the bitter split between her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher; the scandal that rocked Hollywood when her dad left her mom for the newly widowed Elizabeth Taylor, Carrie's drug addiction, her own divorces, manic depression and on and on.

The New Yorker B-
(Unsigned) Carrie Fisher is best known as the princess of Alderaan, but she makes a convincing bid as camp goddess in her biting stage tell-all... The show wears thin—it tops two hours—only because Fisher’s wit exceeds her purview, which is herself. Nevertheless, her ability to boil down a life of mishaps into tart one-liners is a testament to some crazy kind of strength.

Show Showdown C+
(Wendy Caster) Much of the material is very funny; little of it is new. The show runs a good 15 to 20 minutes too long, and Carrie Fisher the performer is not in the same league as Carrie Fisher the writer... Wishful Drinking is for the already converted. If you think you'll enjoy it, you probably will. If you think you won't enjoy it, you probably won't.

Time Out New York D+
(Helen Shaw) Self-deprecatory to a fault, Fisher can be dirty and delightful (despite her single-rhythm delivery), and taken in smaller doses, wryly hilarious. After a while, though, her cigarette-roughened rasp seems to be concealing real brittleness, and her much-referred-to Hollywood inbreeding has left her both cynical and desperate for our approval. She assures us she wants to confess, that she’d rather have the poison out than in. Still, her openness yields diminishing returns; it might be best if these forces just stayed with her.

Bloomberg News D+
(John Simon) I am prepared to feel compassionate toward people whom poverty and hopelessness have driven into addiction. I take a dimmer view of a person whom riches and pampering have surrounded from cradle to middle age, who could claim the best rehab centers as habitats yet, for all this, is still fighting her demons with white kid gloves in the limelight of our most prestigious arenas. To give her due credit, she makes fun of herself, often quite amusingly, sprinkled with just the finest dusting of pathos. There is smart, vengeful riffing on her marriage and after-marriage to the singer and songwriter Paul Simon. Still, hers has been one of the more applauded acts in American celebrity life: the confessed sinner who tells all but can afford to tell it laughingly, and to vociferous encouragement from the audience even during her show, and with thunderous standing ovations at the end.

New York Post D-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) While the actress-turned-author is handy with a quip, "Wishful Drinking" quickly wears thin. After more than two hours of raspy-voiced zingers and Hollywood gossip -- it's actually faster to read the book this touring show inspired -- you feel as if you've been stuck in a simultaneously garish and cheap boudoir with a garrulous drag queen who just. Won't. Shut. Up. That tone is set from the very beginning: Fisher, barefoot in black satin pajamas and a dressing gown, enters singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" while a montage of lurid headlines flashes in the background. Fisher looks downright cheery, dusting the front rows with what looks like sequins. We're one step away from Liza Minnelli, and what follows, complete with sexually ambiguous husbands and complicit use of the audience, only confirms that impression. But while Minnelli channels her tragic baggage through songs, Fisher is a lot more direct: She just tells us.

Show Showdown A+ 14; The New York Times A 13; AP A 13; Lighting & Sound America A 13; TheaterScene.Net A 13; EW A- 12; Just Shows To Go You A- 12; TheaterMania A- 12; Talkin' Broadway A- 12; Backstage A- 12; Newsday A- 12; CurtainUp A- 12; NYMag A- 12; The Daily News B+ 11; On Off Broadway B+ 11; USA Today B 10; Variety B- 9; NY1 B- 9; The New Yorker B- 9; Show Showdown C+ 8; TONY D+ 5; Bloomberg News D+ 5; New York Post D- 3; TOTAL: 242/23 = 10.52 (B+)

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Tin Pan Alley Rag

GRADE: C-

By Mark Saltzman. Directed by Stafford Arima. Roundabout at the Laura Pels Theatre. (CLOSED)

Even as an excuse to hear a fair amount of tunes by Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin, Mark Saltzman's high-concept play about an imagined meeting between these musical giants has most critics sounding bum notes. Though many praise the performances and the production, most rag on the play's didactic approach, its dubious historical inventions, its lack of conflict or drama. Almost all are charmed by Michael Therriault's Berlin (special props to AP's Michael Kuchwara for comparing the performance to Therriault's Gollum), though they're more divided on Michael Boatman's Joplin. Universal kudos also go to Beowulf Boritt's set, with Backstage's Eric Haagensen helpfully teaching us the word "periaktoid" (a three-sided scenic unit).

Bloomberg News A-
(John Simon) The likable “Tin Pan Alley Rag,” slightly bigger than a vest-pocket musical, has the unassuming charm of a winsome pet that gently nuzzles you...Some of it is factual, much of it invented, in a partly humorous, partly sentimental way...The show plugs into a favorite American myth, equal parts fact and fantasy, that Jews and blacks shared a collegial empathy and struggle. Certainly what we see onstage -- a black man and a Jew in musical and existential harmony -- is socially and spiritually heartening...All praise to Stafford Arima’s fleet yet unsuperficial direction...The Canadian actor Michael Therriault is a terrific Berlin, droll, bemused, brash or touching, all perfectly apportioned. Michael Boatman invests Joplin with exemplarily quiet dignity and, when called for, stirring indignation.

Financial Times B+
(Brendan Lemon) Entertaining, slightly irksome...Even allowing for dramatic licence there were moments when I wondered if I were watching the narratives of Berlin and Joplin, or the stories of two men who happen to fit into Saltzman's predetermined ideas about art versus commerce and black music versus white music...Exactly how did African and European influences blend to create American popular music? The greatest chroniclers of jazz have been unable to answer that question, so I was happy when Saltzman allowed his notions to emerge from the specificities of Berlin and Joplin's stories rather than from speculative pronouncements. It is also satisfying to hear Berlin and Joplin compositions performed by offstage pianists, and glorious onstage singers giving us snatches of Treemonisha. Under the fluid direction of Stafford Arima, the acting communicates the essence of the composers' parallel lives, especially their marriages, sundered heartbreakingly by the early deaths of their wives. As Berlin, Michael Therriault keeps the proto-Woody Allen impulses mostly in check. As Joplin, Michael Boatman not only registers the depth of his character's aches, romantic and artistic, but also proves once again his brilliance at conveying acidic intelligence.

CurtainUp B+
(Simon Saltzman) An amiable show that is not unlike a primer on Berlin and Joplin, as well as on the circa 1911 era that was set to define American pop music. Michael Boatman as Joplin and Michael Therriault as Berlin are able to credibly personify these unique musical immortals, a primer in performance craft...As you might expect in a show about Berlin and Joplin, the songs are recognizable, delectable and danceable, the latter particularly graced by Liza Gennaro's rag-timed choreography. The show makes generous use of early Berlin songs, as well as Joplin's folk ballet scores as a bridge for flash-backs into their respective lives, but without the songs being consigned to defining character...A loving tribute to the spirit of rag time and to two of the 20th century's most spirited composers.

The Hollywood Reporter B
(Frank Scheck) The show occasionally suffers from a tendency toward clunky speechifying. But anyone remotely interested in American popular music will find much to enjoy in this spirited production from the Roundabout Theatre Company...The show's episodic structure proves somewhat stilted, and it too often resorts to the forced doling out of biographical tidbits. But what saves the evening from its schematic tendencies is the music, both in the generous selections from the composers' output that are presented and in the depiction of the love of making it that they share...Therriault is wonderfully energetic and engaging as the supremely ambitious Berlin, while Boatman lends a moving dignity to Joplin, who is desperate to have his magnum opus published and produced.

NY1 B
(Roma Torre) Scores on many fronts. It's tunefully original, centering on an imagined meeting between music greats Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin; we're treated to some wonderful selections from their songbooks; and the performances are uniformly strong. But while there are flashes of brilliance, this is not an altogether cohesive work. It hits enough high notes to captivate in moments, but there are also times when it feels as if it's running strictly by the numbers...Through an ongoing series of flashbacks, we get biography lessons on each of them that are alternately enlightening and formulaic. This story-telling technique can make for fascinating theater, but Saltzman tends to rush through the facts, which, in turn, flattens the drama. Fortunately, there's so much talent invested here, the show is never less than interesting.

New Yorker B-
Simple, inoffensive, and eager to please. But at moments it resembles a singing encyclopedia entry...The presence of so many timeless songs only reminds us what Berlin and Joplin could do that Saltzman doesn’t: write from the heart without falling back on cliché.

Theatermania C+
(Brian Scott Lipton) If such a tete-a-tete did occur, let's hope it was more compelling than the one Saltzman has imagined for this occasionally entertaining if dramatically unfulfilling play...Mostly, the two bicker -- often in dialogue reminiscent of imitation Neil Simon -- as well as share their music (a particular treat for Berlin lovers), and ultimately bond over their peculiar shared fate...Beyond presenting these mini-bios, Saltzman has a seemingly larger goal, as the mysteriously ill Joplin is actually on hand to inspire Berlin to move beyond his Tin Pin Alley successes into creating great art. Unfortunately, these conversations often have the unpleasant whiff of Obi-Wan Kenobi advising Luke Skywalker...Fortunately, the piece does benefit from the efforts of its hard-working cast.

Variety C-
(David Rooney) Despite Stafford Arima's fluid direction, polished design contributions and an able cast, the material is ploddingly episodic and way too elementary in its presentation, never shaping the two composers into three-dimensional figures...To suggest, however fancifully, that one of the greatest composers of the classic American Songbook only evolved from commercial success into work with a more enduring artistic legacy because Joplin nudged him in that direction is reductive. Dramatic tension is minimal...Many of the episodes are entertaining, and there are charming moments particularly in Joplin's recollections. But the halting momentum of each man's story means neither one of them develops much as a character.

Backstage C-
(Erik Haagensen) Playwright Mark Saltzman clearly loves the work of Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin, and he wants to share it with the world. And, indeed, whenever music takes center stage in The Tin Pan Alley Rag, there is enjoyment to be had. Unfortunately, the play Saltzman has fashioned, about a fictional encounter between the two musical titans, is a thin, unbelievable affair that ultimately plays like dueling episodes of Biography...Director Stafford Arima indulges the script's penchant for sentimentality far too often.

Just Shows To Go You C-
(Patrick Lee) The situation, which has “The King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin paying an initially desperate but ultimately inspirational visit to songsmith Irving Berlin, is contrived and the dialogue is often clunky. (Here’s one groaner: “Maybe you can turn that Tin Pan Alley tin into something greater than gold!”) Yet, when he’s not heavy-handedly making the case for art over commerce, playwright Mark Saltzman is on to a theme that is hard to resist: art lives longer than the artist

The Daily News D+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) A revisionist Wikipedia entry dressed up as a play...Mark Saltzman...has packed his show with snippets of the composers' music (which is good), but too often what it delivers is a superficial history lesson and an earful of corn (not so good)...Stafford Arima, who brought inventive vigor to the mock boy-band musical "Altar Boyz," fails to inject vitality in this staging for the Roundabout. Too bad, since the show, the first musical production at the Laura Pels, starts off promisingly as wanna-be songwriters pitch tunes to Berlin and his publishing partner. The scene had the bouncy energy of a Keystone Kops-era "America's Got Talent." After that, this "Rag" had pretty much wrung itself dry.

New York Post D
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) This 12-year-old "play with music" is plagued with well-meaning didacticism...At times, it feels as if we're taking an audioguide tour of the new "Dinosaurs of American Music" wing at the Museum of Natural History. Which is totally fine if you're out with a school group, but frustrating if you want a little more than educational dioramas.

Associated Press D
(Michael Kuchwara) A soggy, inert examination of what made these musical masters tick...As concocted by Mark Saltzman, this turgid hybrid revolves around a fictional meeting between the two men. But their coming together doesn't offer much insight into either one, although Saltzman tries to drum up some dramatic conflict in between songs and the superficial presentation of facts from each of their lives...There is a relentless quality to the acting, particularly among the supporting players who are loud and surprisingly cartoonish. Yet Therriault manages a moment or two of poignancy when he transforms himself into an elderly Berlin. The transformation is a reminder of the actor's innate physicality, most prominently on display in his portrayal of the Gollum in the ill-fated Toronto and London stage productions of "The Lord of the Rings"...The evening's fleeting moments of pleasure are provided by its musical interludes.

Talkin' Broadway D
(Matthew Murray) Dusty, predictable...The play isn’t, and doesn’t want to be, about the hearts and souls of Berlin and Joplin. It wants to nudge around the border of art and commerce and ask whether a work can ever be a legitimate success if it doesn’t embrace one without the other. This is a difficult approach to make theatrical - forget about entertaining or moving - and Saltzman doesn’t make it easier by treating the characters as little more than robotic avatars...Everything else is too calculated to be enjoyable in any real way. Director Stafford Arima, who brought nonstop jolts of cleverness to the musical Altar Boyz, has provided a lot of static stage pictures that capture all the turgid enthusiasm of Saltzman’s writing.


Village Voice D
(Michael Feingold) If you're unfamiliar with the two composers' lives and works, the inherent falsity of Saltzman's stodgy, static saga does no more harm than the average soggy script for a 1940s MGM songwriter biopic. The more you know of the realities involved, however, the more irritated you're likely to get. The actors aren't to blame: In supporting roles, Michael McCormick, James Judy, and Idara Victor considerably outclass their thin material, but Stafford Arima's production injects no excitement into what is basically a faded library lecture with examples. And library lectures should be factual.

Associated Press D-
(Michael Kuchwara)Soggy and inert... The evening's fleeting moments of pleasure are provided by its musical interludes. It's hard not to be uplifted by Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" or Berlin's "Play a Simple Melody," two songs that at least stylistically link the songwriters. "Catchy doesn't happen by accident," says Berlin at one point in the show to an aspiring songwriter. Quite true. And it's a quality that has managed to elude this out-of-tune Tin Pan Alley Rag.

Time Out NY D-
(Adam Feldman) It should be a clash of the titans, but there’s no clash: It’s a mild, respectful trading of biographical information of the titans...An original musical in name only—its hoary devices include a showbiz audition montage and a snippy librarian—The Tin Pan Alley Rag offers a sampler pack of Joplin tunes, but stints on the Berlin. Don’t expect to hear more than a few stingy bars of the great composer’s best-loved songs...The main actors do fine with the little they are given.

The New York Times F
(Charles Isherwood) If the figures in wax museums could walk, talk and play the piano, they would closely resemble the leading characters in “The Tin Pan Alley Rag”...This stodgy and soporific show...transforms the lives and careers of two of America’s great popular composers into two hours of theatrical elevator music...The relentless rhythm with which the show shifts between story lines, and between past and present, gives it a metronomic quality that grows increasingly wearying...More problematic are Mr. Saltzman’s tinny dialogue and flat characterizations...The music is, naturally, among the saving graces of the evening, although the numbers are so choppy that you never really get much chance to settle into the infectious charms of Berlin’s songs.

AM New York F
(Matt Windman) Something is wrong when an Off-Broadway play feels like little more than an elementary school history report...While Saltzman started off with a great premise of historical fiction, he uses the play simply as an opportunity to digress into flashbacks on their upbringings and a show off their songs...Michael Therriault manages to be convincing and even charming as the nebbish and socially awkward Berlin. Michael Boatman, on the other hand, comes across merely as rigid as Joplin, failing to portray the character’s pain and suffering in a more fully fleshed manner.

Bloomberg News A- 12; Financial Times B+ 11; CurtainUp B+ 11; The Hollywood Reporter B 10; NY1 B 10; NYer B- 10; Theatermania C+ 8; Variety C- 6; JSTGU C- 6; Backstage C- 6; The Daily News D+ 5; New York Post D 4; Associated Press D 4; Talkin' Broadway D 4; VV D 4; Time Out NY D- 3; AP D- 3; The New York Times F 1; AM New York F 1; TOTAL=119/19=6.26 (C-)

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Streamers

GRADE: B


By David Rabe. Dir. Scott Ellis. Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre. Through Jan. 11, 2009.

Reviews for this revival of Rabe's Vietnam-era play are the definition of mixed. With its focus on recruits waiting to ship off to war, and fighting among themselves over issues of race, class, and sexual orientation, is the play dated or relevant? You won't find a consensus on that. OK, how about Scott Ellis' production and the performances of the cast? Depending on who you read, they're either crackling or dull. AM New York's Matt Windman may embody the play's most salutary effect: He's not sure how much he liked it, but he's still thinking about it.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) The setting may be America of four decades ago but there is something eerily topical about the Roundabout Theatre Company's tough-minded, thoroughly engrossing revival of David Rabe's Streamers. Questions about race, violence, sexuality and fighting an unpopular war in a distant country are still with us, just as they were for four young soldiers in an Army barracks somewhere in Virginia in 1965...Rabe is a superb craftsman. He knows how to tell a story and build tension, a sense of suspense that director Scott Ellis carefully exploits in this production. Yet the playwright is also a lover of language, unafraid to give his characters lengthy speeches that veer into the poetic.

Theatermania A
(Sandy MacDonald) Thanks to a crack director, Scott Ellis, and a sizzling cast, the Roundabout Theatre's first-rate rendition...makes you wonder why this play took so long to claim a major marquee...Rabe trains his cool, reportorial eye not on any ideological arguments, but on the systemic marginalization that produces willing killers...There's a searing transparency to his writing, intensified by the honest, grounded performances Ellis has elicited from this elite cadre of actors.

Variety A
(David Rooney) The ongoing relevance of this final play in Rabe's Vietnam trilogy is matched by its striking theatricality. The punchy dialogue is simultaneously literary and naturalistic, shifting repeatedly between dynamic exchanges and beguiling monologues...Aided by a terrific ensemble that exhibits all the frictions and bonds of a unit in close quarters, Ellis brings a firm, even hand to the piece, keeping a judicious lid on performances that could have tipped over into melodrama.


Newsday A-
(Linda Winer) Remains a powerful, if a bit predictable, link between racism and homophobia at home and the carnage on faraway battlefields...Rabe puts an improbably tidy cross-section of classes and impulses into the same cadre room, then manages to thread his one-from-column-A, one-from-column-B characters into a subtle weave of brutality and vulnerability. Scott Ellis' production is taut and threatening, yet full of tenderness for his characters.

New Yorker B+
(John Lahr) Within the hubbub of his story line, Rabe captures the particularly toxic chemistry of boredom and dread....Rabe is expert at building the awful pressure of impending woe. The competent cast of this production hits the notes but not always the music of his writing. Nonetheless, his vision is vivid and devastating.

Backstage B+
(David A. Rosenberg) Now, at a distance from Vietnam, Streamers encompasses all wars and pockets of hate, within and without. The communal house that these men struggle to establish is infected by wildernesses of spirit that reflect what happened in the Garden of Eden...In some ways time and circumstances have not been kind to all aspects of Streamers, yet Rabe's talent is not as a historian but as a playwright who knows that at any moment people can be "all of a sudden dead."

Talkin' Broadway B+
(Matthew Murray) Yes, the play creaks in examining the emotional burden of the wisecracking, self-loathing homosexual, but it compensates by being otherwise sufficiently steeped in recognizable realities...Ellis never approaches the somewhat predictable as a foregone conclusion. He builds the rage and the resentment gradually, letting cool disdain and indifference simmer until all they can do is boil over.


The Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Who needs a battlefield when a barrack gets so fraught with anxiety and frustration that it becomes its own war zone? That notion looms large during the sturdy revival of David Rabe's drama Streamers, which is invigorated by a top-flight, if little-known, cast.

The New York Times B
(Charles Isherwood) The theater’s heavy reliance on revivals sometimes feels like a steady diet of disillusionment. Plays that seemed risky and fresh a couple of decades ago can seem tame, lame or seriously stale when they’re dusted off and remounted today. Not so with Streamers...Despite the clarity of the new Roundabout Theater Company production that opened on Tuesday night at the Laura Pels Theater, crisply directed by Scott Ellis, this simmering stew of class and race, sex and violence still seems mighty strange.

Show Showdown B
(Patrick Lee) David Rabe's excellent 1976 play...seems to have been revived for, and directed with a focus on, its gays-in-the-military content. On that score, the production is engaging as a time-capsule that invites contemplation about what has and has not changed. Unfortunately the play's other themes are shortchanged, which drains the production of dramatic tension...Still, it's great to hear Rabe's dialogue again, and two of the performances - by Hale Appelman and J.D. Williams - are exactly right.

AM New York B-
(Matt Windman) Almost a half a week after watching it, we’re still debating the merits and flaws of David Rabe’s 1976 military drama Streamers...Quite frankly, we can’t seem to decide whether or not the drama is dated. While the shock value of the violence is gone and the uneven dramaturgy is frustrating, much of Rabe’s raw dialogue still possesses a compelling spark. And though the Vietnam tale has relevance to our country’s status in Iraq, it offers nothing that we haven’t seen before. In any case, director Scott Ellis has staged a sharp production with an excellent all-male cast.

The Journal News C+
(Jacques Le Sourd) Streamers, a 1976 play by David Rabe, caused quite a stir when it opened. As a revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company, it makes you wonder what all the fuss was about...All this does not invalidate Rabe's occasionally brilliant talent as a dramatist, which surprisingly shines now in an extended coda for a drunken sergeant named Cokes, played with commanding humor by Larry Clarke.

CurtainUp C+
(Elyse Sommer) This earnest, well-acted but mostly patience-trying revival is under the disciplined direction of Scott Ellis. The play certainly makes its points, although they have been blunted by time, and tamed by our increasingly inured perspectives...This 32 year-old play doesn't come close to displaying the kind of graphically detailed brutality and violence that we have recently become accustomed to in the theater. It is not so much an anti-war play as it is a play that examines the psycho-sexual motivations that may be a part of what instigates wars.

New York Post C+
(Frank Scheck) This drama about a group of soldiers nervously biding their time in a Virginia barracks while waiting to be shipped off to combat reveals itself to be both talky and schematic, lurching predictably toward melodrama...The play comes alive only fitfully, primarily in the scenes involving two drunken sergeants (John Sharian, Larry Clarke)...Scott Ellis' production is well-acted and competently staged, but it lacks the dramatic tension necessary to compensate for the play's more predictable aspects.

Time Out NY C
(Helen Shaw) Rabe’s play isn’t just another war-is-hell yellathon. His barracks drama—rife with homosocial tension among gay Richie (Hale Appleman), possibly closeted Billy (Brad Fleischer) and fed-up Roger (J.D. Williams)—has delicacy, craft and humor. Too bad, then, that director Scott Ellis and most of his cast often seem intent on draining those qualities from the show.

Philadelphia Inquirer D+
(Toby Zinman) Unfortunately, it's hard to judge Streamers' current power because the cast is weak - unconvincing and flat. The stage should crackle with unanswered questions, unfathomed motives, uneased consciences. But it doesn't, and Scott Ellis' direction seems flaccid and dull.

Associated Press A 13; Theatermania A 13; Variety A 13; Newsday A- 12; New Yorker B+ 11; Backstage B+ 11; Talkin' Broadway B+ 11; The Daily News B+ 11; The New York Times B 10; Show Showdown B 10; AM New York B- 9; The Journal News C+ 8; CurtainUp C+ 8; New York Post C+ 8; Time Out NY C 7; Philadelphia Inquirer D+ 4; TOTAL: 159/16=9.94 (B)

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