Behanding Begins On BroadwayIf no applause is heard this evening at Broadway's
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, perhaps it's just the first preview audience's way of honoring playwright
Martin McDonagh's macabre title:
A Behanding In Spokane.
Directed by
John Crowley, who previously brought McDonagh's acclaimed
The Pillowman to the Great White Way five years ago,
A Behanding In Spokane is officially described as follows:
Carmichael (Christopher Walken) has been searching for his missing left hand for over a quarter of a century. Enter two bickering lovebirds (Anthony Mackie and Zoe Kazan) with a hand to sell, and a hotel clerk (Sam Rockwell) with an aversion to gunfire, and we're set for a hilarious rollercoaster of love, hate, desperation and hope.
A Behanding In Spokane marks Christopher Walken's first Broadway show since his Tony-nominated turn in
James Joyce's The Dead ten years ago. No stranger to the Great White Way, Walken made his Main Stem debut as "Ken" Walken in 1952's
The Climate of Eden with
Rosemary Harris and was later featured in
The Visit (1958) with
Lynn Fontanne and
Alfred Lunt. He then performed as "Ronnie" Walken in
J.B. (1959) and
High Spirits (1964) before adopting his Christopher moniker for 1965's
Baker Street.In
Behanding, Walken is teamed with Zoe Kazan (
Come Back, Little Sheba and
The Seagull) and Anthony Mackie (
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and
Drowning Crow), both of whom have already tread Broadway's boards over the last decade, as well as with indie film star Sam Rockwell, who apart from his participation in four of
The 24 Hour Plays benefits is making his
real Rialto debut here.
Regular readers will know of my deep appreciation for Kazan's work. I've been a fan since her "stunning, breakthrough performance" in
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (Off-Broadway, 2006). After seeing her in
100 Saints You Should Know (Off-Broadway, 2007), I remarked, "Kazan once again demonstrates that no young stage actress delivers sassy adolescent insolence quite the way she can."
Fans of "
The Hurt Locker," which has been nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, will recognize Mackie as the tough Sgt. J.T. Sanborn, who is anxiously awaiting the end of his tour of duty. But Shakespeare in the Park aficionados will recognize this distinguished actor from his work this past summer in
The Bacchae in Central Park.
As for McDonagh himself, count me among the admirers of his, er, body of work, ranging from his
Cripple Of Inishmaan to "
In Bruges." The man is a genius. While many of his characters get bloodied, the playwright is also known for arming many of them with his wicked, biting wit.
That's why the world premiere of his latest work -- a four-hander, if you will -- is particularly intriguing to me. If it receives anything like the praise for McDonagh's four other plays that have been produced on Broadway, expect to see lots of Tony nods for the show. The limited run of
A Behanding In Spokane opens March 4 and is currently slated to close June 6, allowing just enough time for all Tony voters to see this dark comedy.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: A Behanding In Spokane, Anthony Mackie, Broadway, Christopher Walken, John Crowley, Martin McDonagh, Play, Sam Rockwell, World Premiere, Zoe Kazan
Did Seagull Revival Soar With Critics?Last evening, the seventh Broadway revival of
Anton Chekhov's
The Seagull, with fresh translation from the reigning king of adaptations
Christopher Hampton, opened at Broadway's
Walter Kerr Theatre.
The 14-week limited engagement stars
Kristin Scott Thomas and
Peter Sarsgaard in their Broadway debuts, alongside
Mackenzie Crook,
Zoe Kazan and
Carey Mulligan under the direction of
Ian Rickson. Most critics gave high marks to the production, even if a number of them took issue with the performance of Sarsgaard.
Heralding this as a "magnificent production,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley rhapsodically hurls superlatives: "The careful cultivation of such transparency, to the point that we feel instinctively tuned into the minds of every individual onstage, helps to make this
Seagull the finest and most fully involving production of Chekhov that I have ever known.... It is, to make honest use of the language of hucksters, a limited, once-in-a-lifetime offer... [T]his
Seagull has only ripened and deepened.... And Ms. Scott Thomas, who was excellent as the aging actress Arkadina in London, here delivers a magnified, intensified performance that more than ever is the keystone to understanding this play."
Nearly equal in his praise is
New York Post's
Clive Barnes, who offers up a rare four out of four star review: "Scott Thomas is an actor who doesn't act. Rather, she moves into a character, breathing the same air as a human reality. It's a style heaven-sent for the plays and people of Anton Chekhov, as she's now demonstrating as Arkadina, the overbloomed actress who sweeps her way through
The Seagull in the wonderfully subtle production that opened last night.... [H]ere it's staged with natural fluency by Ian Rickson, with an elegant new adaptation by Christopher Hampton that sounds as though it were written the day before yesterday."
Labeling
The Seagull "powerful theater," is
Variety's
David Rooney, who is largely effusive "despite one casting choice that doesn't quite measure up": "Rarely is the writer's signature balance of humor, pathos and tragedy so exquisitely rendered or the modulation between them orchestrated so affectingly.... It's the anchoring naturalism brought even to this diva in chronic performance mode that makes Scott Thomas so transfixing.... [W]hile he does slowly reveal the opportunistic worm beneath the self-possessed surface, Sarsgaard appears to be struggling to get a read on his role for much of the play."
Noting how this "serene, soaring
Seagull makes a 113-year-old story feel as fresh as a cool breeze," New York's
Daily News critic
Joe Dziemianowicz offers four out of five stars: "Scott Thomas is sly-eyed, sharp-tongued and sure-footed (a little sprightly scampering proves her vigor) and holds you rapt while just standing motionless. In short, she's heaven in her Broadway debut. Less well-known, but no less phenomenal, is Carey Mulligan, who plays Nina and instantly captures your heart with her teary-eyed, exquisitely emotional portrayal. Mackenzie Crook seems to draw from a deep well of sadness as Konstantin, the experimental playwright hopelessly in love with her.... (Sarsgaard) is too lackadaisical, almost borderline lazy, to set off bright sparks."
Calling the revival "visually stark, emotionally luscious,"
Newsday's
Linda Winer production offers a mostly positive review: "Most of the men are not as effective as the women, and not just because Chekhov wrote such wonderfully complicated women. Peter Sarsgaard ... plays Trigoran ... as puzzlingly effeminate and more than a little dull.
Seagull may be the hardest of Chekhov's late plays to get right.... But Rickson and Scott Thomas find the exquisite balance between being idealistic about the arts and satirizing that idealism."
Concluding that "its uneven casting makes for a frustrating experience,"
USA Today's
Elysa Gardner zeroes in on Sarsgaard in her two-and-a-half-star review: "If you're a fan of Chekhov's writing and Peter Sarsgaard's acting, you face a serious dilemma this fall.... Sadly, though, Sarsgaard doesn't rise to the challenges confronting him any more than his complex and crucial character does. It might be an overstatement to say that his curiously awkward, lackluster performance fatally wounds this
Seagull ... but only a slight one.... That's a shame, because the other legs in Trigorin's romantic triangle could hardly be sturdier. Leading lady Kristin Scott Thomas ... is a witty, poignant Arkadina, revealing a nervous fragility in the fading thespian who lives with and clings to Trigorin. As the doomed ingénue Nina, who suffers even more for her lover's callousness, fellow West End import Carey Mulligan is equally lovely and moving, at once a fresh-faced foil and a worthy rival to the elegant but vulnerable Arkadina."
My own personal view comes closest to that expressed by Gardner. You can review my own abbreviated SOB Review by clicking
here.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Anton Chekov, Broadway, Christopher Hampton, Critics' Capsule, Ian Rickson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mackenzie Crook, Peter Sarsgaard, Play, Revival, The Seagull, Zoe Kazan
London Seagull Flies Into Broadway Opening Night
London Seagull Flies Into Broadway Opening NightThis evening,
Ian Rickson's Olivier Award-winning revival of
Anton Chekhov's
The Seagull opens at Broadway's
Walter Kerr Theatre. The 14-week limited run stars
Kristin Scott Thomas opposite
Peter Sarsgaard, along with
Mackenzie Crook and
Zoe Kazan as Masha.
This seventh Great White Way revival of
The Seagull comes 92 years after its very
first Main Stem mounting.
Will Broadway critics be cheering? Well, as a sneak preview, I can divulge that
The New York Times' Ben Brantley was seated within my sightlines of the stage last Friday evening, and he was applauding enthusiastically. But then again, Big Ben already provided the initial London incarnation with praise.
Nevertheless, I'll be providing my critics' capsule tomorrow.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Anton Chekov, Ian Rickson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mackenzie Crook, Opening Night, Peter Sarsgaard, Play, Revival, The Seagull, Zoe Kazan
Did Critics Deem Little Sheba Worthy Of Come Back?Last evening, the very first revival of
William Inge's 1950s play
Come Back, Little Sheba -- opened at the
Manhattan Theatre Club's
Biltmore Theatre on Broadway. Directed by
Michael Pressman, the revival stars
S. Epatha Merkerson,
Kevin Anderson and
Zoe Kazan.
In a confounding display of deeply felt assessments that were scattered all across the board, critics' reviews ranged from high praise to major pans. You almost wonder if everyone saw the same show.
Raving that Merkerson offers a performance "that stops the heart,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley lauds: "Ms. Merkerson allows a kind of intimate access traditionally afforded by cinematic close-ups, when the camera finds shades of meaning in impassive faces. She rarely signals what Lola’s feeling; she just seems to feel, and we get it, instantly and acutely. Such emotional sincerity is the hallmark of this revival from the Manhattan Theater Club, directed with gentle compassion by Michael Pressman and featuring first-rate performances from Kevin Anderson and Zoe Kazan....But the performances here are so convincingly present tense that you come to accept scene-shaping contrivances -- those too conveniently timed entrances, exits and phone calls -- as if life were really that structured....Like Ms. Merkerson’s anchoring performance, this production resounds precisely because it keeps its voice down."
Hailing this as "one of the finest American plays of the 20th century, a masterpiece of theatrical realism,"
The Wall Street Journal's
Terry Teachout praises: "
Come Back, Little Sheba is close to flawless. I'd never seen it on stage prior to this revival, and I had no idea what a wallop it packed....Ms. Merkerson is a stage actress of the first rank. She brings Lola's melancholy and yearning to life with such soft-spoken understatement that you feel as though you'd wandered through the back door of her house and sat down at her kitchen table for a chat. Ms. Kazan, who is making her Broadway debut after a pair of buzzworthy performances Off Broadway in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and
Things We Want, is no less impressive..."
Finding it "gently stirring,"
The New York Sun's
Eric Grode delivers a mixed review: "It doesn't help that Mr. Pressman lets the Freudian cross-currents among Lola, Doc, and their college-age boarder, Marie (Zoe Kazan, the granddaughter of frequent Inge collaborator
Elia Kazan), unfold at a stately, almost lethargic pace early on. But as the collision course between Doc and his sweet, sad Lola draws near, precipitated by the flighty Marie and her two suitors, the director and his largely fine cast tighten the reins and do justice to Inge's strains of Midwestern melancholia."
Calling the production "old-fashioned but still-engaging,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News falls into the same camp as Grode: "Inge's story pours on melodramatic moments, as when Doc pulls a liquor bottle from the kitchen cupboard, considers it and puts it away -- for now. The symbolism is not subtle -- Lola's beloved missing dog mirrors her long-gone happiness. But despite such creaks, the story's shattering climactic confrontation still brings gasps.
Anderson's nuanced work shows Doc's desires, disgust and deep sorrow. Merkerson ("
Law & Order") is a poignant Lola."
"Fatally imbalanced," is how Bloomberg's
John Simon describes the show: "
Come Back, Little Sheba' owes not a little to
Tennessee Williams and comes across as a moderately effective Williams knock-off, by now rather dated. A period piece needs impeccable writing and flawless production to make the death-defying leap across the decades. What we have instead in this Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Biltmore Theatre is a measure of likableness and pathos yet nothing truly compelling. Even the business with the little dog Sheba, vanished long ago but regularly and pathetically beckoned by Lola from the front porch, is a rather heavy-handed symbol for trying to recapture the past."
Criticizing that
Little Sheba "registers as one of the writer's most heavy-handed, painfully obvious works,"
Frank Scheck offers thumbs down in the
Hollywood Reporter: "Not only is the playwright's brand of naturalism out of style, but even more so is his bludgeoning use of symbolism. From the titular runaway pooch that represents Lola's faded youth and beauty to the phallic javelin that Marie's boyfriend constantly describes wielding,
Sheba is not exactly subtle in its implications. With the constant references to Doc's former drinking, it's not hard to figure out that by play's end he'll have fallen off the wagon.... Merkerson...underplays with a sad dignity that doesn't quite convey Lola's ridiculousness."
Deeming it as a "creakingly dated play,"
New York Post's
Clive Barnes offers one and a half stars: "Michael Pressman's pedestrian staging is as adequate as the play deserves, and a miscast Merkerson makes an adorable Lola - sincere, compassionate and, well . . . miscast. The best performance comes from Anderson as the dark, sexually twisted, wild and crazy Doc, who runs the dubious gamut of the role like a champion hurdler. He, at least, manages to glitter dangerously amid the play's thick thickets of mediocrity."
As you may have seen from my own
SOB Review, I (unfortunately) have to say I agree with the last three reviews. Will MTC revoke
my subscription? Hope not!
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Come Back, Little Sheba (The SOB Review) (January 25, 2008)
Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening Night (January 24, 2008)
Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba, Critics' Capsule, Kevin Anderson, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
Come Back Little Sheba (The SOB Review) - Biltmore Theatre, New York, NY*1/2 (out of ****)Everybody loves a good comeback. Unfortunately, the revival of
William Inge's melodramatic
Come Back, Little Sheba is not one of them.
Ostensibly about hopes and dreams that have long since gone, just like the titular dog, this revival
feels like a tired old one at that. In essence, we've seen it all before.
Certainly, Inge broke fertile new ground when he wrote this play about alcoholism and an unwed couple's unplanned pregnancy back at the dawn of the 1950s. But there's nothing new here. Time has a way of diminishing the shock value, and this particular production possesses absolutely none.
Well, that is unless you count director
Michael Pressman's well-intentioned, but nonsensical color blind casting. Despite keeping
Little Sheba set in the early 50s, a full decade before the landmark
Civil Rights Act of 1964, he pairs the fine African American actress
S. Epatha Merkerson as a very forlorn Lola with a crackling waspy
Kevin Anderson as her recovering alcoholic husband Doc. They're an unhappily married couple.... of
25 years. And they're sitting on a powder keg.
While it certainly would have been a much better world back then if no one had thought twice about multi-cultural families back 58 years ago, that's unfortunately just not the way it was. In a week when we celebrated
Martin Luther King Jr., yet ironically saw how even all these advanced years later America's first "
black president" could
inject race into a political campaign, their pairing only serves to distract.
Personally, I became more fixated on what I imagined Lola and Doc's backstory to be as I found myself conjuring up how difficult their experience with bigots might have been when they first would have met, way back in America's roaring 20s. My imagined script was far more compelling and interesting than the stilted déjà vu dialogue delivered by the angry drunk of a husband lording over his long-suffering yet completely helpless, hopeless wife. In listening to their banter, I couldn't help but think of all the times since Inge wrote this play that I've heard a similar refrain many times over and many times better.
And then I realized how ludicrous my exercise was. And what a wasted opportunity Pressman allowed to pass him by. He's squandered an opportunity to explore new territory by instead retracing all too familiar steps.
He assembled a decent enough cast, with a very meek and mild Merkerson headlining with a hunkered down portrayal of the hapless Lola, who just can't seem to come to grips with how she's allowed her life to pass her by -- or the fact that her beloved dog Sheba has run away (thus the title). Anderson comes unhinged as her tormented alcoholic husband.
Zoe Kazan breathes what little fresh air wafts through this production -- her first Broadway outing -- as Lola and Doc's coquettish boarder.
Yet almost in spite of the talent he's amassed, Pressman misses a chance to make his story more relevant for today's audiences. It would have been far more intriguing had Pressman revised the play a bit, shifting its timing to a more recent decade when society was really beginning to grapple with interracial marriages. Rather than completely ignore the matter of race,
Come Back, Little Sheba could have served as a thoughtful contemporary examination of the historic challenges mixed race couples had. Instead, we get all the histrionics one would expect from a depiction of the fifties.
Unfortunately, this
Come Back feels more like a stale and unsatisfying throwback. We're left to merely ponder what could have been.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening Night (January 24, 2008)
Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Come Back Little Sheba, Kevin Anderson, Michael Pressman, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, The SOB Review, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
Little Sheba Comes Back To Broadway Opening NightFifty-eight years is a long, long time for an old Broadway hit to stage a comeback.
But tonight, the first-ever revival of
William Inge's seminal, groundbreaking play on shotgun weddings and alcoholism --
Come Back, Little Sheba -- opens tonight at the
Manhattan Theatre Club's
Biltmore Theatre.
The original Great White Way production in 1950 helped
Sidney Blackmer and
Shirley Booth each earn Tony Awards, with the latter going on to score an Oscar for her work in the 1952
film version.
Helmed by
Michael Pressman, the new incarnation stars "
Law And Order" favorite
S. Epatha Merkerson as Lola and
Kevin Anderson as her husband Doc. One of my personal favorite young stage actresses,
Zoe Kazan, makes her Broadway debut.
Last summer, Merkerson also starred in the Los Angeles production, which received
mixed reviews.
How will this
Come Back fare with the Broadway critics? Find out tomorrow as I provide my regular critics' capsule, along with my very own SOB Review.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Little Sheba To Come Back To Broadway (August 16, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Come Back Little Sheba, Kevin Anderson, Manhattan Theatre Club, Play, Revival, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Inge, Zoe Kazan
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
