AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Well, that took a heck of a lot longer than I expected. I'm literally just getting in now and after nearly 10 hours of meeting, I'm dead.

I hate doing this, but I'm going to keep ATW on 'pause' until the AM

Back at ya tomorrow with a full set of 3-4x a day clippings.

Thanks for understanding - and for those of you who want to know what the meeting was about, email me.

:)

Best,

A

In a meeting all day - had hoped to get Drama Desk nominations onto the site before it begins. Alas, they haven't gotten the release out yet. So, they'll have to go on here sometime late day.

My apologies. Until then, a couple of clips from UK papers.

Hope you have a good one.

Best,

Andy

Daily Telegraph

The Great Game, Tricycle Theatre
The Tricycle's ambitious theatrical marathon on the politics of Afghanistan offers intelligent insight into a history written in blood, writes Charles Spencer. Rating: * * * *

The Guardian Performing Arts Blog

Alexis Soloski: Greek tragedies lost in Anne Carson's translation
The poet's trilogy about the house of Atreus lacks the austerity of Aeschylus and highlights the tricky business of adapting classic verse plays

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: The Philanthropist
When Finding Good Backfires

New York Times

The Mildest of Manners Have Perils
For sheer dullness, this moribund revival beats just about anything on Broadway this season.

New York Daily News

Prof positive proves negative
As the title character in "The Philanthropist," Matthew Broderick is a mousy professor who has only nice things to say about people. Unfortunately, it's hard to be generous about this zzzz-inducing Roundabout revival, which fails to flatter its star, director or the play.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of The Philanthropist
It’s been quite a year on Broadway for playwright Christopher Hampton. A year since the revival of his most celebrated drama, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” we’ve witnessed his translations of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and and Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage.”

Newsday

Theater review: "The Philanthropist"
...detachment from timely realities, whatever possessed the Roundabout Theatre Company to revive this mild little British satire about apathy...Then again, maybe not. Broderick, in his first major theater since being paired with Nathan Lane on stage and Sarah...

New York Post

Unworthy cause
Walking down 42nd Street after "The Philanthropist," I ran into a Times Square fixture -- the guy who dresses as the Dark Knight. I had to summon all my willpower not to yell, "Batman, quick! There's a disaster down the block!" It's baffling to see marquee names like playwright Christopher Hampton (who just...

Hartford Courant

Broderick Hits His Stride
...A graying Matthew Broderick, straining to present his character as English, comes into his own in the second half of the production, which opened Sunday night at the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre.

Bergen Record

Review: "The Philanthropist" on Broadway
The problem is that watching a dull character who's front-and-center in a play can get tedious pretty quickly. And Broderick, playing it straight, doesn't offer the audience anything offbeat, some kind of humor, that might make Philip's passivity less irritating.

Associated Press

A sleepy 'Philanthropist' is revived on B'way
Philip, the title character in Christopher Hampton's "The Philanthropist," is enamored of words, words, words and more words. They are the downfall of this professor of philology, and, come to think of it, the problem with the Roundabout Theatre Company's sleepy revival of this English comedy, which opened Sunday at its American Airlines Theatre.

Bloomberg.com

Broderick Saunters Through Icy, Bloodless `Philanthropist': Jeremy Gerard
The British prime minister and most of his cabinet have been assassinated by a right-wing nut job. Philip, the title character in Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist,” revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway, is nonplussed.

USA Today

Three plays span comedy, and history, with style
'Philanthropist', 'Norman Conquests', 'Mary Stuart'

Variety

Review: The Philanthropist
...With Matthew Broderick reducing the title character to a cartoon, performing in his own hermetic space that excludes everyone else onstage, the play sits inertly, its poignancy lost and its clever dialogue hollowed into empty banter.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: The Philanthropist
Matthew Broderick's latest star turn, in this Broadway revival of "The Philanthropist," continues a downward cycle that has continued from "The Producers" to "The Odd Couple" to "The Foreigner." Not that the play helps him much.

BackStage

The Philanthropist reviewed by David Sheward
In the early 1970s, Christopher Hampton's "The Philanthropist" must have shocked some audiences with its frank-for-its-time depiction of violence and loose sexuality.

TheaterMania

Review: The Philanthropist
Matthew Broderick fails to meet the challenges of playing the passive title character in the Roundabout's revival of Christopher Hampton's 1970 comedy.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Philanthropist
Ferris Bueller’s way off at the American Airlines, where he’s starring in Christopher Hampton’s The Philanthropist. Okay, technically it’s Matthew Broderick who’s appearing in the central role of Philip, the philology instructor and anagram lover too lily-livered to tell anyone anything he thinks they don’t want to hear. But since he’s playing everyone’s favorite 1980s-teen-film delinquent, complete with fake-looking roughed-up sideburns, the dorkiest English accent in history, and at best a high school junior’s comprehension of his deceptively complex character, why bother pretending? . . .

 

Early on in Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist, a 197X comedy that spin's Moliere's The Misanthrope 180 degrees, Philip (Matthew Broderick), an affable and unflappable professor of philology at Oxford, admits that he generally can find some good in any book he reads and that generally he can like a play no matter how terrible it might be. Such equanimity might come in handy for New York theatergoers attending David Grindley's lackluster revival of this bittersweet comedy that opened last night at the Roundabout.

Hampton's play begins with a bang – quite literally – as a get-together that Philip and his best friend and fellow professor Don (imbued with a certain clear-sightedness and amiable appeal by Steven Weber) have with a high-strung aspiring playwright student (Tate Ellington) turns sour because the young man thinks that all of Philip's kind, but empty, compliments are backhanded barbs. Philip will continue to be misunderstood as "Philanthropist" – which like the student's play is something of a conversation piece – moves forward.

When his exuberant and slightly catty fiancé Celia (a muted Anna Madeley) and he host a small get-together for friends and Braham (brought to life in a gloriously over-the-top turn from Jonathan Cake), a famous novelist whom Celia met at another event, Philip manages to insult Braham by commenting on the way in which he appropriates phrases used by other people and Braham's frequent use of the word "actually." After the party has ended and Philip's refused to pick up on Celia's desire to spend the night, Philip gives in to sexual advances by Araminta (Jennifer Mudge) to avoid, as theatergoers later learn, hurting her feelings.

Hampton's play attempts to incorporate some of the topicality of Moliere's piece. There's talk about a blood-bath in the Houses of Parliament and of a student's destruction of his dormitory room after when he comes to believe that there's no real hope for the world. These events- incredibly sad and disturbing – are mere anecdotes for the characters, all of whom, on one level or another, are representative of the seven deadly sins, either individual ones or various combinations. (In case audiences fail to recognize this, anagrams – creating new words and phrases from scrambling letters is a favorite pastime of Philip's – of the various evils are projected across the top of Tim Shortall's handsome, but overly abstract, rendering of Philip's living room.)

"Philanthropist" is by no means a rollicking comedy, but in Grindley's laborious production, clever turns of phrase and cutting bon mots barely elicit wry smiles. The abstraction of the scenic design – which never grounds the action firmly – may have something to do with a distance that theatergoers feel from the action and its humor. Similarly, the bombast of liturgical music that punctuates scenes jars.

Equally troubling is Broderick's performance – which seems like an Anglicized version of likeable wimps he's previously played. It never sparks to life so that audiences can find simultaneous bemusement in the predicament that Philip's genuine decency and goodwill causes and empathy for the pain it ultimately induces.

The production does spring to life while Cake, wearing a gloriously showy purple striped leisure suit (just one of the terrific period ensembles from costume designer Tobin Ost) is center stage. The actor revels in Braham's obnoxious and egotistical rants against the French and his broad, and ludicrous, pronouncements about his writing. There's also a certain joy to be found the bitchy scene that Celia and Araminta share after Celia's learned of Philip's infidelity.

Celia attempts to use this fling to break-off the engagement (one that strikes both the characters' friends and audiences as a complete mismatch), but ultimately, she must tell him the truth about her own feelings about the relationship. It's harsh stuff that, theoretically, should induce winces. Similarly, Hampton's clever ending should flicker with a bit of comedic hope. Unfortunately, neither of this revival quite becomes so deeply felt or richly conceived as to engender such emotions. It's the sort of show that ultimately does not provoke ill-will, but one may find oneself having to bring a little charity to The Philanthropist.

----- Andy Propst

---

The Philanthropist plays at the American Airline theatre (227 West 42nd Street). Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm with Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2pm. Tickets are $66.50 - $111.50 and can be purchased by calling 212-719-1300 or online at www.RoundaboutTheatre.org.

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: The Norman Conquests
A Comedic Trilogy Triumphs on Broadway

New York Times

Unrequited Lust, in Triplicate
The topping, London-born revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s “Norman Conquests” cripples you with laughter that shakes the body and, more subversively, fractures the soul.

New York Daily News

'Norman' conquers B'way with laughter
Unbridled libido makes for uncontrollable laughter in "The Norman Conquests," now back on Broadway for the first time since 1975 in a gold-standard revival.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of The Norman Conquests
It really doesn’t matter which order you see the three plays that comprise Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests,” an interlinked epic of dark humor, farcical misunderstanding and Chekhovian loneliness in suburban England.

New York Post

Triumphant 'Conquests'
A merry British sprite has been sprinkling magic dust all over Broad way. No, it's not Mary Poppins: It's Matthew Warchus. After last season's "Boeing-Boeing" and, more recently, "God of Carnage," the director's just spun comic gold out of another good-not-great play. Warchus' main asset is his sense of...

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "The Norman Conquests"
Seldom has a comedy crossed our shores that produced the kind of gut splitting laughter heard in Alan Ayckbourn's masterful "The Norman Conquests." I'd have to go back to the original "Noises Off" on Broadway to recall such a comically consummate production. It's three separate plays that can stand alone or be seen back to back. But I recommend seeing all three because it's the only way to appreciate the ingeniousness of the thing and it's three times the fun.

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: A Long Day's Hilarity With 'Norman Conquests'
On Saturdays, you can see all three plays in Alan Ayckbourn's "The Norman Conquests," a daunting but highly amusing proposition.

Bergen Record

A comedic triple play
Last Saturday, I had an Alan Ayckbourn immersion. And it was one of the most hilarious days and nights I've ever spent in a theater.

Associated Press

Alan Ayckbourn provides a triple dose of comedy
The Broadway revival of Alan Ayckbourn's "The Norman Conquests," is a seriously funny, as well as a comically serious, trilogy about relationships, specifically the not-so-peaceful coexistence between men and women.

Wall Street Journal

Laugh and the World Cries With You
The Old Vic's revival of Alan Ayckbourn's "The Norman Conquests," made up of three interlocking plays, comes to Broadway after a triumphant London run.

Bloomberg.com

Spacey's `Norman' Storms Broadway With Killer Ayckbourn Comedy: John Simon Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests,” revived in London by Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic Company and now exported to Broadway, is a remarkable invention.

TIME

Man of the Moment
The Norman Conquests is so damned funny (though grounded, as Ayckbourn's comedy always is, in real human emotion) that it may simply perpetuate the ...

Variety

Review: The Norman Conquests
...The Norman Conquests" delivers more laughs than ought to be legal while steadily expanding our perspective on the needling dissatisfaction beneath the comic chaos of his characters' lives. There's no such lack of audience fulfillment in the richly rewarding revival transferring from London's Old Vic, its structural ingenuity matched by an exceptional cast and by the supple modulations of Matthew Warchus' direction.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: The Norman Conquests
Bottom Line: Brilliantly staged trilogy of hilarious British comedies seems poised to conquer Broadway.

Back Stage

The Norman Conquests reviewed by Erik Haagensen
It's proving to be a stellar year for revivals on the Great White Way, but none packs as much comic punch as the Old Vic Theatre Company's splendid production of Alan Ayckbourn's "The Norman Conquests."

TheaterMania

Review: The Norman Conquests
Alan Ayckbourn's rollicking trilogy about marital strife benefits from Matthew Warchus' assured direction and a superb ensemble.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Norman Conquests
“I only wanted to make you happy!”...These seven words are uttered by the lovably loathsome lothario who’s the title character of The Norman Conquests, the bawdy, bouncy, and boisterous 1973 comedy trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn. But they can just as easily serve as the theme statement of the plays themselves, as well as of the accomplished Matthew Warchus-directed productions of them that have just transferred from London’s Old Vic to the Circle in the Square. ..

nytheatre.com

Review: The Norman Conquests

CurtainUp

Review: The Norman Conquests
With the terrific British cast and director from the much lauded Old Vic production on board, the triptych is as hilarious and poignant as ever.