Putting It Planely: And Another One DownThis afternoon, the producers of the 2008 Tony Award Best Revival of a Play
Boeing-Boeing announced that the show that's been pressurized for laughter will close its cabin doors for good. The show will close at Broadway's
Longacre Theatre on January 4, 2009.
Personally,
I found this show to be one of those rare, laugh-out-loud absurdly funny shows. Making it a joy to see was British actor and onetime Wisconsin resident
Mark Rylance, who earned a very well-deserved Tony Award for his hilarious portrayal of befuddled Wisconsinite Robert. But it was Rylance who ultimately befuddled Tony viewers with what was surely one of the most unusual acceptance speeches in years.
Helmed by
Matthew Warchus, the revival of
Marc Camoletti's farce (translated by
Beverley Cross and
Francis Evans) first landed in London nearly two years ago with Rylance leading the cast. Then, the show opened on Broadway on May 4, 2008, with Rylance reprising his role, alongside
Christine Baranski,
Bradley Whitford,
Gina Gershon,
Kathryn Hahn and the Tony-nominated
Mary McCormack. Rylance and Baranski remain in the show.
In recent weeks,
Boeing-Boeing's box office has been in a holding pattern around the 60% capacity level. But with economy crashing and burning, and having recouped their initial investment, the producers are closing out the very successful revival on a high note, and plans are aloft for a 45-week national tour. When
Boeing-Boeing finally closes, it will have played 280 performances.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Boeing-Boeing, Bradley Whitford, Broadway, Christine Baranski, Closing Notices, Gina Gershon, Kathryn Hahn, Mark Rylance, Mary McCormack, Matthew Warchus, Play, Revival
Boeing-Boeing (The SOB Review) - Longacre Theatre, New York, NY
*** (out of ****)Looking for the funniest, laugh-out-loud comedy currently on the Great White Runway?
Look no further than Broadway's
Longacre Theatre where almost in spite of itself,
Boeing-Boeing has touched down for what looks to be a lengthy layover. It's a mostly fantastic, high-flying farce.
In a season already filled with plenty of this genre, from the frivolous (
The Ritz) to the fraught (
November) to the fanciful (
Is He Dead?), one would be forgiven for thinking audiences would have had enough of the fare. And to be frank, I wondered how New Yorkers would respond to a revival of such a dated show, which
originally closed on Broadway almost as quickly as it opened back in February 1965.
But with
Claire van Kampen's groovy selection of sixties tunes setting the mood, supplemented by
Rob Howell's ingenious red, yellow and blue set and costume designs that are artfully augmented by
Hugh Vanstone's complementary lighting, it's clear from take-off that this is going to be a first-class flight.
Written by
Marc Camoletti (translated by
Beverley Cross and
Francis Evans),
Boeing-Boeing has a fairly simple, silly plot. Bernard (
Bradley Whitford) is a swinging American bachelor living in Paris who's simultaneously balancing three stewardess, er, flight attendant fiancées --
Kathryn Hahn as
TWA's Gloria,
Gina Gershon as
Alitalia's Gabriella and
Mary McCormack as
Lufthansa's Gretchen -- all with the help of a good old-fashioned
OAG (yes, they still print them). Bernard relies on the OAG's schedules to help him keep track of when his ladies would be in and out of his love nest.
Fortunately for Bernard, he has a cunningly complicit French maid Berthe (
Christine Baranski). In a delightful shellgame, whenever it's time for a shift change, Berthe wheels out a special cart with three color-coded boxes to ensure that there's no trace of the last female companion left for the next one to find.
Of course, as one would expect of any farce, all these best intentions come perilously close to crashlanding. Soon after Bernard's friend Robert (
Mark Rylance) unexpectedly comes calling from Wisconsin, the women in Bernard's life, quite predictably, all end up back at the Paris apartment at the same time. Not even a schedule manifest can predict turned-around and canceled flights.
As absurd as the storyline is,
Matthew Warchus portentously propels this
Boeing-Boeing to a new altitude with a turbocharged cruising speed that left me breathless from laughing. Much of the marvelous mirth comes from watching Rylance do his best to create diversions for his buddy Bernard's girlfriends, finding himself mirroring his friend's lust for life just a little too closely. It's hard to believe that this Shakespearean actor could be so capable of slapstick comedy, but in his Broadway debut, he's proving to be a worthy master. This is truly his show.
Nearly as wonderful is Baranski's wickedly funny take as Berthe. In her first Broadway outing since 1991's short-lived
Nick & Nora, this talented actress demonstrates a propensity for broad comic relief, whether it's with an exaggerated roll of her eyes or via her deadpan, droll response.
Regrettably, I can't say the same for Whitford. As a man wrestling to maintain his harem, he certainly gets all of the agitated nerves down pat. Yet they come along just a bit too soon, almost as if he's never flown before. And if you're going to have the testicular fortitude to balance three fiancées at once, you'd better have more than a bag full of nuts and nerves of steel before ever taxiing down the runway.
Among the array of assembled space waitresses, McCormack plays her Gretchen so over the top, I half expected oxygen masks to drop. As shockingly funny as she often is, I just wasn't buying her as a bona fide love interest for Bernard. Hahn's gumsmacking American is played much more credibly, but it's Gershon who wins the day with her glorious Gabriella -- this is the best I've ever seen her and it's hard not to fall for her.
Despite the wildly mixed performances,
Boeing-Boeing is about the wildest ride on Broadway. Fasten your seatbelts!
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:And The Tony Nominees Go To... (May 12, 2008)
Whoopi! Tony Eligibility And More Handicapping (May 9, 2008)
Did Boeing-Boeing Have Critics Flying High? (May 5, 2008)
Opening: Boeing-Boeing Lands On Great White Way (May 4, 2008)
Is It Just Me, Or... (Part III) (January 22, 2008)
Boeing-Boeing To Touch Down On Great White Way (September 17, 2007)
Was De La Tour's Latest A Tour De Force With Critics? (February 17, 2007)
London's Boeing-Boeing Flies Into Opening Night (February 15, 2007)
Labels: Boeing-Boeing, Bradley Whitford, Broadway, Christine Baranski, Kathryn Hahn, Mark Rylance, Mary McCormack, Matthew Warchus, Play, Revival, The SOB Review
Did Boeing-Boeing Have Critics Flying High?Yesterday, the first Broadway revival of the sixties sex farce
Boeing-Boeing opened at the
Longacre Theatre. Helmed by
Matthew Warchus, the play was written by
Marc Camoletti and translated by
Beverley Cross and
Francis Evans. The show stars
Christine Baranski,
Bradley Whitford,
Gina Gershon and
Mark Rylance.
Most critics were flying high in their praise of the show.
Offering that the revival "soars right out of its time zone and into some unpolluted stratosphere of classic physical comedy,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley is first in line for take-off: "
Boeing Boeing, it turns out, has great bones.... It allows the cast members to cut loose like preschoolers on the playground of their dreams. And like fond parents, we can enjoy their shenanigans while knowing that the slides and swing sets are too well-made for anyone to get seriously hurt. Their performances are among the most one-dimensional and stereotyped that have ever shown up on a Broadway stage -- and that’s a large part of their roaring success.... At the performance I saw, the ensemble began a tad shakily, and I wondered if I had been a fool to enjoy the play as much as I did when I saw it in London last year. But as the show progressed, everyone shed self-consciousness and found a shared rhythm. The second act was unconditional bliss."
Concluding that "nothing sullies the enjoyment of Warchus' sprightly production or of the play's unexpected ingenuity,"
Variety's
David Rooney also soars in his review: "It could have been a tired dollop of '60s camp in the wrong hands, but director Matthew Warchus and his sparkling cast fine-tune this fluffy French farce with clockwork precision, and the result is a riot.... [W]hile it usually requires more verbal complexity than physical dexterity to sustain this kind of featherweight comedy, Warchus and the ensemble do a remarkable job of keeping things at cruise speed for 2½ hours with no discernable lags.... [W]hile none of the women are slouches, the master of physical comedy here is Rylance, the one holdover from the production's London cast.... With inexhaustible inventiveness, Rylance gives shape to Robert's sly blossoming from a meek, unsophisticated bystander into a man eager to remedy his romantic inexperience and not shy about partaking of his friend's female smorgasbord."
Lauding that "it's nothing but blue skies and mile-high hilarity,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News gives this ticket four out of five stars: "At certain points, the comedy becomes very broad, almost ridiculous. But it's such a blast, you don't care. Credit goes to director Matthew Warchus, whose jet-propelled production is filled with fantastic performances. Chief among them is one by Mark Rylance, who played the frazzled and lovable Robert in London. In his Broadway debut, he creates one of the funniest characters in memory.... Bradley Whitford makes a dashing and dexterous playboy who seems to have taken the "American in Paris" thing to heart.... As the exasperated maid, seasoned joker Christine Baranski lays on the French accent thicker than a sauce Béarnaise -- and it works."
Gushing that "gold is gold, and if slogging through the likes of
Boeing-Boeing" is what it takes to mine it, so be it,"
Eric Grode of
The New York Sun offers a review that's positivey upright and in a locked position: "Matthew Warchus and his rubber-limbed sextet of actors have somehow wrenched Marc Camoletti's musty effort out from its own 747-size languors. And once again, the salvage operation is led by a superb comic performance. This time it's Mark Rylance, taking a decided step away from his renowned Shakespearean diet ... and creating a staggeringly funny portrait of lust-deranged masculinity.... The usually dependable Ms. Baranski trips up repeatedly on her impenetrable French accent but handles Berthe's silent passages neatly, with a deceptively casual face-off between her and Robert serving as a giddy respite amid the slamming doors and flying bodies. Mr. Whitford, by comparison, starts out uncomfortably broad and has nowhere to go as the tension builds."
Fessing up that "I hate to be a buzz kill.... [A]nd I don't have a clue to explain the genuine mirth around me,"
Newsday's
Linda Winer sounds as if the show lost her luggage: "Why the reception appears to be different now, I don't dare to analyze. Despite a dreamy hoot of a performance by Mark Rylance ... the director's comic philosophy is rooted in the bellowing, jumping around, hitting-with-a-beanbag-chair school of humor.... Please don't get me wrong. My problems is not prissy feminism, a modern distortion of feminism's joy and strength. Sure, women are plugged into the mechanics of the plot as if they were widgets in gumball-colored, miniskirted airline uniforms. But the women ... are at at least unpredictable. Warchus ... lets the women be sexual thugs-blowup dolls who are also action figures. The physical businesses -- the phony trembling fits, the floor rolling and the big leggy strides across the stage -- culminate, if that's the verb, with special 'curtain-call choreography' by Kathleen Marshall. Big strides for the theater, perhaps, are for another day."
Declaring that
Boeing-Boeing "crash landed,"
New York Post' s
Clive Barnes sounds as if he boarded the wrong flight in his one-star review: "When I saw this revival, staged by Matthew Warchus and designed by Rob Howell, in London last summer, I thought it was terrible, but Rylance had already left the cast, and I was assured by some that he had made a terrific difference. He does make a terrific difference. And it's still terrible -- as repetitious and as tedious as a flea circus.... But the whole cast, particularly the agile Whitford and a beautifully acidulated Baranski, as the game but aging French maid, prove to be accomplished farceurs."
With plenty of raves all around, this
Boeing-Boeing looks like it can settle in for a reasonably long, comfortable flight on the Great White Way. I'll be taking in a performance this week and will provide my own SOB Review shortly thereafter.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Opening: Boeing-Boeing Lands On Great White Way (May 4, 2008)
Is It Just Me, Or... (Part III) (January 22, 2008)
Boeing-Boeing To Touch Down On Great White Way (September 17, 2007)
Was De La Tour's Latest A Tour De Force With Critics? (February 17, 2007)
London's Boeing-Boeing Flies Into Opening Night (February 15, 2007)
Labels: Boeing-Boeing, Bradley Whitford, Broadway, Christine Baranski, Critics' Capsule, Mark Rylance, Matthew Warchus, Play, Revival
Opening: Boeing-Boeing Lands On Great White WayThis week marks the final homestretch for Broadway's 2007-08 Theatrical Season. The
last three shows open before this year's Tony Award derby shifts into high gear with its nominees being announced May 13.
The first of those three,
Boeing-Boeing, opens today at Rialto's
Longacre Theatre for an open-ended engagement. After this farce from
Marc Camoletti and
Beverley Cross (late husband of
Dame Maggie Smith) and
Francis Evans first opened in London during 1961, it became the West End's longest-running comedy. But amazingly,
it crashed and burned when during its 1965 Broadway run of just 23 regular performances.
Now directed by
Matthew Warchus, this
Boeing-Boeing is taking off on the Great White Way with a stellar cast, including
Christine Baranski (in her first regular Main Stem outing since 1991's
Nick & Nora),
Bradley Whitford in his first Broadway turn since serving as a replacement in 1989-91's
A Few Good Men),
Gina Gershon and
Mark Rylance, who is not only reprising his Olivier-nominated role as Robert, but is finally making his Broadway debut.
I'm hearing that this version of
Boeing-Boeing is played much more broadly than the acclaimed West End mounting. Will the second time be the charm for this play on the Great White Way? Find out tomorrow as I provide my critics' capsule.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Is It Just Me, Or... (Part III) (January 22, 2008)
Boeing-Boeing To Touch Down On Great White Way (September 17, 2007)
Was De La Tour's Latest A Tour De Force With Critics? (February 17, 2007)
London's Boeing-Boeing Flies Into Opening Night (February 15, 2007)
Labels: Boeing-Boeing, Bradley Whitford, Broadway, Christine Baranski, London, Mark Rylance, Matthew Warchus, Opening Night, Play, Revival, Transfer
