AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Humor Abuse
Life With Father, a Clown

New York Times

Pratfalling Through an Eccentric Childhood, the Son of a Clown
Lorenzo Pisoni’s endearing new solo show is about growing up the son of a professional clown.

New York Daily News

A clown prince looks back
Every son, at some point, thinks his dad is a Bozo. Lorenzo Pisoni's pop actually was one. In his glossy solo show, "Humor Abuse," the writer-performer recalls growing up in the shadow of a sad-clown father who ran the Pickle Family Circus.

Time Out New York

Review: Humor Abuse
Lorenzo Pisoni tackles the age-old question: Can you be handsome and funny?

Associated Press

'Humor Abuse' pays homage to a man's clown father
Fathers and sons often make for potent dramatic confrontations.

Variety

Review: Humor Abuse
After trying to escape from his clown family as a child, Lorenzo Pisoni wore a button reading "I belong to the circus" by order of his father. For better or worse, this appears to be true: "Humor Abuse" is a clown show of the highest order, but it's also Pisoni's autobiography.

Back Stage

Humor Abuse reviewed by Erik Haagensen
Humor Abuse, a title with nicely multifaceted meaning, is about much more than clown routines.

TheaterMania

Review: Humor Abuse
Lorenzo Pisoni's solo show about growing up in the circus is utterly charming and often hilarious.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Humor Abuse
Lorenzo Pisoni is one actor whose father never encouraged him to stop clowning around. Quite the opposite: Larry Pisoni outright encouraged it. It was, after all, the family business, and he wanted his son to take

 

Additions for March 11, 2009:

Financial Times

33 Variations, Eugene O’Neill Theatre, New York
The structure of Moisés Kaufman’s new play unravels with plodding inevitability, writes Brendan Lemon

Time Out New York

Review: 33 Variations
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway chasing down a Beethoven musical mystery.

Huffington Post

Fern Siegel: Stage Door: 33 Variations, Two Men of Florence

Additions 12:15PM EST, March 10, 2009:

New York Magazine

Review: 33 Variations
Jane Fonda (accompanied by Beethoven) is not to be missed

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "33 Variations"
The mark of a great play is its ability to transport us, our hearts and minds, to places we couldn't possibly imagine, without ever being aware of how we got there. On that front, Moises Kaufmann's new play "33 Variations" is half successful. It does take us to wonderful new places, but we are fully aware of the journey.

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: 33 Variations
A Combination of Star-Power and Theater Artistry

New York Times

Beethoven and Fonda: Broadway Soul Mates
I’m willing to forgive a fair amount in a production that returns Jane Fonda with such gallantry to the Broadway stage after an absence of 46 years.

New York Daily News

Jane Fonda back on Broadway for '33 Variations'
Jane Fonda is back on Broadway, but too bad the handsomely designed but unconvincing drama "33 Variations" isn't as big an event.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of 33 Variations
History does not explain why Beethoven, while finishing his “Ninth Symphony” and “Mass” and on the verge of death, became utterly obsessed with a lengthy series of piano variations on an inconsequential beer hall waltz. Playwright-director Moises Kaufman’s response was to write “33 Variations,” now making its Broadway premiere with Jane Fonda.

Newsday

Jane Fonda braves Broadway in uneven '33 Variations'
Jane Fonda is lanky and wry, with a great chin and a flat, deep voice that, more than once in her return to Broadway, may make you think about her late father, Henry. By opening last night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in an ambitious new work - rather than in a brand-name vehicle or a star-driven fluff ball - she is also very brave.

New York Post

It's not music to our ears
Jane Fonda, is that really you? How long has it been since we've last caught up on Broadway? Forty-six years? You look great! And your character has a fatal illness? No way! There are quite a few issues with "33 Variations," written and directed by Moisés Kaufman. But the biggie is the difficulty of believing that anything...

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: Jane Fonda Moving In Broadway's '33 Variations'

FoxNews

Fonda Fantastic in Broadway Return

Bergen Record

Feldberg: Beethoven piece drives '33 Variations'
...Kaufman's effort has its distinctive, and even lovely, moments, but, overall, it doesn't stack up very well against Stoppard's play. In fact, it demonstrates how hard it is to find the right style, among other elements, to pull off such a bravura scheme....

Associated Press

Tepid version of '33 Variations' brings Jane Fonda back to Broadway
One of the problems with "33 Variations" is Fonda's cipherlike character. She may be centre stage much of the time, but we don't really learn much about her ...

USA Today

'33 Variations' plays on a theme: Human frailty

Bloomberg.com

Ageless Fonda Gets Inside Beethoven's Head: On Broadway With John Simon
Beethoven wrote 33 variations on a simple little waltz by the music publisher Anton Diabelli. Now Moises Kaufman has written “33 Variations,” a play in 33 scenes in which Jane Fonda, age 72, returns to the Broadway stage after a 46-year absence.

Variety

Review: 33 Variations
...If Moises Kaufman's elegant production outshines his schematic play, Fonda nonetheless distinguishes it with integrity and class.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: 33 Variations
Bottom Line: Jane Fonda makes her long-overdue Broadway return in a disappointingly lifeless play.

Back Stage

33 Variations reviewed by David Sheward
It is marvelous to see Fonda on Broadway after a long absence from major screen work and an even longer hiatus from the stage.

Washington Post

Theater Review: Broadway's '33 Variations' With Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is 71. I'm trying to process this preposterous fact as I watch the actress, still svelte and radiant, portray a musicologist dying of a wasting disease in "33 Variations," the earnest new Broadway play about the inscrutable progress of illness and genius.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fonda haunting in return to stage

TheaterMania

Review: 33 Variations
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway in Moises Kaufman's often rewarding play about a dying musicologist.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: 33 Variations
The idea of a series of meaningful somethings arising from a barely significant nothing is central to 33 Variations in more ways than one. Just as Moisés Kaufman’s play at the Eugene O’Neill explores how some of ...

CurtainUp

Review: 33 Variations
You don't have to know Beethoven from Bach to find yourself thoroughly absorbed by the theatricality with which Moises Kaufman has connected a legendary musical mystery about a Beethoven composition to the story of a Beethoven scholar determined to solve it

The Guardian

'Something magical has happened'
Actor Jane Fonda's much-anticipated return to Broadway certainly delivers the goods, writes Ed Pilkington

 

In their new show, Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams playing at the Metropolitan Room, husband-and-wife team Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano comb the American Songbook and find a wind array of tunes to beguile listeners during these troubled times.

Fasano sets the escapist tone for the show, which runs through Sunday, with Cole Porter's "Use Your Imagination," which she delivers in warm, silken and hopeful tones. As the evening progresses, she proves herself to be a deeply moving singer, with almost an actress' like ability to deliver a lyric and its emotion.

Comstock, perhaps best known as one of the co-creators of the long-running review, Our Sinatra, sits at the piano throughout the evening, and adds an aura of detached sophistication to "Dreams," but there is nonetheless a palpable tenderness to his delivery. It's felt most potently when he delivers the show's title number.

This tune, like others like "Sunny Side of the Street," "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "Brother Where Are You?," and "My Forgotten Man," date from the early part of the twentieth century, but the program does not avoid more contemporary sounds. Paul Simon is represented with "America" as is Laura Nyro with "Save the Country." Cleverly, two songs from the late twentieth century are included that hearken back to the years just before the Great Depression. Comstock ably arranges Sondheim's "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow" (from Follies) into a medley with the Gershwins' "Who Cares?" and late in the show, Fasano and Comstock deliver a not quite rollicking, but certainly jubilant take on Kander and Ebb's "Nowadays," a song that, in the context of Chicago celebrates the hedonism of the Roaring Twenties.

Throughout bassist Sean Smith provides excellent support for Comstock and Fasano and once they've concluded their encore, "Ain't We Got Fun?," theatergoers are apt to answer affirmatively, no matter what has happened to their IRA in recent months.

---- Andy Propst

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Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams plays at the Metropolitan Room (34 West 22nd Street). Performances are Friday and Saturday at 9:45pm and Sunday at 7pm. There is a $25.00 cover and 2 drink minimum. For reservations call 212-206-0440.

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Solo shows, in which performers revisit the cruelties inflicted on them in their youth, are a dime a dozen, and generally traverse similar arcs, right? Don't answer this question too quickly, or at least not until you've seen Lorenzo Pisoni and Erica Schmidt's Humor Abuse, which opened last night at Manhattan Theatre Club. In this often hilarious, and occasionally touching, show, Pisoni looks back on his youth spent in the company of his father, a clown with the Pickle Family Circus. I don't know but somehow tales of neglectful and substance abusing parents somehow begin to seem sane after hearing Pisoni describe how, when he was nine, his dad sent him to an airport, alone, with a set of moose antlers and had him try to board a plane. When the attendant (heard in voiceover in Bart Fasbender's sound design) explains, kindly, that he'll need to check them, Pisoni, imitating the younger incarnation of himself says sheepishly "I think that's the joke..."

Tales like these certainly illuminate the difficulty that Pisoni, who confesses that he's "not funny," had growing up. Theatergoers watch as he recreates the grueling sessions that he had learning how to perform a backflip for his dad. With each unsuccessful attempt, some of which leave Pisoni splayed on the floor, the voice of the elder man is heard to say "Again." To get ice cream for dessert at the dinner table, Pisoni must out do his father in double takes.

In actuality, the strikingly handsome Pisoni's perception of being "not funny" belies the fact that he can be very funny as he recreates portions of his father's routines and his own. One highlight of the show, which is performed on an essentially bare stage, outfitted with just a tattered curtain, a tall ladder and wooden chest, is a routine he developed for himself early in his career. It involves a pair of huge flippers, swimming goggles, a staple gun, and a very small bucket. As this act unfolds, chuckles do develop into gales of laughter.

As successful as this and several other extended clowning segments of "Humor" are, though, the piece's narrative as a whole disappoints. There's something rag-tag not only about the set but the arrangement of the stories that Pisoni relates, including his father's ultimate dismissal from the circus and the performer's reconciliation with the clowning tradition into which he was born. Theoretically, there's emotional potency at to be found in "Humor," but Pisoni and Schmidt, who's also directed, have yet to fully channel the anecdotes and physical humor into what could be a devastatingly funny and moving one-man show.

---- Andy Propst

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Humor Abuse plays at MTC New York City Center – Stage II (131 West 55th Street). Performance schedule varies for complete information and ticketing online visit www.NYCityCenter.org or call 212-581-1212. Further information is also available online at www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

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