Archives for: November 2008, 13
ATW Digest - Haidle's Saturn Returns opens at LCT - read the reviews [updated 11/13/08]
By Andy Propst on Nov 13, 2008 | In ATW Digest
ADDITIONS - 11/13/08 10:02am EST
Time Out New York
Review: Saturn Returns
In Noah Haidle’s lightweight meditation on aging and memory, time doesn’t heal; it tears the flesh and leaves ugly scars
ADDITIONS - 11/12/08 9:24am EST
Newsday
Reviews: Rabe's 'Streamers,' and 'Saturn Returns'
New York Times
Three Ages of a Man Who’s Strutting and Fretting His Hour Upon the Stage
A troubled, solitary man nearing the end of his life shares a living room with the ghosts from his past in “Saturn Returns,” a wintry new play by Noah Haidle that opened on Monday night.
New York Daily News
A sorrowful life in the past lane
It's a cruel irony of life - an occasion that should be a joyous beginning instead turns out to be an infinitely sad ending and a source of nonstop ache.
Associated Press
The past haunts the present in 'Saturn Returns' as it opens in New York
Bloomberg.com
One-Act `Saturn Returns' Has Star's Life Unfold in Three Parts: John Simon
Some bad plays are fun, the way B- movies are, or used to be. Noah Haidle's B-play, ``Saturn Returns,'' however, has the distinction of being the dullest, most pointless piece the venerable Lincoln Center Theater has foisted on us in a very long time.
Variety
Review: Saturn Returns
...this is an intimate reflection on grief and loneliness that keeps its sentimentality in check via prickly character shadings. But despite Nicholas Martin's graceful staging, the play is too contrived to be fully affecting.
Back Stage
Saturn Returns reviewed by David Sheward
While the work is somewhat slight and overly tricky, it does display solid characterization and a moving situation.The short play comes across as too much like a writing exercise.
TheaterMania
Review: Saturn Returns
Noah Haidle's wistful memory play depicting one man at three stages of his life gets a first-rate production.
Talkin' Broadway
Review: Saturn Returns
“I can’t live without you.” Usually, when a man utters these words, he doesn’t really mean them. Oh, he may believe he does, but deep down he knows that if love truly is forever, then life will always find a way to continue until it must naturally stop. And most of Noah Naidle’s sweet but underdeveloped new play Saturn Returns, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, seems to be about nothing more than proving that anxiously exaggerated statement. . .
ATW Digest - Transport Group Revives Shaw's Bury the Dead - read the reviews [updated 11/13/08]
By Andy Propst on Nov 13, 2008 | In ATW Digest
ADDITIONS: 11/13/08 - 10:00am EST
New York Times
An Antiwar Revival
Joe Calacro’s peculiar yet impassioned revival of “Bury the Dead” for the Transport Group Theater Company turns its attention to modern-day Iraq.
Time Out New York
Review: Bury the Dead
Irwin Shaw’s antiwar play must have already seemed timeless in 1936; it suits today quite well, too.
ADDITIONS: 11/12/08 9:26am EST
nytheatre.com
Review; Bury the Dead
TheaterMania
Peter Filichia's Diary: High Schoolers' Non-Musical
After the ticket-taker dutifully dealt with my ticket, before I actually entered the Connolly Theatre, I heard a voice coming from the stage. Was I late? I consulted my watch, and saw that it was 1:50, a full 10 minutes before the Saturday ...
ADDITIONS: 11/11/08 8:07am EST
New York Post
Grave issues
It's not surprising that the Transport Group would revive "Bury the Dead." Written in 1936 by a 23-year-old Irwin Shaw, this powerful anti-war drama about six dead soldiers who refuse to be buried is all too relevant in a time when the sight of military coffins arriving from the Middle East is considered too upsetting to be televised...
Back Stage
Bury the Dead reviewed by Gwen Orel
As woman after woman pleads with the dead soldier she loved to allow himself to be buried, in this stylish production of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, tears ran down my face.
Variety
Review: Bury the Dead
Hard to believe Irwin Shaw wrote "Bury the Dead" in 1936, between the War to End All Wars and all the wars to come. The angry, searing pacifist drama feels as up-to-date and urgent as an incoming text message.
TheaterMania
Review: Bury the Dead
Transport Group serves up a marvelously affecting version of Irwin Shaw's 1936 anti-war play.
CurtainUp
Review: Bury the Dead
Joe Calarco has streamlined Irwin Shaw's 30-character fantasy about war's cost in young lives. His own added prologue is an interesting but flawed addition. . .
ATW Digest - Rabe's Streamers Revived - read the reviews [updated 11/13/08]
By Andy Propst on Nov 13, 2008 | In ATW Digest
ADDITIONS: 11/13/08 - 9:58am EST
Time Out New York
Review: Streamers
The Roundabout revives David Rabe's 1976 psychodrama about young soldiers bound for Vietnam.
Bergen Record
Vietnam-era play has lost much impact
AmericanTheaterWeb
Review - Streamers - A Vietnam War Classic Revisited
New York Times
Banter in the Barracks Takes a Serious Turn
The theater’s heavy reliance on revivals sometimes feels like a steady diet of disillusionment. Not so with the revival of “Streamers.”
New York Daily News
Viet-era play surges back to life
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."
amNY
Newsday
Reviews: Rabe's 'Streamers,' and 'Saturn Returns'
New York Post
Chute the messenger
For several years now, theater companies have dusted off war-themed plays for revivals. The latest example is this Roundabout Theatre...
Associated Press
'Streamers' displays a tough-minded timeliness
Variety
Review: Streamers
...Sexuality turns out to be the big one here, and its handling continues to resonate more than 30 years after the play was first seen -- especially so in light of the past week's events.
Back Stage
Streamers reviewed by David A. Rosenberg
Plays date for different reasons. Even a work as damning and compassionate, as violent and loving as David Rabe's Streamers suffers from events beyond its control.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Cast sabotages 'Streamers'
David Rabe, best known for Hurlyburly, was long considered the playwright of the Vietnam War. A vet whose company once traded him to another company for a Jeep, he understood the deep damage the war did to the American psyche. In an essay written....
TheaterMania
Review: Streamers
The Roundabout gives a sizzling, well-acted revival to David Rabe's play about a group of Vietnam War-era soldiers.
Talkin' Broadway
Review: Streamers
Go ahead, throw around the "D" word. It's an appropriate, perhaps even accurate, description of David Rabe's 1976 play Streamers. After all, if a play set in a Virginia army barracks in 1965, and concerning a quartet of soldiers tussling with issues of class, race, and sexuality before shipping out to Vietnam isn't dated, what is? Hasn't our understanding of each of these topics progressed well beyond what any 32-year-old play could teach us - especially in the coinciding eras of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and President-Elect Barack Obama? . . .
CurtainUp
Review: Streamers
This earnest, well-acted but mostly patience-trying revival certainly makes its points, although they have been blunted by time
ATW Digest - Birbiglia opens his 'Sleepwalk' - read the reviews [updated 11/13/08]
By Andy Propst on Nov 13, 2008 | In ATW Digest
ADDITIONS: 11/13/08 - 9:55am EST
Time Out NewYork
Review: Sleepwalk with Me
Mike Birbiglia tries to marry highly personal autobiography and stand-up comedy.
Associated Press
Mike Birbiglia rises and shines in comedy 'Sleepwalk With Me'
Variety
Review: Sleepwalk With Me
Mike Birbiglia's mind wanders into the strangest places. Ever wondered what would happen if an iPhone could shoot bullets? No? Birbiglia has, and while his solo show, "Sleepwalk With Me," may be a little lightweight as drama, his consistently engaging digressions keep the aud laughing at problems that probably wouldn't be all that amusing outside the theater.
Back Stage
Sleepwalk With Me reviewed by Andy Prospt
Given his unassuming entrance in his one-man show Sleepwalk With Me, Mike Birbiglia doesn't seem like a performer who could send audiences into gales of hysterical laughter.
TheaterMania
Review: Sleepwalk with Me
Mike Birbiglia's solo show deals with serious issues, but is an 80-minute grinathon.
Talkin' Broadway
Review: Sleepwalk with Me
When Nathan Lane talks, in-the-know theatre folk know to listen. Since his lilting punch of a voice commands your attention, why shouldn't his name when he places it prominently above the title of an Off-Broadway show? Sleepwalk With Me, the new show that Lane is coproducing at the Theatre at 45 Bleecker, conclusively proves it should. In Mike Birbiglia, the show's writer and performer, you'll find a talent of such vigorous freshness that you get a glimmer of understanding of what it might have been like to discover Lane once upon a time.
nytheatre.com
Review: Sleepwalk With Me
ATW Digest - Russell-directed Mindgame opens off-Broadway - read the reviews [updated 11/13/08]
By Andy Propst on Nov 13, 2008 | In ATW Digest
ADDITIONS: 11/13/08 - 9:54am EST
Newsday
Reviews: 'Farragut North,' 'Mindgame'
Time Out New York
Review: Mindgame
Perhaps the looniest stage failure of the year, this is dinner theater served with an emetic.
ADDITIONS: 11/11/08 - 8:05am EST
Back Stage
Mindgame reviewed by David Sheward
The trouble is with Mindgame, Anthony Horowitz's mindless thriller, is that twist is fairly obvious five minutes after the show starts. The second act is just as easy to predict.
New York Times
Journalist in Asylum Lacks Exit Strategy
With “Mindgame,” Ken Russell, the British film director, and Keith Carradine, the economical movie actor, attempt to resuscitate a moribund stage genre, the psychological thriller.
New York Post
'Mindgame' doesn't matter
Ken Russell has made many a loopy film in his day - "Liszto mania" and "Lair of the White Worm," among many others...
Associated Press
An Excess of Talk Does in the Actors in 'Mindgame'
''Mindgame,'' Anthony Horowitz's English mystery thriller, is death by exposition. And the weapon of choice is talk, talk, talk -- and more talk.
Variety
Review: Mindgame
...But more imagination has gone into the tricky set than into the plot, and despite some stabs at realistic horror, helmer Ken Russell can't quite stop himself from tipping the whole thing into farce.
TheaterMania
Review: Mindgame
Ken Russell's staging of this mediocre thriller is often more silly than scary.
Talkin' Broadway
Review: Mindgame
You only need to know one thing before seeing Anthony Horowitz’s thriller Mindgame at the Soho Playhouse: Don’t blink. . . .
nytheatre.com
Review: Mindgame
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