Elling Turns To Ending
Well, that was quick.
Since I've been on vacation, I haven't even had an opportunity -- yet -- to write my review for the show. But I can tell you that I certainly enjoyed the show, which snuck up on me and left me a wee bit teary eyed at the end -- perhaps a surprise for all the folks who walked out of the production who never knew what they missed.
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.
Labels: Brendan Fraser, Broadway, Closing Notices, Denis O'Hare, Elling, Jennifer Coolidge, Jeremy Shamos, Play, Richard Easton, Simon Bent
All Elling Set To Break Loose On Broadway
Beginning November 2, playwright
Simon Bent's
Elling starts previews on Broadway. The comedy is based on the
Ingvar Ambjørnsen novel and Academy Award-nominated Norwegian
film from 2001.
The play itself was originally mounted at London's
Bush Theatre in 2007. Now on Broadway,
Doug Hughes will helm a new
Elling starring Tony-winning actor
Denis O'Hare in the title role. O'Hare will be joined by
Brendan Fraser in his Broadway debut as Kjell,
Jennifer Coolidge as Reidun,
Richard Easton as Alfons and
Jeremy Shamos as Frank.
Elling appears to be purposely be marketing itself as enigmatic. Witness the puzzle pieces on its
website,
Facebook and
Twitter pages. It's such a puzzle, that each are surprisingly bereft of any real information regarding the show. To find a description, you must turn to
Telecharge, the official ticketbroker for the play, which describes the comedy as follows:
Set in the current day, Elling is a comedy about a wildly mismatched pair of roommates trying to embrace life, love, friendship, pizza, poetry and women. Denis O’Hare plays obsessive/compulsive Elling. Brendan Fraser, plays the wildly enthusiastic gentle giant Kjell. Jennifer Coolidge plays Reidun, the object of Kjell’s considerable affection, and Richard Easton plays Alfons, Elling’s unlikely poet mentor.
When produced in London a few years back, the
West End Whingers hailed the show as "A feel good story of the first degree. It's also utterly charming and very funny."
Broadway.com described the London incarnation of
Elling as follows:
Mummy's boy Elling and his roommate, the uncouth, reluctant virgin Kjell Bjarne, are the Odd Couple of Oslo: a pair of confused souls taking their first steps in the outside world after years of an isolated and institutional life. Given a flat in the city by social services, their mission is to either re-assimilate themselves into society or be forcibly returned to the asylum. All they have to do is convince their social worker that they really are "normal" -- even if it does feel safer sleeping in a wardrobe.
O'Hare and Coolidge alone were enough to compel me to get my tickets early. Those two were responsible for some truly
memorable theatrical experiences, but I'm also thrilled that Easton will be back on Broadway and can attest to Shamos' stage work. The wild card certainly is Fraser, who appears to be the producers' movie star insurance card for selling tickets. Starting Tuesday, we'll see whether he has the mettle.
The limited run of
Elling opens at Broadway's
Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 21 and is scheduled through March 20, 2011.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I have received nothing of value in exchange for this post.Labels: Brendan Fraser, Broadway, Denis O'Hare, Doug Hughes, Elling, Jennifer Coolidge, Jeremy Shamos, Play, Richard Easton, Simon Bent
100 Saints: Were Critics Singing Its Praises?Two evenings ago, budding playwright
Kate Fodor's new play
100 Saints You Should Know opened. The reviews are mixed on the material, but generally positive on performances.
Calling it "a play you should know,"
Newsday's
Linda Winer recommends the work: "Fodor invents rich characters who speak in their own peculiar rhythms and make observations that defy our expectations for this perilous subject matter....
Ethan McSweeny has directed an exquisite cast to find the humor, absurdity and simple elegance of the search....The luminous
Lois Smith continues her recent surge of priceless portrayals of seemingly ordinary women in such plays as
The Trip to Bountiful....Any cliche of the impossibly precocious daughter is turned into something exhilarating, scary and new by the terrific young actress
Zoe Kazan....
Jeremy Shamos has a quiet, touching credibility as the priest whose conflicts go beyond the generality of headlines into particular heartbreak."
Observing that the show's characters "earn the attention they crave,"
Variety's
Marilyn Stasio also offers praise: "Helmer Ethan McSweeny's sensitive reading of the material and an extremely classy cast make all the difference in a production of this episodic and none-too-original drama about the difficulties of grasping and holding onto one's beliefs in a modern world....Structurally, Fodor has written an articulate, if dramatically circular play, with the overlong and repetitive setup scenes in the first act methodically paying off in the second."
Taking note of "unresolved quality throughout,"
Ben Brantley of
The New York Times is mostly kind: "This tale of everyday people in search of faith, directed by Ethan McSweeny and featuring the estimable Lois Smith, is thoughtful, well spoken, humbly aware of its limitations and respectful of its characters. It is, in other words, the kind of play you could take home to mother. Just don’t expect it to provide you with a transporting night of passion....But the story approaches these topical matters with a calm, open mind and a tidy, symmetrical structure that balances and parallels different points of view....Ms. Kazan enjoyably nails the hostile neediness of an adolescent girl who hates her mother as much as she loves her. And Ms. Smith...turns Colleen’s first scene into a mini master class in acting."
Labeling it "sensitive and engaging yet, in the end, uneven,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News offers a mixed review: "The dialogue sometimes sounds more like a setup for punch lines than honest-to-God conversation....(The second act) tolls with such honesty and depth that one imagines
Francis de Sales, the patron saint of authors, watching Fodor's back when she wrote it....The always excellent Lois Smith makes the most of Colleen....Zoe Kazan, memorable last year in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is uninhibited and brash and makes the wild-child Abby both believable and sympathetic."
Noting how
100 Saints You Should Know "has enough issues for a trio of
Lifetime movies,"
New York Post's
Frank Scheck offers a two-and-a-half star review: "Though the playwright's compassion is evident -- as is her ability to interweave their plights in emotionally resonant and sometimes humorous ways --
100 Saints has a patented feel that recalls the many similarly sensitive off-Broadway dramas that preceded it....To her credit, Fodor doesn't provide any pat solutions to her characters' crises....It's hardly a surprise that Smith is wonderful, but there is also fine work by Moloney...Shamos....and the two younger performers.
As you'll recall from last week,
I recommended the production with ***1/2 stars. Performances of
100 Saints You Should Know run through September 30.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:100 Saints: One Opening Night (September 18, 2007)
100 Saints You Should Know (The SOB Review) (September 14, 2007)
Labels: 100 Saints You Should Know, Critics' Capsule, Jeremy Shamos, Kate Fodor, Lois Smith, Off-Broadway, Play, Zoe Kazan
100 Saints You Should Know (The SOB Review) - Mainstage Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York, NY
***1/2 (out of ****)Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the death of that
most saintly of 20th Century Nobel Prize winners, recently released passages from
Mother Teresa's remarkable diaries have illuminated what has been characterized as
her personal crisis of faith. All of which begs the question of where faith and disbelief intersect.
Those two intangible elements intersect quite literally in
Kate Fodor’s arresting and provocative new play,
100 Saints You Should Know, now enjoying its "world premiere" at Off-Broadway’s
Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theatre (in actuality, it was first presented last July at
Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre in Chicago, but I won't quibble that point here).
In this frequently humorous, yet ultimately circumspect morality play directed with sharp veracity by
Ethan McSweeny, another Theresa (Janel Moloney) finds herself on a spiritual quest. Having been a teenage mother -- her acerbic, downright bitter teenage daughter Abby (Zoe Kazan) is now teetering close to the precipice in replicating Theresa's earlier missteps -- she is nearing middle age and searching for more meaning in her life. Perhaps it's no accident that she's found herself cleaning toilets in the rectory of a local Catholic Church.
Matthew (
Jeremy Shamos) -- a priest on leave from that parish is experiencing a crisis of faith -- returns home for respite in the care of his reliably faithful, old-fashioned Irish mother Colleen (
Lois Smith). Fueling Matthew’s crisis is his inability to reconcile his inner longings with church doctrine (or for that matter his own mother's).
When Garrett (Will Rogers), the dimwitted young son of Colleen's grocer, drops by with his latest delivery, he immediately places Matthew on the defensive by asking probing, sexually suggestive questions. While Garrett's pondering is meant to assuage his own carnal guilt, his questions further isolate a despairing Matthew.
Later that same evening, Theresa calls on Matthew, while leaving her daughter out in the car. Theresa is seeking spiritual guidance, but finds she must scale the walls Matthew has built around himself. Meanwhile, a very bored Abby is left to her own devices outside; she chances upon Garrett, who's hanging around hoping to bare his soul to Matthew, but instead shares his innermost secrets and desires with Abby.
Since I won't act as spoiler, let's just say that what transpires from there spins everyone's lives out of control (aided by Rachel Hauck's simple, yet stirring turntable set design). What still resonates and lingers with me is the purity in which Fodor wrote this compelling piece seemingly without any agenda or ax to grind.
In the program notes, Fodor writes, "I was interested in thinking about what true religious longing might feel like, especially if it took a nonbeliever by surprise, and as a mirror image, what it might feel like for a believer to be pulled away from God by a longing for the things in the secular world." To that end, Fodor has succeeded brilliantly without being heavy-handed or preachy.
It doesn't hurt that she is aided tremendously by the uniformly exceptional cast. Certainly, many will go to see
100 Saints You Should Know for the unique opportunity to see the graceful dignity offered by Lois Smith. But Shamos offers his own solemn, if sobering, portrayal as the priest in crisis. Kazan once again demonstrates that no young stage actress delivers sassy adolescent insolence quite the way she can. Rogers' tender yet goofy take on Garrett shows the awkwardness that comes with burgeoning teen sexuality. And Moloney is radiant as the would-be believer.
Regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof,
100 Saints You Should Know is worth seeing and knowing.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Labels: 100 Saints You Should Know, Ethan McSweeny, Janel Moloney, Jeremy Shamos, Lois Smith, Off-Broadway, Play, Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf, World Premiere, Zoe Kazan
