AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

New York Times

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Bruises and Battle Scars
Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel bring authentic and unsparing life to “Fifty Words,” Michael Weller’s bruising domestic drama.

New York Daily News

'50 Words' doesn't amount to much
It's never a good sign when a review begins by praising a play's set. So let's get right to the superb scenic design of "Fifty Words," the unimpeachable aspect of Michael Weller's disagreeable marriage drama presented by MCC at the Lucille Lortel.

Newsday

Reviews: 'Fault Lines,' 'Fifty Words,' 'Wig Out!'
No doubt, David Schwimmer would like everyone to put aside his years as endearing, annoying Ross in "Friends" and appreciate his career as a grown-up actor and director. ...

New York Post

Them's fighting 'Words'
No wonder Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel have gotten hurt performing Michael Weller's "Fifty Words," which opened last night. As Adam and Jan, a married couple who endure one very long night of domestic discord, they incur enough physical and emotional violence to make George and Martha's "Who's Afraid of Virginia...

Hartford Courant

'Fifty Words' A View Of Marriage As Unequal Partnership

Star-Ledger

High casualties on this marital battlefield
Excellent actors going for broke, Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz furiously flail away as a Brooklyn couple whose marriage explodes overnight in "Fifty Words."

Associated Press

Michael Weller's 'Fifty Words' dissects a volatile, combative married couple
Adam and Jan have what you might call a volatile relationship. Apocalyptic, it turns out, reminiscent of George and Martha battling ferociously in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Bloomberg.com

Hot Kisses, Flying Food Leave Weller's Couple Dazed, Bruised: John Simon
We cannot help recalling how good Michael Weller's youthful plays of the '70s were, as we sadly watch the second of his late middle-age ones come to grief. ``Fifty Words,'' at the Lortel Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village, is an equal-opportunity loser with ``Beast'' across town in the East Village.

Variety

Review: Fifty Words
Marriage is no walk in the park in "Fifty Words," Michael Weller's incisive closeup of the emotional battleground of contemporary relationships, in which most audiences with any experience of cohabitation -- and any shred of honesty ...

Back Stage

Fifty Words reviewed by Gwen Orel
Have you ever been in the middle of a bickerfest between a couple you don't really know and can't get away from — say, in a car or at a holiday dinner?

TheaterMania

Review: Fifty Words
Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz give excellent performances in Michael Weller's less-than-realistic portrait of an unraveling marriage.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Fifty Words
A frequently quoted factoid about the close relationship between proximity and perception is that Eskimos have many more ways to refer to snow than do, say, New Yorkers. (Though chances are the latter group does so with a bit more color.) Michael Weller borrows the idea, and one of the more frequently cited numbers, for his explosive but downbeat play Fifty Words, which MCC Theater is presenting at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. As might be expected, however, in Weller's vernacular, those words are used for describing an even more amorphous idea: love. . . .

nytheatre.com

Review: Fifty Words

CurtainUp

Review: Fifty Words
Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel are sheer dynamite as battling spouses who veer from loving to biting conversation, from tender to more violent embraces, from mutual admiration to hurtful putdowns .