Farnsworth Invention To Be Turned OffLast night, it was announced that
Aaron Sorkin The Farnsworth Invention has posted its closing notice. The play about the race to build the first television will shutter at the Broadway's
Music Box Theatre on March 2.
Directed by
Des McAnuff and starring
Hank Azaria and
Jimmi Simpson, the show scored
mediocre reviews when it opened in early December (
I gave it two out of four stars). Sorkin has been put through the
proverbial wringer for twisting historical facts in fictionalizing this true story.
No matter now. The cold hard facts as we know them are this. During the February winter doldrums,
The Farnsworth Invention's box office take last week was down to $186,343 for a total capacity of just 43.2%, while the average ticket price was $53.65. The only show to pull a lower capacity crowd was the 11 year old revival of
Chicago (42.8%), and the only shows to pull in lower grosses were the very funny
Is He Dead? (which at just $165,165, sadly appears to almost be caput) and cult favorite
Xanadu ($153,328).
When Sorkin's drama finally closes, it will have played a total of 104 regular performances. Then on March 2, it will be history.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Sorkin "No Tracy Letts" (December 14, 2007)
Did Critics Enjoy Sorkin's Invention? (December 4, 2007)
The Farnsworth Invention (The SOB Review) (December 4, 2007)
Don't Touch That Dial: Farnsworth Invention Opens (December 3, 2007)
All Of Great White Way Gleams Tonight (November 29, 2007)
Strike Fallout, Part Two? Opening Nights In Question (November 12, 2007)
Television Comes To Broadway (June 21, 2007)
Labels: Aaron Sorkin, Box Office, Broadway, Closing Notices, Des McAnuff, Hank Azaria, Jimmi Simpson, Play, The Farnsworth Invention
Did Critics Enjoy Sorkin's Invention?Last evening,
Aaron Sorkin's first play on the Great White Way in nearly twenty years opened at Broadway's
Music Box Theatre. Directed by
Des McAnuff,
The Farnsworth Invention pits
Hank Azaria against
Jimmi Simpson in the supposedly true story on the race to invent television. Critics were lukewarm at best.
Calling this "vintage Sorkin and crackling prime-time theater,"
Linda Winer of
Newsday offers about the most glowing review I could find: "Breezy and shrewd, smart-alecky and idealistic, the quick-moving drama presents two sides to the still-contentious story behind the invention of television....For all the double and triple casting, nobody is generic. Sorkin can pile more details than the mind can process about the mechanic versus the electronic TV. But he makes sure we get it. He also can set the stage for the Great Depression and the moonwalk with a few miraculously brief bursts of information."
Noting how "Sorkin has gotten some -- possibly a lot -- of his facts wrong,"
New York Post's
Clive Barnes still offers two and a half stars: "Sorkin's take on the Farnsworth/Sarnoff standoff would be better suited to a screen, either big or small. Even now, while crackling with crisp dialogue,
The Farnsworth Invention often has the air of a clumsy stage adaptation of, say,
'Citizen Kane.' Its very busyness detracts from it as a stage play -- plus the fact that all but two of its 19 actors play multiple roles....(McAnuff)'s helped by the smartly minimalist stage design of
Klara Zieglerova, and the general performance of his Protean cast, particularly Simpson as the innocent genius, a
Jimmy-Stewartishly rumpled Farnsworth, and the smoothly opportunistic and charmingly ruthless Azaria as the nicely tailored Sarnoff."
Eric Grode of
The New York Sun offers this middling review: "Mr. Sorkin...has brought over some unfortunate habits from the left coast, including a tendency to create dramatic parallels where none exist and a weakness for soupy background music. But he has also imported his shrewd ear for plotting and his unmistakable flair for well-crafted paragraphs caroming off the halls of power. And he has found in Des McAnuff the rare director capable of turning all those painstakingly assembled anecdotes into a breezy parable, one about two men with huge dreams and the invention that proved bigger and more rapacious than even they could imagine."
Calling it an "information-crammed, surface-skimming biodrama,"
Ben Brantley of
The New York Times is dismissive: "you’re likely to leave
The Farnsworth Invention feeling that you have just watched an animated
Wikipedia entry, fleshed out with the sort of anecdotal scenes that figure in 're-enactments' on
E! channel documentaries and true-crime shows. This two-hour play is a fast-moving sequence of reflex-stimulating information- and emotion-bites. It never pauses long enough to find depth in any of them. Mr. Sorkin clearly had higher intentions."
Referring to "Sorkin's ingratiating approach" and "manicured dialogue,"
David Rooney of
Variety is quite critical: "
Farnsworth never fully moves beyond its stream of overexplained factoids. What's worse is that it's morally questionable....Sorkin wants to have it both ways. He depicts Sarnoff as single-minded in his focus on personal glory and corporate profit to the exclusion of all other concerns. But then after crushing Farnsworth and consigning the true inventor of television to obscurity (in lengthy legal proceedings reduced to a single perfunctory scene), Sarnoff gets to imagine the rapprochement between the two men and acknowledge the underdog's achievement. He also gets to show tearful remorse and big-picture perspective in a manipulative closing speech."
Discounting the show that "seemed to have everything going for it,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News is also negative: "So why is
Farnsworth disappointing and ho-hum enough to make you want to change channels? Sorkin's framework -- Sarnoff and Farnsworth co-narrate the story -- automatically adds a layer of distance. And though the play is informative, it's seldom deeply involving....Both stars give fine performances, but their characters often don't rise much above one dimension....Dramatic license is one thing. But a play about the invention of television that fails to blaze in living color is another."
Frankly, as much as I enjoyed the first act, I felt very cheated by the second, which clearly should have been labeled "The Sorkin Invention."
Newsday's Linda Winer is right to point out that there are plenty of people questioning Sorkin's conceit in adding a contrived confrontation between Farnsworth and Sarnoff when it admittedly never happened. She's also right to question where all the outrage was when
Frost/Nixon used a similarly fictitious 11 o'clock device to propel its story (she clearly wasn't reading my
review in which I said, "[S]uch flagrant abuse of the facts borders on an abrogation of artistic license.").
You can view my full SOB Review for
The Farnsworth Invention by clicking
here.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:The Farnsworth Invention (The SOB Review) (December 4, 2007)
Don't Touch That Dial: Farnsworth Invention Opens (December 3, 2007)
All Of Great White Way Gleams Tonight (November 29, 2007)
Strike Fallout, Part Two? Opening Nights In Question (November 12, 2007)
Television Comes To Broadway (June 21, 2007)
Labels: Aaron Sorkin, Broadway, Critics' Capsule, Des McAnuff, Hank Azaria, Jimmi Simpson, La Jolla Playhouse, Play, The Farnsworth Invention
The Farnsworth Invention (The SOB Review) - Music Box Theatre, New York, NY** (out of ****)With nary a boob tube in sight, it's astonishing that the backstory on the invention of television is playing out on the unlikeliest of all living art forms: the stage.
But against
Klara Zieglerova's unimaginitive set, which, let's be honest, inexplicably looks more like a retread of her dual-level
Jersey Boys design gussied up like a retro Japanese steakhouse -- I'm not kidding! --
Des McAnuff wisely keeps all channel surfers at bay by focusing their attention on his two outstanding principle actors in
Aaron Sorkin's second Broadway play
The Farnsworth Invention.
The two exceptional actors --
Hank Azaria as the irascibly boorish
David Sarnoff, legendary founder of
NBC, and
Jimmi Simpson as the boyish man who went down in history as the asterisk, the titular
Philo T. Farnsworth -- complement each other perfectly with enough
yin and yang to feel more like you're caught in a quick moving giant
yo-yo of one-upsmanship: one moment one of them is up in the race to "invent" television, the next moment he's down and vice versa.
There's a particularly captivating moment during the First Act when the initial promise of a televised live picture crystalizes that's positively electrifying. It hints at just how great this show could have been. The irony is that McAnuff never allows his audience to see that picture. By deliberately keeping the one single prototype to be found in all of
The Farnsworth Invention turned away from us, we're never truly allowed in. Faster than you can say "photon," the magic Sorkin had succeeded in building gets zapped away.
Making matters worse, in the Second Act, Sorkin resorts to sheer melodrama bordering on pure fiction. It's a pity Sorkin chooses to veer so far from reality in the climactic dust-up between Farnsworth and Sarnoff. It's an exposive scene to be sure, but the moment is ruined by an 11 o'clock admission that what we were to believe constitutes a first attempt at reality TV is instead as bogus as a Jerry Springer episode. Just like with Springer, we feel had. Only here, we didn't see it coming.
Even more frustrating is Sorkin's feeble attempt at a misty-eyed finale. Given what a certifiable SOB Sarnoff is made out to be throughout the proceedings, how can anyone believe he'd shed anything but crocodile tears for Farnsworth. Apparently Sorkin does what he does "best" for television -- he signs off with a hackneyed, melodramatic conclusion.
Maybe that works for a made-for-TV movie, but on a Broadway stage, we just need a better picture with finer tuning.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Related Stories:Don't Touch That Dial: Farnsworth Invention Opens (December 3, 2007)
All Of Great White Way Gleams Tonight (November 29, 2007)
Strike Fallout, Part Two? Opening Nights In Question (November 12, 2007)
Television Comes To Broadway (June 21, 2007)
Labels: Aaron Sorkin, Broadway, Des McAnuff, Hank Azaria, Jimmi Simpson, Play, The Farnsworth Invention, The SOB Review
Don't Touch That Dial: Farnsworth Invention OpensNearly three weeks after it was originally scheduled to open,
Aaron Sorkin's
The Farnsworth Invention finally gets its opening night this evening at Broadway's
Music Box Theatre.
The November 12 opening night was the first casualty of sorts during the recent stagehands strike.
The drama stars
Hank Azaria and
Jimmi Simpson as the legendary David Sarnoff and Philo T. Farnsworth, respectively, who raced to build the first functioning television.
The
Des McAnuff-helmed play enjoyed its world premiere last summer at the
La Jolla Playhouse, just north of San Diego. McAnuff had been the playhouse's artistic director until
Christopher Ashley took over later this year.
Find out tomorrow whether critics enjoyed tuning in when I present my critics' capsule. I'll also be providing my own SOB Review then.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:All Of Great White Way Gleams Tonight (November 29, 2007)
Strike Fallout, Part Two? Opening Nights In Question (November 12, 2007)
Television Comes To Broadway (June 21, 2007)
Labels: Aaron Sorkin, Broadway, Des McAnuff, Hank Azaria, Jimmi Simpson, La Jolla Playhouse, Opening Night, Play, The Farnsworth Invention
