Let Me Down Easy

GRADE: B+

By Anna Deavere Smith. Directed by Leonard Foglia. Second Stage Theatre. (CLOSED)

Yet another one-person show has opened this season to positive reviews. (Note: Later critics have been much harder on the play.) In Anna Deveare Smith's Let Me Down Easy, she recreates over 20 interviews on the subject of death and health care. Critics write that Smith offers a lot of insight on the current health care debate without imposing an agenda. As noted by critics, Smith's design team unobtrusively aid her transformations.

Backstage A+
(David Sheward) Smith captures every hesitation and search for the right word as well as every pain and every adrenalin-induced rush of her myriad interviewees. She never condescends to them, but allows us to make our own conclusions. There are screamingly funny moments as when Smith's aunt recalls the startlingly unusual last words spoken to her by a dying sister, and heartbreaking ones exemplified by the recollections of a South African orphanage director about her AIDS-infected charges. As the nation vociferously debates health care reform, "Let Me Down Easy" removes the high-decibel name-calling that characterizes the argument taking place in Washington, D.C. and at town hall meetings. Smith lets us down easy into the complicated issues. This stunning 90-minute essay in play form should be required viewing for tea-baggers, progressives, and anyone who has a body.

Variety A+
(Sam Thielman) An incredible mimic, Smith has found plenty of strong personalities to channel, but she never resorts to caricature even when the temptation must have been overwhelming. Armstrong is a perfect example: He presents his personal philosophy as a magic cure-all available to anyone willing to make the effort. Smith captures the cyclist's mean streak in a brief moment when he reflects that "there was a guy who was five times second in the Tour de France." Armstrong (well, Smith) pauses. "Sucks to be him. But, I look at it as, uh, he didn't make the sacrifices that I made." Even as Smith skewers Armstrong's arrogance, she suggests it's part of the indomitability he had to discover to rescue himself from cancer. Once you've tapped that reservoir of will, you can dip into it any old time, and you feel invincible... It's not all laughs and back-patting, of course. Smith's other subjects have had much closer calls and haven't escaped unscathed. Worst and saddest of them is Hazel Merritt, patient at a hospital in Connecticut where the nurses' neglect killed her daughter. Her story isn't just heartrending, it's a stern comment on Armstrong's assertion that everyone gets what they deserve. "There is just not enough of the best of everything to go around," says model-actress Lauren Hutton in the next segment.

The Faster Times A+
(Jonathan Mandell) The discrepancy between the care for the rich and the poor is one of several themes easily discernible in “Let Me Down Easy.” But the power of this play lies not in the themes but in the moments. There is Ann Richards, outspoken former governor of Texas, laughing (but deadly serious) about the need to preserve her Chi, her life force, in the face of illness. There is Joel Siegel, ABC movie critic, telling hilariously corny jokes, but he tells them with a video camera projecting his face onto a screen at the back of the stage, with the clear implication that his illness has all but paralyzed him. It takes a moment to remember, this is not actually Joel Siegel, but one of the most gifted theatrical presences in America.

The New Yorker A
(Unsigned) It has a terrific cumulative impact. She looks at everything from wounded machismo (a maimed bull rider, a boxer battered into a four-day coma) to the people who tend those wounds. Smith is doing more than opening up a much needed discussion about the dying and those who minister to them. The purpose of the enterprise, we realize, is for the playwright herself to learn how to die. It’s bracing, poetic stuff.

Newsday A
(Linda Winer) For me, what distinguishes a Smith work from most other such worthy projects is her curiosity about - and empathy for - multiple points of view. I knew gays in the military had problems before I went into the play about them. And when I left, I thought, "Yes, it certainly is a problem." I knew more specifics, but my mind hadn't been opened up to anything else about it. But I've never walked out of her pieces thinking, yes, I know exactly what she wants me to think. With "Let Me Down Easy," the net is especially wide for such a big, mysterious and, yes, upsetting topic. I wish the 90-minute solo had been longer - not a criticism I usually have. Compared with "Fires in the Mirror," which had 29 characters, and "Twilight," with 43, the 20 people recreated here seemed, at first, almost lonely and a bit scattered. It wasn't until I looked back on the experience that I fully appreciated the resonant breadth of the viewpoints, not to mention the remarkable discipline with which she avoids bathos and cliches.

New York Post A
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Tracing a graceful -- and, at 95 minutes, nimble -- arc from lighthearted and funny to downright philosophical, Smith creates the mosaic portrait of an America disconnected from the cycle of life and unwilling to face death as natural and inevitable. At the same time, the show, elegantly directed by Leonard Foglia, subtly suggests that we all leave traces of our presence: The props. Smith uses to flesh out her portrayals remain visible after she's done with them. By the end of the show, the stage is strewn with jackets, hats, glasses, a breakfast tray -- as if to say, "It's not so bad. Memories linger."

Talkin' Broadway A
(Matthew Murray) Smith conducted the interviews over the course of a couple of years, and (with the help of director Leonard Foglia) has assembled them into a touching and caustic confessional that explores a wide variety of opinions as refracted through the title's linguistic uncertainty. Black or white, male or female, famous or not, Smith's "characters" all make a pungent impact on a discussion that delves into human conscience and mortality from very different angles than did Smith's race-oriented plays, Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992... A few choice costume pieces (the designer is Ann Hould-Ward) are all Smith needs to make her transformations, and by the end of the evening those snippets of clothing and various attendant props litter Riccardo Hernandez's extravagantly elegant set, which crowns an ivory combination living-dining room with angled mirrors that seem to reflect right into the souls of Smith's subjects. As, of course, does the actress herself: Her style may start with documentary, but it doesn't end there - she ensures that each of these people seem far too theatrical to be "real," which is exactly the response you want in a play.

TheaterMania A-
(Brian Scott Lipton) The middle section -- and the most impressive part -- of Let Me Down Easy is primarily concerned with America's health care crisis, as seen and experienced first-hand. For example, Ruth Katz, an associate dean at Yale University Medical Center, tells of how she was treated badly as a cancer patient at Yale New Haven Hospital until a resident is informed of her position. Most poignant is the recollection of Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician at New Orleans' Charity Hospital, who reminds us of FEMA's neglect of this country's poor in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Under Leonard Foglia's savvy direction, Smith wisely incorporates a great deal of humor into the proceedings, which also helps undercut any hint of didacticism. Not every section seems necessary -- and I think Smith might have been wiser to reshuffle some of the segments' order -- but every word and gesture presented by Smith appears to have been carefully considered.

The New York Times A-
(Charles Isherwood) Even if you have already had your fill of heated debate about the crisis in American health care — informed, opinionated or just plain batty — do not go in fear of “Let Me Down Easy,” the new solo show from Anna Deavere Smith, which opened Wednesday night at the Second Stage Theater. The buzz words that have been filling the airwaves like swarms of gnats (“public option,” “death panels”) make no appearances in this engrossing collection of testimonials about life, death and the care of the ailing body. True, Ms. Smith has collected some input on the state of the current system. She includes contributions from a rodeo bull rider with a cynical view of doctors and a medical school dean who argues that prime consideration must be given to end-of-life care. (Yep, it’s that freighted grandma issue.) But just as often she seeks answers to more open-ended questions about the power of the human body, its susceptibility to disease, and the divide between spirit and flesh that poses mysteries no one can really elucidate.

Associated Press A-
(Michael Kuchwara) The stories are strikingly different. As Eduardo Bruera, a specialist at a Texas cancer centre says, "It is not plausible to turn dying into a picnic; it will never happen. ... (But) not everybody dies the same way." And those ways are what proves so fascinating in Smith's play. Humor exists side by side with sorrow. Joel Siegel, the television movie critic who died in 2007, gets a huge laugh with a great George Burns joke that won't be spoiled by telling it here. And Smith's aunt, a retired teacher, offers delightful remembrances of her own mother and older sister, memories that produce laughter and a few tears.

CurtainUp A-
(Elyse Sommer) The set (by Ricardo Hernandez) is, like the performance, deceptively simple: a couch, a few chairs and a table to help Smith move naturally and with fluidity from one tape recorded character to another. Four large upstage mirrors add a measure of theatricality. Each scene has a title which is projected onto an unobtrusive overhead screen along with a line about the character being channeled by Smith. The overall title is discussed by the first speaker, author and New York's Union Theological Seninary professor James H. Cone, who ponders that those words evoke broken hearts, love and could also be about death. Cone's last evocation sets the theme: dealing with illness and, in the case of the worst case scenario, dealing with death and dying which is after all what the health care debate is all about. Of course, Smith is too smart not to realize that timely or not, illness and death aren't exactly what people associate with a night out at the theater and she's thus managed to balance the serious scenes with light and peppy ones. Thus she follows the contemplative opening with an amusing segment called "Fire Dance," in which choreographer Elizabeth Streb describes a literally incindiary performance.

Lighting & Sound America B+
(David Barbour) There are many people you should meet in Anna Deavere-Smith's latest channeling session, but none more so than Kiersta Kurtz-Burke. She's a physician at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, an institution that, she admits, most of her colleagues are looking to flee as quickly as possible, on the way to well-paying careers. (An anecdote about a male colleague's unspeakably cruel bedside manner -- it's too shocking to repeat here -- is, sadly, par for the course, she adds.) Kurtz-Burke has always prided herself on the level of care that Charity provided to the city's poorest citizens. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and she details, with devastating clarity, how everyone -- patients and staff -- were all but abandoned in the stifling heat, with no electricity and a dwindling food supply. It's no wonder, she says, that the nurses on her staff believe the government opened the levees on purpose, drowning the Ninth Ward in order to save the city's wealthier districts. Even more dismaying to her is their certainty -- accurate, as it turns out -- that they will be the very last to be rescued... The scene occurs at about the halfway point in Let Me Down Easy, and, from there on in, the show moves from strength to strength. Before that, however, it comes across as a scattered, if often incisive, collection of character sketches.

Time Out New York B
(Helen Shaw) There’s prodigious intelligence and skill on display. It’s just that Smith once seemed to promise more: When audiences first saw her, it seemed like her judicious juxtapositioning was the work of a genius, or at least a call to a new, lacerating form. Now, the tidy snippets of experience, the deliberate emotional tugs and the high celeb quotient feel a little easy. Smith is excellent at what she does, but in tipping toward polish and the middlebrow, she has subtly let us down.

The Village Voice B-
(Alexis Soloski) Despite the claims of a recent New York Times Magazine article, Smith is not a particularly gifted mimic, nor does she vanish into her characters. In translating interviews into theatrical monologues, she tends to identify a facial or physical tic—lip-licking for Dr. Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a splayed leg stance for boxer Michael Bentt—and conjure a role from that gesture. Smith never disappears; she merely adjusts herself to each new persona. Somehow, performer and character seem to coexist in the same body, like a set of transparencies slightly misaligned. It's a fascinating technique—and, in a show concerned with the body's intransigence, a fitting and moving one.

Bloomberg News D+
(John Simon) Yet what does it all come down to? Do we really care how Lance Armstrong, the supermodel Lauren Hutton, a rodeo bull rider, assorted doctors and patients of no particular interest sound off on these matters? They’re good for some cheap laughs, though not for 95 minutes of theater. One thing, however, is of interest. Everyone speaks terrible English, and I mean everyone, from professors of musicology to deans and ministers. I doubt whether Deavere Smith deliberately sabotaged them with assorted blunder or bluster, meaningless fillers, inarticulate stutter or inability to express the simplest ideas in passable sentences. The only character who comes off well is a Buddhist monk, who says very little and uses a cup of spilled water as a symbol. Otherwise, I recommend the show mostly to English teachers, who will feel either guilty as accessories to these verbal crimes, or unduly relieved that their students are not the only perpetrators of linguicide.

NYMag D
(Dan Kois) Smith isn’t an actress so much as a master impressionist, re-creating her interviewees’ every hem, haw, and (as her script at one point specifies) thirteen-beat pause with a transcriptionist’s care. She’s by definition incapable of transcending her material, and would be doing her subjects a disservice if she ever did. The play is thus strongest when she tells the stories of people on the front lines, like a doctor at Charity Hospital in New Orleans during Katrina, or a cancer patient who just happens to be a dean at the Yale School of Medicine. The show’s power completely dissipates when she turns to play pontificating academics or celebrities like Lance Armstrong or Lauren Hutton.

Wall Street Journal F+
(Terry Teachout) Her flat-textured "impersonations" of such familiar figures as Lance Armstrong and Lauren Hutton run to caricature, and even when she plays unknown people, you never quite feel that she has succeeded in submerging herself in their personalities. It doesn't help that the shapeless script of "Let Me Down Easy" lacks the clear sense of direction that one expects out of a theatrical performance—or, even more to the point, that so few of Ms. Smith's interviewees have anything especially memorable to say about their experiences with illness. It all adds up to a well-meaning pseudoplay that promises much but delivers much less.

Backstage A+ 14; Variety A+ 14; The Faster Times A+ 14; The New Yorker A 13; Newsday A 13; New York Post A 13; Talkin' Broadway A 13; TheaterMania A- 12; The New York Times A- 12; AP A- 12; CurtainUp A- 12; Lighting & Sound America B+ 11; TONY B 10; The Village Voice B- 9; Bloomberg News D+ 5; NYMag D 4; Wall Street Journal F+ 2; TOTAL: 183/17 = 10.76 (B+)

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Wildflower

Grade: C

By Lila Rose Kaplan, Directed by Giovanna Sardelli. At Second Stage Uptown. (CLOSED)

Lila Rose Kaplan's Wildflower gets decidedly mixed reviews from the NY Press. Winning "Most Divisive Aspect" award? The play's ending (which critics dare not give away) which, depending on your POV, either adds unexpected depth and drama to the sit-com-ish rest of the play or drives the play straight into ludicrous and schematic territory. TalkinBroadway's Matthew Murray turns in a particularly difficult-to-grade review. He is quite enamored with the show, but feels betrayed by (and hates) its final five minutes. I pegged it at C+, due to the amount of space in the review devoted to the positives, but readers might have a different takeaway. UPDATE a late-breaker from the Village Voice has downgraded the show from C+ to C.

CurtainUp A
(Deborah Blumenthal) It seems like the perfect summer play: small town romance, nature, second chances. But what's really going on in Lila Rose Kaplan's Wildflower pulses with a much deeper intensity than its premise initially lets on. It's the kind of plot so unexpected, so affecting, and so daring that you want to tell it all to express how impressive it is, but can't because you'll spoil the experience. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of play that makes Second Stage one of the city's most dependable outlets for unique, provocative new plays.

Variety B
(Sam Thielman) With a little watering and some more sunlight, Lila Rose Kaplan's Wildflower will grow up to be a mighty play about love and death. Short script has excellent roots, with firm characterizations and graceful dramaturgy that combine to give the text a surprising slickness (borne out in the all-pro production)... The less said about the play's big surprise, the better, but it's worth noting that Kaplan's groundwork is hard to criticize. Suffice to say that when the performance is over, you're thinking more about whether you liked the ending than what it means for the characters, and that's not necessarily a good thing. On the other hand, the decision runs gleefully counter to the play's occasional undercurrent of whimsy, which is a good thing indeed.

NYTimes B-
(Ken Jaworoski) The play, written by Lila Rose Kaplan and presented at the McGinn/Cazale Theater as part of the Second Stage Theater Uptown Series, is performed by a solid cast, notably Ms. Smith and Quincy Dunn-Baker as James, a he-man with a tender soul beneath the tough surface. Giovanna Sardelli’s direction is skillful, using small moments and movements to heighten the humor, while Lap Chi Chu’s lighting is equally effective. Still, despite the talented cast and crew, there’s no getting around a final scene that is both incongruent and inorganic; the blunt ending mixes with the rest of the play the way motor oil mixes with fruit juice. It’s conceivable that Ms. Kaplan was looking for a tragic turn in the vein of “Of Mice and Men” or that she decided that her cheery comedy needed a shocking close. Whatever the reason, the move seems mistaken. She was doing just fine before that.

TalkinBroadway C+
(Matthew Murray) Sparkling...loaded with bite-and-run dialogue that’s also weighty enough that you never feel the characters are being sacrificed for laughs....Unfortunately, the play’s myriad successes become meaningless when Kaplan veers off her established course into a darker, stormier direction. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: It’s justifiable, even desirable, in certain circumstances. And as Kaplan’s goal isn’t merely to peddle escapism, but also to show the many ways love can be alternately beautiful and terrifying depending on its participants identities and histories, it’s even worthwhile for this play, which is at least as concerned with the dangers of isolation as it is the benefits of communities. But Kaplan doesn’t just abandon comedy by the side of the road, she kicks it out the passenger-side door at 80 miles per hour. She switches so quickly and so haphazardly to Twilight Zone-style creepiness that it doesn’t feel like the natural evolution of misplaced or misdirected laughs, but a betrayal of the foundation from which they originally sprang.

NYPOST C-
(Frank Scheck) THE botanical metaphors are as thick as weeds in Lila Rose Kaplan's new play, which explores hidden passions in a small town. The sort of quirky comedy that would probably knock them dead if it were a film shown at Sundance, Wildflower quickly wilts on the vine in its world premiere production at the Second Stage's uptown home...Under the direction of Giovanna Sardelli, the performers manage to be restrained in their characterizations, and the play has some amusing and tender moments.

TheaterMania D+
(Andy Propst) Nothing in this play about summertime love and teens coming-of-age happens because of human nature or psychology; instead, characters act in ways that are expedient for moving the piece's contrived plot forward...Theatergoers' patience with such machinations in the plot is only shortened by the ways in which Kaplan contorts the characters' behavior. James, whose homophobic baiting of Mitchell borders on assault, demonstrates a vulnerable and sensitive side at moments that can only be described as dramatically expeditious. Randolph, who's characterized as having an above-average IQ, never really exhibits any sort of true intelligence, or even common sense. When he turns to Mitchell for guidance about sex, he seems not so much naively innocent about the awkward position into which he's placing the older man as callously teasing. Further, Randolph's actions that lead to the play's denouement are simply ludicrous.

Village Voice D+
(Eric Grode) This all sounds more subversive and Lynchian than it really is. Not even director Giovanna Sardelli's no-nonsense pacing can mask the tin-eared quality of lines like, "What part of 'I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go' did you not understand?" The exception to the play's overall lassitude comes in the last five minutes, when a drastic about-face sends the play into decidedly choppier waters. The initial jolt offered by this final twist, though, is quickly tempered by the realization that it's no less trite and underdeveloped—well, maybe a little less underdeveloped—than the 70 prosaic minutes that led up to it.

Backstage F+
(Leonard Jacobs) Lila Rose Kaplan's Wildflower is a wilted, stilted comedy. Its roots are submerged beneath a writing style lacking in nutrients. Its petals may please, but they die on the vine. Giovanna Sardelli's direction may orient the intertwined tales toward direct sunlight, but it's challenging to identify true beauty among so many weeds.

CU A 13; V B 10; NYT B- 9; TB C+ 8; NYP C 7; VV D+ 5; TM D+ 5; BS F+ 2; TOTAL: 59/8= 7.38 (C)

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Vanities

GRADE: C-

Music and Lyrics by David Kirshenbaum, book by Jack Heifner. Dir. Judith Ivey. Musical Staging by Dan Knechtges. Second Stage Theatre. (CLOSED)

The most frequent word to come up in the reviews of Vanities is banal. Critics cannot understand why a musical version of the '70s play by Jack Heifner was necessary, especially when even the added final scene feels outdated and false and the score by David Kirshenbaum adds little. Still, critics find that the sets by Anna Louizos, Judith Ivey's able direction, and the trio of actresses--Anneliese van der Pol, Lauren Kennedy, and Sarah Stiles--rise above the material in this ill-conceived musical. The silver lining for most critics is that the recession kept the show from Broadway, where it would have struggled.

CurtainUp B-
(Simon Saltzman) It almost doesn't matter that Vanities, A New Musical is an egregiously simplistic, determinedly sentimental rehashing of Jack Heifner's 1976 play Vanities. It also doesn't matter that the score (music and lyrics) by David Kirshenbaum (Summer '42) is discouragingly unexceptional. And why are none of the musicals numbers listed in the playbill? Nevertheless, what really matters is that you are suddenly hooked on a three-character musical about three life-long friends over three decades because of one stand-out performance: Sarah Stiles, as Joanne. Stiles originated the role of Joanne in both the Theatre Works Palo Alto and Pasadena Playhouse productions, and it is the show's good fortune she is in it for its New York run. Forgive me for gushing, but she gives the kind of dynamic, full throttle musical-comedy-styled performance that hasn't been seen since the heydays of Judy Holiday and Nancy Walker. Stiles is, in fact, as close to being a Walker-double as possible, her diminutive size, endearingly expressive face, powerhouse personality, superior comedic delivery are consolidated in a most wonderful way. She is a joy to watch. This is not to say that Lauren Kennedy, as Mary and Anneliese van der Pol as Kathy are not first rate performers. In step with Stiles from pep rally to penthouse, through thick and thin (thanks to Dan Knechtges's vigorous musical staging), they concertedly help to empower all the corny, cliché-riddled episodes that we are to endure.

Backstage B-
(David Sheward) This new tuner was originally slated to open on Broadway, but the recession put the kibosh on those plans. The economic downturn was probably the best thing that could have happened to Vanities. A Main Stem run for this just-okay, small-scale tuner would have most likely resulted in a short run. It's right where it belongs in a limited Off-Broadway noncommercial engagement. The show has its share of mild laughs and pleasant tunes, but it's not worth a ticket price of over $100. The staging by Tony-winning actor Judith Ivey is smooth and flexible, employing Anna Louizos' carefully detailed sets to create the different time periods. Being a performer herself, Ivey knows when to get out of the way and give her cast center stage. Each of the three has at least one number in which to shine.

The New Yorker C+
(Unsigned) There’s not much time for exploration of story line and character, let alone context: was that the Vietnam War, first-wave feminism, and Watergate that just flew by, or a bobby pin? Despite the trite handling of important issues and the shallow portraits of the women as feisty nincompoops, there are some very funny bits here, and the three actresses—Lauren Kennedy, Sarah Stiles, and Anneliese van der Pol—all with beautiful voices, put everything they have into their performances.

TheaterMania C+
(Andy Propst) After a brief prologue, Vanities transports audiences to November 22, 1963 and the gymnasium of a small town high school near Dallas, one of the many settings marvelously created by Anna Louizos' elegant scenic design. It's where we first meet our three heroines. Cheerleader Kathy (Anneliese van der Pol, who gracefully tracks the character's arc from self-assurance to hopelessness) struggles to get her best friends Joanne (whom Sarah Stiles plays with surface cuteness, but a steely determination), and Mary (imbued with cleverness and later a devil-may-care demeanor by Lauren Kennedy) to concentrate on an upcoming pep rally, but boys and other social issues keep getting in the way. Here, Kirshenbaum's music shrewdly reflects how tight this group is; rarely during the first scene do any of the women sing solos, instead, they perform a variety of girl group-like songs.

Associated Press C
(Michael Kuchwara) The songs primarily mark time, done in by lyrics that often settle for greeting-card sentimentality. You wait for the plot to kick back in and get these girls to grow up and face life.Director Judith Ivey and Dan Knechtges, who's credited with musical staging, smoothly move the show along over an intermissionless 100 minutes... For a small show, "Vanities" has elaborate, colorful settings designed by Anna Louizos. Most prominent are the wooden clothes cabinets that swirl into place when the three ladies change hairstyles and costumes. The actresses don't break stride as they slip into clothes (the work of designer Joseph G. Aulisi) that change them from teenagers to young adults to mature women. It's the evening's most striking transformation.

AMNY C-
(Matt Windman) The musical version of “Vanities,” which has a book by Heifner and songs by David Kirshenbaum, is perhaps too faithful to the original play. Except for a newly inserted optimistic finale, Kirshenbaum’s mildly pleasant songs have quietly replaced the original dialogue. His lyrics are true to character, but not too interesting or exciting... Judith Ivey has respectfully staged “Vanities” as a quiet chamber piece. But in spite of good intentions and much onstage talent, this is a musical that fails to catch fire or spark interest.

The New York Times C-
(Charles Isherwood) Joanne (Sarah Stiles) is the ditzy one, or perhaps I should say the ditziest one, since all three girls are depicted as having little more than boys and clothes and the big dance on their minds. Which does not make them very interesting company, I’m afraid, despite the winking satiric tone the authors take to their petty obsessions. In the three decades since the original play became a runaway hit and regional theater mainstay after opening Off Broadway (with Kathy Bates playing Joanne), the stereotype of the perky cheerleader has been so repeatedly and relentlessly poked, prodded and parodied that returning to the subject almost a decade into another century seems a futile exercise in the debunking of American myths. What’s left to debunk? Maybe it’s time to leave the benighted girls to dream their sweet, trivial dreams in peace... Mr. Kirshenbaum’s serviceable pop score, which nods in the direction of chart toppers like Burt Bacharach at some points and the more ruminative melodies of Stephen Sondheim at others, provides little in the way of defining depth for the characters. Too often it reverts to the same musical moods and self-actualization clichés. The cartoony pep of Mr. Heifner’s book in the first scenes gives way to a similarly on-the-surface examination of the upheavals and disappointments of the women’s later lives. (Although it’s really not much later: the women are presented as having evolved drastically before they’ve turned 30.)

New York Post C-
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) There isn't a shred of suspense in Jack Heifner's book, based on his own 1976 play. The only surprise is that Kathy, the unlucky-in-love PE major, doesn't turn out to be gay. In this show, it rates as a daring buckling of expectations. That said, the 95 minutes zip along smoothly in the hands of actress-turned-director Judith Ivey (with help from Dan Knechtges for the musical stagings). The trickiest parts occur between scenes, when Kennedy, Stiles and van der Pol, fishing accessories from the vanities that give the piece its name, change costumes in full view while singing. At least David Kirshenbaum's light score doesn't complicate matters by throwing vocal challenges their way.

Lighting & Sound America C-
(David Barbour) Vanities was always enjoyable because of its refreshing absence of a thesis statement. Instead, through little bits of everyday conversation, we discovered the young ladies' foibles, and their hidebound mores. ("When I found out George Eliot was a woman, I got all confused!") Without editorializing, we saw them grow apart and struggle with realities they could never have imagined as teenagers... David Kirshenbaum's songs consist of pleasant, polished, and thoroughly disposable pop music of no particular character; this is less a comment on his talent than on the difficulties of finding reasons to make these characters sing. Oddly, except for one mildly Burt Bachararch-ish tune, Kirshenbaum avoids period pastiche. A couple of the big pieces -- "Flying into the Future," in which Mary itches to cut loose from the sorority house, and "Cute Boys with Short Haircuts," in which Kathy basically says the hell with men -- are overscaled for this modest comedy. Oddly, Heifner, who wrote the book, has dispensed with some of the script's best and edgiest jokes -- including a memorable shock laugh about John F. Kennedy's assassination. Even more surprisingly, his original point, that all three young ladies were ill-served by upbringings that left them unable to cope with changing times, is now erased by a new finale, set years later in a funeral parlor, when everyone convenes for a big sisterhood-is-powerful hug. I'm the last person to complain if he wants to reverse the point of the play -- it's his play, and he can do what he wants with it -- but I can't help but feeling that the Vanities, a New Musical isn't a patch on just plain old Vanities.

Time Out New York C-
(Adam Feldman) Three Texas cheerleaders mirror their changing times in Vanities, which tracks the girls through 25 years of pom-poms and circumstance. Adapted by Jack Heifner from his own 1976 Off Broadway hit, and outfitted with a modest new score by David Kirshenbaum, this new musical was originally slated to open on Broadway last season; smartly, its would-be producers got cold feet, and Vanities wound up in the supportive arms of Second Stage Theatre, which has given it a solid staging (on a smart set by Anna Louizos). There’s only so much that director Judith Ivey can do, however, with a piece in which characters begin as clichés and then mature into types.

Variety D+
(David Rooney) Whether expressed in dialogue -- much of it lifted intact from Heifner's play -- or in David Kirshenbaum's pleasant but samey showtunes inflected with period pop sounds, the girls' concerns are standard issue. The early talk focuses on boyfriends, sex, parties and popularity, dreams of marriage, home and family or, in Mary's case, of beguiling new horizons. But the show's own outlook is decidedly narrow... Social context is mostly glossed over, and while the play conveyed a sense of women coming of age during the burgeoning feminist movement, albeit in their own hermetic bubble, the musical fabricates a dated, thoroughly anonymous sitcom world. It's a banal version of every femme-centric character piece that's ever played on screens big or small, from "Steel Magnolias" and "The First Wives Club" to "The Golden Girls" and "Designing Women." But its humor has none of the bite or freshness of any of those sisterhood models. The lack of texture is especially a problem in the Manhattan interlude; up to that point, the girls have been cardboard cutouts, so the sudden grit of their animosities doesn't wash. And the show doesn't always ring true. Would a Joni Mitchell-loving libertarian like Mary really have been accepted in the rigidly conservative confines of a 1968 Dallas Kappa sorority house? While Anna Louizos' versatile sets have fun touches and Joseph G. Aulisi's costumes add character definition, Dan Knechtges' choreography is perky but unexciting, and Judith Ivey's listless direction is too by-the-numbers to foster emotional investment. Kennedy, Stiles and van der Pol all bring big, confident voices and likable personalities, but the writing denies them any edge at all.

Bloomberg News D+
(John Simon) All good and well until it becomes a musical. The play contented itself with three scenes in 1963, 1968 and 1974. The musical adds a fourth scene, “years later,” in which the trio, looking hardly older, provides a totally supererogatory -- and improbable -- anticlimax. Poorer yet is the score. Kirshenbaum’s music could give monotony a worse name: Not only is it tuneless, it manages not even to come up with some varieties of tunelessness. The lyrics, which do not move the action an inch forward, prove little beyond Kirshenbaum’s possession of a rhyming dictionary. A further liability is Dan Knechtges’s choreography, which espouses all the well-worn dance cliches. Judith Ivey’s direction, on the other hand, makes a laudable effort to invest basically static situations with as much movement as they can bear.

Talkin' Broadway D
(Matthew Murray) Without the darker, more ominous undertones on which the original play thrived, the fights and reconciliations along the way are meaningless. The first third of the play ended with the girls blithely waving off President Kennedy's assassination by cheering that that evening's football game would go on as scheduled; the corresponding section of the musical climaxes with a song called "I Can't Imagine," in which the three pledge eternal friendship. It's such reconfiguring that makes this Vanities seem like Kirshenbaum and Heifner's attempt to stake a claim to the theatregoing dollars of young women who've outgrown Wicked and Legally Blonde rather than any sort of an artistic or dramatic statement. The score is a particular disappointment, as Kirshenbaum is a major up-and-coming talent. If he miscalculated with his Brazil-tinged, by-the-numbers musical-comedy writing for Party Come Here, his intentionally awkward and emotionally discordant songs for Summer of '42 were alternately hilariously and hauntingly right for an adolescent coming-of-age saga. What he's written here feels like the melodic equivalent of giving up, a too-willing adherence to an instruction in the original script that advises the "music must not make a statement. It should be incidental."

Show Showdown D-
(Wendy Caster) The new musical version of Vanities, adapted by Jack Heifner from his 1976 play, is dated. While the ins and outs of friendship and loyalty are universal, this particular story depends on now-cliché tropes that limit its story to a tiny time and place. The new version has nothing new to say, which might be okay if it said the old things better. The three actresses give it their all, and there are moments that work, but mostly it just isn’t particularly interesting. The songs add little to the mix.

The Daily News D-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Though likable, the actresses are hamstrung by thin material and monochromatic characters. Mary (Lauren Kennedy) is the sexed-up one, Kathy (Anneliese van der Pol) is the organized one, and Joanne (Sarah Stiles) is the goofy one and, weirdly, the only one with a sagebrush twang. To compensate, they all tend to push too hard, so there's an aggressive quality to the performances. It's sometimes a bit unpleasant when they harmonize. The element of the production that gets it (almost) perfect, is Anna Louizos' breezy scenic design, which evokes eras with iconic images, like the album jacket of Joni Mitchell's "Clouds" in the 1968 college scene (so what if the LP came out in '69). Mitchell's mug loomed large for me as a restless Mary sang some jarringly simplistic lines: "Mama is a coward. Mama is a drunk. Mama sleeps with Howard when she gets in a funk." I swear I saw Joni, queen of brainy and incisive lyrics, roll her eyes. It wasn't her. It was me.

The Bergen Record D-
(Robert Feldberg) David Kirshenbaum's songs for the simplistic, unpersuasive narrative – one of the women ends up owning an art gallery, while another becomes a novelist – add nothing to the telling. The heart sinks with the opening number, which sounds like a hundred other perky, personality-free contemporary show tunes. "I don't wanna miss a thing," the women sing. "I know I can have it all … I want the American dream … It's what Mom and Dad both promised." Unless you've just arrived from Mars, you'll recognize the signal that all will not go well. After that, the songs simply express what the women can just say to one another, or even have already said. Only a few times does a number convey someone's deeper feelings... "Vanities" was headed to Broadway last February, when the producers canceled the production, citing the uncertain economy. They owe the recession a favor.

CurtainUp B- 9; Backstage B- 9; The New Yorker C+ 8; TheaterMania C+ 8; AP C 7; AMNY C- 6; The New York Times C- 6; New York Post C- 6; Lighting & Sound America C- 6; TONY C- 6; Variety D+ 5; Bloomberg News D+ 5; Talkin' Broadway D 4; Show Showdown D- 3; The Daily News D- 3; The Bergen Record D- 3; TOTAL: 94/16 = 5.875 (C-)

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Everyday Rapture

GRADE: A-

By Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott. Music supervision by Tom Kitt. Directed by Michael Mayer. Chor. Michele Lynch. Second Stage Theater. (CLOSED)

With grades that range from B+ to A+ (until David Cote's review for TONY), it's pretty safe to say that critics are crazy about Sherie Rene Scott, both the actress and the slightly fictionalized version of herself she plays in Everyday Rapture. Critics gush about her ability to interpret a wide range of songs, from Judy Garland standards to Mister Rogers. Though most of the reviews are dedicated to Scott, critics also note the positive contributions of Christine Jones's sets and Kevin Adams's lighting in creating the appropriate atmosphere.

The New York Times A+
(Ben Brantley) Las Vegas may now have Bette Midler. But New York has Sherie Rene Scott, who is putting on the kind of sensational diva-as-trash-goddess show this city hasn’t seen since Ms. Midler last played Radio City Musical Hall. It is called “Everyday Rapture.” And while this singing pseudo-memoir, which opened on Sunday night at Second Stage Theater, is tiny by Broadway standards, it easily qualifies as one of the year’s most extravagantly entertaining new musicals. Like Ms. Midler, who came to fame singing in gay clubs and bath houses three decades ago, Ms. Scott is a brass-and-butter chanteuse with an out-there alter-ego, a couple of trampy but precision-tooled backup singers and a song list of inventively rejiggered standards and oddities. She is also one of those rare, wry and passionate performers who bring out the inner show queen in people, even folks who didn’t know they had one.

Variety A+
(David Rooney) Scott's skill as an actress shows in her seamless turns from sly humor to break-your-heart honesty. Her account of being a Kansas girl in Manhattan for the first time is so vivid and joyous, it makes you relive your own first taste of the city. And her personal revelations -- losing her virginity to a Times Square street magician; a subsequent abortion -- are touching because they are remarkably unsentimental... Scott's gentle mockery of her own celebrity takes the edge off the inherent self-absorption of any solo (or quasi-solo) show. Much of the quest for knowledge of herself and the universe is built around advice from a sage old rabbi ("could have been a Muslim") who told her to carry two pieces of paper -- one that says "I am a speck of dust," and another saying "The world was created for me."

Associated Press A+
(Michael Kuchwara) The show, on view at off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre, is a touching, tuneful and often hilarious tale, told by Scott in six scenes and punctuated by more than a dozen songs written by the likes of Elton John, Harold Arlen, George Harrison, Harry Warren and more. That should give you some clue to the scope of Scott's considerable talent, which is tailor-made for musical theater. Scott, in possession of not only a big, belty singing voice but a delicious sense of comic timing, owns the stage.

The Daily News A+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) How fitting that a show with music called "Everyday Rapture" features a song urging us to "go up the ladder to the roof, where we can see heaven much better." For the 90 minutes that Sherie Rene Scott is on stage performing at Second Stage, audiences have an unobstructed view of paradise personified... Scott's pursuit is particularly fascinating, what with her Mennonite past and Broadway present (she's known for "Aida," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "The Little Mermaid"). What also makes it special is her sexy smarts, manic energy, salty-sweet humor and, especially, her hypnotic voice — a divine blend that recalls Bette Midler.

Lighting & Sound America A+
(David Barbour) It's our great good luck that that Scott and her co-writer, Dick Scanlan, are aware that her dilemma is ludicrous in its particulars, yet universal in its overall dimensions. Thus, her odyssey, from a childhood afflicted with "acute mennonitis" to a career spent stealing Broadway shows -- an earlier title for this piece was You May Now Worship Me -- is presented in delightfully self-spoofing fashion. At the same time, there's an undertone of real feeling, driven by the star's determination to discover what life is all about. Everyday Rapture amounts to a kind of metaphysical cabaret -- and that's something you don't see every day... Thanks to Michael Mayer's pitch-perfect direction, Everyday Rapture seamlessly blends priceless show-business wisecracks with thoughtful ruminations on the nature of God and the meaning of life. Adding extra emotional heft to the comedy are Scott's lively and touching readings of a songlist that includes U-2's "Elevation," "The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," the Fred Rogers classic, "It's You I Like," and "Up the Ladder to the Roof." I must add that the lady has never been in better voice, which is really saying something.

The New Yorker A
(John Lahr) Scott has a good voice, backed by a pair of jazzy singers called the Mennonettes, and the show is exceptional for the expertise of its collaborators: Tom Kitt’s elegant orchestrations; Christine Jones’s zany, eye-catching set; Michele Lynch’s clever choreography. Michael Mayer has directed the raffish proceedings to a T. The show won’t make Scott a star, but it goes one better: it makes you feel the miraculous in the everyday.

Talkin' Broadway A
(Matthew Murray) Scott embodies both of the qualities that bookend Sherie’s worldview, as imparted to her by a (probably Jewish) rabbi who suggested she write them down and always keep them in her pockets: “I am a speck of dust” and “The world was created for me.” The interplay between the hyperinflated ego of the up-and-coming-Broadway star and the humble introvert who never wants more than she’s earned gives some surprising depth to a script that often tends toward the familiar and slight - not least because you’re never entirely sure whether Sherie or Scott is embodying the aspect you’re seeing at any given moment. All you can tell for sure is that the two women are impressive singers and crack storytellers, capable of weaving fictional narrative and personal reflection into a bare-bones concert format without sacrificing the verities of either form of presentation. (Christine Jones’s galactic disco set, which blends vivid pastels with stylized constellations beneath Kevin Adams’s deceptively intimate lighting plot, is just right as a background for both.) Lindsey Mendez and Betsy Wolfe provide excellent support as the Mennonettes, Sherie’s now-and-then backup singers.

CurtainUp A
(Elyse Sommer) Though Ms. Scott has been quoted as saying that this is a show with four performers, it is basically a solo showcase for her beauty and likeability, very personal style of song interpretation and delivery, not to mention her gifts as a story teller. Her two almost constant sidekicks, Lindsay Mendez and Betsy Wolfe, are excellent, though their "Mennonites" are not very different from other groups of backup singers. The other performer listed in the program, Eamon Foley, is a genuinely surprising and enjoyable surprise guest star. Though he appears only briefly he adds mightily to the overall energy and fun. No matter how you classify Everyday Rapture, Ms. Scott, her colleagues, the 5-piece onstage band and the pacey and colorful staging all give this musical journey a rich, full-bodied flavor... Ultimately, this sort of stage memoir, even though disguised as fiction, does tend to be a bit narcisstic as Scott herself admits though she came to realize " I can be narcissistic, and still be nice." The lovely to look at and listen to and thoroughly endearing narcissist at the center of Everyday Rapture is not just nice but a star -- not a semi-star but a true hyphen-less, capitalized Star.

New York Post A
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) The numbers are so completely integrated into the book that the songs can get frustratingly chopped up. "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," for instance, starts all smoldering and sultry -- and boy, can Scott do smoldering and sultry! But just as you begin to melt into a blissful puddle, Scott launches into observations about Topeka churches, before segueing back into "Atchison" at a faster trot. It's all very funny, but sometimes you want a sing-all, not a tell-all. But even there, "Everyday Rapture," smoothly directed by Michael Mayer, is devious. With its minimal, light-strung set, the show looks and feels like a plain musical memoir, but Scott and co-writer Dick Scanlan ("Thoroughly Modern Millie") are open about its loose connection to facts. What interests them is what makes a performer a performer.

Theater News Online A
(Matt Windman) On one level, Everyday Rapture is a totally sincere memoir of growing up in Topeka, Kansas (where there are supposedly more churches than people), moving to New York City and eventually gaining a worldly sense of spirituality... But on a far more successful level, it is a clever parody of self-deluded and egotistical one-person shows. There is one absolutely brilliant scene where a young show queen male (Eamon Foley) creates a YouTube video where he lip-synchs to Ms. Scott's vocal performance of a hit Aida tune "My Strongest Suit." When she writes him an email to introduce herself, he accuses her of not being the real Sherie Rene Scott, leading to a heated and frustrating battle of correspondence.

Backstage A-
(Adam R. Perlman) Scott, as she reminds us in her disarming deadpan, has played the "second lead" in several Broadway shows. Her ditzy, late-awakening Amneris was the best thing about Disney's Aida, her vaudevillian Ursula was a bright spot in Disney's dingy The Little Mermaid (Disney really should put her on retainer), and in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels she did perhaps her best work to date as a deceptively doelike American abroad. This is the first time, though, I've seen her full, dazzling range of tools. Vain and vulnerable, silly and sexy, wistful and wise, she's a mess of contradictions as riveting as Bernadette, Patti, or any of those divas who don't need three names but just one.

American Theater Web A-
(Andy Propst) The final section of "Rapture" is both the show's sweetest and its weakest. In it Scott describes her life today with her three-year old son, and some of the hopes and dreams that she has for him. There's a life-lesson in here, and it's about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary; unfortunately, though theatergoers grasp how hard-fought this revelation has been for Scott, it underwhelms as the show's climax... Scott's vocal skills – whether blasting rock or silkily gliding over standards – are superlative, and her stylings are marvelously supported by Tom Kitt's arrangements for a five piece onstage combo, set in the back of Christine Jones' handsome scenic design that looks a bit like a series of constellations that have been skewed into a honeycomb of interconnectivity. The theme of interrelationships is ultimately what's at the crux of "Rapture," and superficially Scott's journey to finding the bridge between two sides of herself. And though the revelations of the show may never be significantly profound, the piece itself is an exceptional entertainment.

The Village Voice A-
(Eric Grode) Along the way, there are a few magic tricks, several beautifully delivered songs from well outside the Broadway songbook (who knew the winsome melodies of Fred "Mr." Rogers contained such hard-earned melancholy and banked passion?), and a rather grotesque anecdote about semi-stardom in the era of YouTube fanboys, all of it staged with breathless flair by Michael Mayer. "Any song you live your life inside is a kind of hymn," Scott decides, as she struggles to reconcile her urge to praise with her need to be praised. Gifts like hers, especially when packaged and delivered this shrewdly, deserve a kind of worship.

Theatermania B+
(Dan Bacalzo) As she tells it, music was always her refuge, and a means of expressing herself. Not only does she have a gorgeous voice, Scott has an uncanny ability to interpret the songs she sings in a way that captures the emotional essence of the stories she's spinning. Perhaps most surprising is the layers of meaning she uncovers in several songs by Fred Rogers -- best known as the host of the children's program, Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Her breathy rendition of Rogers' "I Like to Be Told" is sung as a kind of sexual awakening, while her understated cover of his "It's You I Like" is a quiet moment of self-discovery and acceptance... Admittedly, there are moments when the writing of the piece feels strained. Moreover, the show's major drawback is that in trying to create a clear emotional arc from Scott's disparate narratives, it ends up with a rather pithy summation that is too forced to be meaningful. But if you focus on the journey, rather than the destination, there's much to enjoy in Everyday Rapture.

Bloomberg News B+
(Jeremy Gerard) Co-written with Dick Scanlan, “Everyday Rapture” rambles and ambles and never gets overly concerned with connecting one scene to the next. Even at 90 intermissionless minutes, it feels a little padded. One sequence involving YouTube and an extremely talented audience plant (Eamon Foley) goes on way too long. Still, it’s hard not to like such a likable star and the equally likable personality she creates with help from director Michael Mayer, the game back-up “Mennonettes,” Lindsay Mendez and Betsy Wolfe, and a crack quintet.

Time Out New York C-
(David Cote) Honestly, you wish Scott would stick to the bawdy, satirical routine. When she plucks at our social conscience—hatemongering zealots are sad, we know—her vehicle loses steam. Even a brief, frank report about an abortion feels both discomfitingly confessional and cliché. Michael Mayer's frisky production works well for the comic bits and the brassy musical numbers (Scott gets backup from the sturdy Lindsay Mendez and Betsy Wolfe), but there's not enough dramatic architecture to support the star's thematic ambitions. There's fun here, but rapture? Heaven must wait.

The New York Times A+ 14; Variety A+ 14; Associated Press A+ 14; The Daily News A+ 14; Lighting & Sound America A+ 14; The New Yorker A 13; Talkin' Broadway A 13; CurtainUp A 13; New York Post A 13; Theater News Online A 13; Backstage A- 12; American Theater Web A- 12; The Village Voice A- 12; Theatermania B+ 11; Bloomberg News B+ 11; TONY C- 6; TOTAL: 199/16 = 12.44 (A-)

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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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