Broadway/Off-Broadway Review

British Egos, Liaisons, and Vietgone

By David Sheward on November 2, 2016 inMain PostsTheatre


Two current Off-Broadway productions provide a 70-year historic overview of narcissistic British behavior and the decline of that country from admirable empire to self-absorbed ruin. David Hare’s 1978 Plenty at the Public traces the crack-up of the country from World War II into the 1960s through the scattered and destructive choices of its neurotic but charismatic heroine. Mike Bartlett’s 2010 Love, Love, Love at the Laura Pels in a Roundabout staging, picks up where Plenty leaves off, taking us from the mod Beatles era into the 21st century. This work chronicling the tsunami-like romance of Henry and Sandra, a Baby-Boomer Everycouple, who destroy everything and everyone in their path and are meant to represent all of the crimes committed by their heedless generation. Both playwrights are angry at their native land and score stinging points, but Hare’s impassioned indictment retains the ring of honest dramaturgy in spite of a less than stellar production while Bartlett’s heavy-handed bash has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Plenty holds a special place for me. The American premiere directed by the playwright at the Public’s Newman stage was one of the first plays I saw when I moved to New York in 1982. Thirty-four years later, I still remember Kate Nelligan’s impassioned, yet calibrated performance as the complicated Susan Traherne, shattered by her country’s postwar banality after serving as a courier in the French resistance. Romanticizing her wartime exploits, Susan stumbles through a series of unfulfilling jobs and relationships, paralleling Britain’s national identity crisis after losing its position of world dominance.

Seeing the play in the same theater raises personal memories, but also unfavorable comparisons. David Leveaux’s muted new staging seems to exist primarily as a star vehicle for Oscar winner Rachel Weisz who is in love with Susan’s theatrical breakdowns and takes every opportunity for a diva display. Thus she becomes a weepy victim rather than the complex architect of her own downfall (as Hare and Nelligan saw her in the original). Instead of connecting with the character and the situation, Weisz is saying “Look at me act!”

There are physical sparks between Weisz and Corey Stoll as Brock, her diplomat husband, but no emotional connection, making his self sacrifices hard to believe. The limning and bonds between the cast in Love, Love, Love may be more convincing, but Bartlett’s script is less so. Like Susan, his protagonists Kenneth and Sandra are colossal egotists, wrecking lives in order to pursue their individual ends. Divided into three acts, this dark comedy follows them as they careen from a summer of free love in 1967 to suburban opulence in 1990 to retired self-indulgence in 2010. Bartlett has a way with witty, sharp jabs, but, unlike Susan, his characters are symbols of social and political positions rather than flesh and blood. (His earlier play Cock suffered from the same cardboard depictions.) Kenneth and Sandra’s selfish actions lead up to a screaming confrontation with their estranged daughter Rose. In the third act, she gets to deliver a big condemning monologue blatantly indicting her parents and their peers for all of her woes and those of her country. Though Zoe Kazan performs this speech with honest passion, we can hear the playwright talking instead of Rose.

Bartlett pushes his creations to fit his political theses rather than letting them develop organically and consistently. Would Kenneth and Sandra, the feckless flakes of Act One, become the financially prosperous executives of Act Two? (We never do find out how either of them make money after dropping their pseudo-hippie personae.) Would the alcoholic, unreflective Sandra of the entire play suddenly become capable of responding with self-awareness and insight to her daughter’s harangue in the show’s final minutes?

Fortunately, Michael Mayer delivers a fast-paced, wickedly entertaining production—the on-target period sets and costumes are by Derek McLane and Susan Hilferty—and Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan give outsized, eye-catching turns as the explosive main couple.


Janet McTeer and Liev Schreiber play a similarly combustible duo in another British production. Like Plenty, Les Liaisons Dangereuses had a sensational New York production in the 1980s (with the sleekly serpent-like Alan Rickman and the luscsioucly lascivious Lindsay Duncan) and this new edition from the Donmar Warehouse must fight the memory of its predecessor. Many critics have given it a thumbs down, finding Josie Rourke’s less ferocious production several grades below Howard Lindsay’s elegant, intense original. More than a few scribes have also called the broodingly naturalistic Schreiber miscast as the sleekly artificial Vicomte de Valmont.

But I thoroughly enjoyed this remounting, taking place in designer Tom Scutt’s derelict museum, with cast members gradually removing all the discarded art works between scenes, suggesting the decay of the pre-Revolutionary French society which Valmont and the equally malevolent Marquise de Merteuil dominate with their deadly sexual games. Schreiber is a charming cad whose tasteful veneer hides his brutal interior. Rourke takes a decidedly feminist approach to the material, staging Valmont’s carnal conquests for what they are—assaults. She almost makes us sympathize with the villainous Marquise who says to Valmont she was “born to dominate your sex and avenge my own.” McTeer gives us even more cause to identify with her by providing a multilayered portrayal of this stylish viper. At first she is deliciously evil, playfully enumerating her principles of deceit with little hand gestures. But this seductive surface gives way to the needy woman underneath when Valmont genuinely falls in love with one of his conquests. McTeer drops her silky voice an octave at precisely the right moment and her small movements become clawing attempts to suppress her suppressed genuine longings for Valmont. Yes, this is a slow starting Liaisons, but once it gets going, it burns and consumes.

Finally, the only American play I recently encountered considers the immigrant experience from a decidedly unusual angle. Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at Manhattan Theatre Club chronicles the refugee journey of his South Vietnamese parents after the fall of Saigon through a broadly comic lens rather than via the usual noble, tear-jerking tropes. Rap music, ninja movies, African-American slang, and Twitter are all added to mix in this crazy collage. It’s broad, tragic, funny, satiric, and serious all at once in May Adrales’ cartoonish and clear-eyed production featuring another sizzling star pair—Raymond Lee and Jennifer Ikeda.

Plenty: Oct. 23—Dec. 1. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., NYC. Tue, Wed, 7:30 pm; Thu, 7 pm; Fri, Sat, 7:30 pm; Wed, Sat, Sun, 1:30 pm. Running time: two hours and 20 mins. including intermission. $95—$105. (212) 967-7555. http://www.publictheatre.org.

Love, Love, Love: Oct. 19—Dec. 18. Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Sternberg Center for Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., NYC. Tue—Sat., 7:30 pm; Wed, Sat, Sun, 2 pm. Running time: two hours including two intermissions. $89—$99. (212) 719-1300. http://www.roundaboutheatre.org.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Oct. 30—Jan. 22. Donmar Warehouse at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., NYC. Tue, Thu, 7 pm; Wed, Fri—Sat, 8 pm; Wed, Sat, 2 pm; Sun, 3 pm. Running time: two hours and 45 mins., including intermission. $77—$149. (212) 239-6200. http://www.telecharge.com.

Vietgone: Oct. 25—Nov. 17. Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage I, 131 W. 55th St., NYC. Tue, Wed, 7pm; Thu—Sat, 8 pm; Wed, Sat, Sun, 2 pm. Running time: two hours and 30 mins. including intermission. $90. (212) 581-1212. http://www.nycitycenter.org.

Broadway & Me
I'm a theater lover. I am happiest when I am sitting in a theater. Or talking about theater. Or reading about theater. Or now blogging about it. If you’re reading this, you're probably a theater lover too and I hope you’ll keep me company as I blog my way through each Broadway season.

November 2, 2016
"Love, Love, Love" Badmouths the Baby-Boomer Generation

Are we Baby Boomers really so selfish? I ask because over the last few years, young playwrights have been hinting at the resentment and anger they feel toward those of us born in the middle decades of the last century. And now the British playwright Mike Bartlett, who's 36, has come right out with it and branded us solipsistic in Love, Love, Love, which is running at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre through Dec. 18.

Bartlett's dramedy spans 40 years in the life of Kenneth and Sandra, who meet in 1967 when young people around the world were declaring their independence from conventional society and wearing their hair long and their dresses short, smoking dope and sleeping around and listening to music like The Beatles' "Love is All You Need," which ushered in the Summer of Love and provides the play its ironic title (I confess to wondering about how much it must cost to pay for the rights to play that song each night).

The subsequent scenes take place in 1990 and 2011 and bring in the couple's children, first as teens and later as adults themselves. Kenneth and Sandra change with the years and yet they remain (literally) center stage and totally self-involved, which is the problem that Bartlett wants to explore (click here to read an interview with him).

Bartlett is a clever writer with an acute ear for dialog and, with the assistance of Michael Mayer's sharp direction, the play is undeniably witty and entertaining (who doesn't enjoy chuckling at yuppie foibles?) But I had expected it to be more—and to be more subtle.

I fell in love with Bartlett when I saw his play Cock, a stripped-down romantic triangle with a bisexual man at its center (click here to read my review) and I admired the pomp and circumstance of his King Charles III, an imagining of the reign of the current Prince of Wales written in iambic pentameter.

But be they royals or commoners, the characters in those earlier works come across as complex human beings who want to do the right thing and to be good people. Kenneth and Sandra, on the other hand, are almost pathologically oblivious to the needs of their children or anyone else around them.

The British actor Richard Armitage and the American actress Amy Ryan (click here to read a profile of her) bring their considerable personal charisma to the roles and make it fun to hang around with them and their cast mates Alex Hurt, Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield who play Kenneth's proletarian brother (who was also Sandra's original boyfriend) and the couple's damaged children.

The creative team does its part too. Susan Hilferty's costumes are spot-on for each era and Derek McLane's sets showcase the couple's increasing affluence, although the scene changes take an awfully long time.

But none of it is enough to inflate the play's one-dimensional caricatures into full-bodied people or to refine its broad generalizations about the lives of those in the boomer generation into a convincing portrait of one specific family.

In a climactic speech that will probably be heard in audition rooms for years to come the daughter bitterly upbraids her parents:“You didn’t change the world, you bought it. Privatised it. What did you stand for? Peace? Love? Nothing except being able to do whatever the fuck you wanted.”

Really? Call me defensive if you'd like but it seems churlish to say that the baby-boom generation didn't contribute anything of value to the world. After all, where would Bartlett and his play be without The Beatles?

REVIEW: Off-Broadway show full of laughter and ‘Love’
Bill Canacci , @billcanacci 2:03 p.m. EDT November 4, 2016


While there does not appear to be a lot of love in Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of “Love Love Love,” there is a lot of laughter.

And before the show and during intermissions, some great music.

The dark comedy by Mike Bartlett (“King Charles III”) examines baby boomers from three stages of life: as young adults in 1967, as parents of teenagers in 1990, and at retirement age in 2011.

Directed intelligently by Michael Mayer, the off-Broadway play is mostly entertaining, full of biting dialogue and lots of craziness.

In the first scene, Kenneth (Richard Armitage) is relaxing in the London apartment of his working-class brother Henry (Alex Hurt). The two could not be more different: Henry likes classical music, does not do drugs and seems very no-nonsense. Kenneth, on the other hand, is a fun and carefree Oxford student who loves the Beatles.

Henry is trying to get rid of Kenneth because he has a girl coming over. But he manages to stick around. And, wouldn’t you know, Sandra (Amy Ryan) and Kenneth click.

When we see them next, Kenneth and Sandra are the parents of Rose (Zoe Kazan) and Jamie (Ben Rosenfield). The family has a nice home, but things are not picture perfect. Jamie is weird and poor Rose is unhappy. She is smart, but she feels ignored and neglected by her parents.

Meanwhile, Kenneth and Sandra speak openly about their relationship. Let’s just say they have not forgotten about free love.

When we see Jamie and Rose again, they are adults, but are they mature? Who’s to blame? And have Kenneth and Sandra really grown up? The strength of Bartlett’s play is that he is looking at a generation with both affection and criticism. Audience members of all ages will relate to some part of these flawed characters, and will certainly appreciate the commentary on parenting.

Armitage, best known for his work in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy of “The Hobbit,” is comfortable in this role. He has a natural knack for comedy. The audience likes him immediately. As the play continues, Kenneth shows signs of responsibility, but his sense of adventure never goes away.

This is Armitage’s New York debut, and one can only hope he will want to return.

As Sandra, Ryan is fun as the wanna-be hippie, but much better and believable in the second act as a mom who cares more about her job than her kid’s recital.

Kazan is impressive throughout. She has some of the play’s best lines in Act II. Rose wants to live in a “normal” house, but realizes that’s impossible with her wacky parents. Kazan is as convincing as a teenager as she is as a frustrated adult approaching 40 in Act III. Her expressions are priceless.

As Jamie, Rosenfield is effective playing a boy trying to escape reality.

Kudos to set designer Derek McClane and costume designer Susan Hilferty. They help set the time periods, and bring back memories.

THEATER: 'Billy Elliot' dances its way to the Shore

“Love Love Love,” which had its London premiere four years ago, is named after the lyric from the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” We hear that song in the show, as well as classics like “Time of the Season” by the Zombies and “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers throughout the night. Indeed, the “soundtrack” to this show would be popular on Spotify.

But why settle for digital? The album should be released on vinyl, so the songs can be heard the way they were meant to be.

Baby boomers wouldn’t want it any other way.

Bill Canacci: 732-643-4218; bcanacci@gannettnj.com

LOVE LOVE LOVE

WHEN: Through Dec. 18

WHERE: Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., New York

TICKETS: $99

INFO: 212-719-1300 or www.roundabouttheatre.org

ON AND OFF BROADWAY
Love, Love, Love
Posted November 4, 2016
Review by Elyse Trevers
The title of Mike Bartlett’s new play immediately sets the tone and the theme of his work. Love, Love, Love is the anthem for Kenneth (Richard Armitage of "The Lord of the Rings") and Sandra (Amy Ryan of TV's "The Office".) First meeting in 1969 in England, they are immediately drawn to each other sexually and act upon it. The fact that Sandra is dating his brother is secondary. In fact, she notes, “he’ll thank us for this one day.”

The couple ages over the three acts of the play. Act II jumps ahead 20 years when their relationship has grown a bit stale. Instead of working on it, they quickly dissolve their marriage, indifferent to their two children’s needs. By Act III, once again, it’s love and sex that governs their behavior. The characters don’t age convincingly. They don’t look young enough to have us believe they are 19 in Act I and nor do they look old enough to be in their 60’s by the end.

Kenneth and Sandra are selfish and totally self-absorbed. Actually they are well suited for one another. As a couple, they seem more a product of the “me” generation than ‘flower children” of the 60’s. Sadly≤ their children Rose (Zoe Kazan) and Jamie (Ben Rosenfield) become collateral damage.

As a 16 year old, Kazan spends most of her role exasperated and angry at her parents who don’t listen to her. Kenneth isn’t even sure how old she is while Sandra minimizes her pain. Later, at 37 years old, Kazan again shouts in frustration as she struggles to make ends meet. She blames her parents for her situation and demands that they buy her a house, but they refuse. Jamie has obvious psychological issues which his parents pointedly ignore as they concentrate only on themselves.

Ryan is bubbly, shallow and garrulous. Armitage is leaden; his character is easily manipulated and clueless. It was hard to even feel sympathy for Rose because she is too much of a one-note character, always whining and shouting. They are quite dislikable, and, as a result, it’s difficult to want to spend time with them. It’s hard to care about any of them, let alone love them.

Love, Love, Love
Never quite as meaningful as it clearly intends to be, this play benefits from fine acting and a glitzy production.
Posted on November 5, 2016 by Joel Benjamin in Off-Broadway, Plays, Still Open

Joel BenjaminJoel Benjamin, CriticLove, Love, Love, the new play by Mike Bartlett proves that he can write a keenly observed chamber piece as well as a sprawling, Shakespearean drama (the recent King Charles III). The Roundabout Theatre Company has staged Love, Love, Love with great care. Directed by the brilliant Michael Mayer, the play, nevertheless, can’t overcome its clichéd subject matter and is never quite as deeply meaningful as it intends to be. The social commentary—how time, money, parenthood change couples and families—is rather ordinary stuff all puffed up with glitzy production values and fine acting.
The title comes from the Beatles’ hit “All You Need is Love,” and is clearly ironic.

The play covers forty years in the intertwined lives of Kenneth (Richard Armitage) and Sandra (Amy Ryan) who appear to think of nothing but their own needs—the wounds they inflict on others, including Kenneth’s put-upon brother, Henry (Alex Hurt, who makes an emotionally rich impression in his one scene) and their two children, Jamie and Rose, barely registering in their psyches.

Act One takes place in 1967 in Henry’s student apartment where Kenneth (age 19) has clearly overstayed his welcome. Kenneth lolls about, bare-chested, clad in a fancy robe and posh pants, never finishing any of the ridiculously simple chores—shopping, cleaning, etc.—his brother has asked him to perform. Henry (age 23) has invited Sandra, a very recent, “met cute” acquaintance whom he would like to know better, alone in his flat. Kenneth refuses to budge, even though Henry offers bribes. Sure enough, Amy, an outgoing nymphette who uses her smarts to hide her selfishness, immediately flirts with Kenneth who welcomes the attention and the possibility of sexual conquest. Both ignore Henry’s angst as they hit it off right under his nose and on his own bed, Sandra evilly mocking Henry.

Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan, Ben Rosenfield and Zoe Kazan in a scene from Miek Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love” (Photo credit: Joan Marcus)Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan, Ben Rosenfield and Zoe Kazan in a scene from Mike Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love” (Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
Act Two transports Kenneth and Sandra to 2000 where they lead a seemingly middle class, suburban life with their two kids, Jamie (a physically and mentally nimble Ben Rosenfield) and Rose (Zoe Kazan), who are thirteen and fourteen, respectively. Kenneth has aged well as has Sandra, but they have become pretentious versions of their former selves, careful about what they drink and what they drink it in. They are no longer grungy self-involved, hot-head students as evidenced in their wardrobe and comfortable surroundings. They choose to ignore the turbulence of worldwide social unrest teeming around them in 2000, while they mock their children’s achievements, to the point of not even remembering Jamie and Rose’s ages. The kids show signs of acting out, struggling to come into their own.

Act Three, set in 2007, finds Sandra, now in her sixties, working and living in London while Kenneth lives in a posh house in the quiet countryside. Technology—cell phones, electronic games, computers, etc.—has made inroads in the family’s daily lives and the kids are no longer kids, their lives having led them away from the not so hot hearth provided by their parents, finally discovering life’s harsh truths.

We also discover what happened to Henry and various other background characters and the changes in Sandra and Kenneth’s relationship. All these development have left a pall on the shattered household. The strongest moment of the evening is the heartbreaking ending in which the estranged Kenneth and Sandra find themselves dancing to keep out the demons they must face when they stop.

Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan in a scene from Mike Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love” (Photo credit: Joan Marcus)Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan in a scene from Mike Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love” (Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
British actor Richard Armitage making his New York stage debut and Tony and Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan work hard to make Kenneth and Sandra three-dimensional, likeable people, but, as written by Mr. Bartlett, their crassness is the fatal flaw in Love, Love, Love. Why should we enjoy spending so much time with two people who so adroitly care only for themselves?

The set design by Derek McLane is lovingly detailed, although scene changes are awkwardly long. Susan Hilferty’s costumes catch the different eras and characters wonderfully as do the hairstyles and wigs of Campbell Young Associates. Kai Harada’s sound design allows the music of the different decades to be heard clearly and meaningfully.

Love, Love, Love (through December 18,

Still six weeks remaining to see Richard Armitage in ‘Love, Love, Love’, Off Broadway

NOVEMBER 6, 2016 at 12:50 PM BY GREENDRAGON -

A month into its run (which began with a period of previews, followed by press night and opening later in October), Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Love, Love, Love has six weeks to go before the limited run ends on December 18th. The production has been gaining strong reviews – here’s a glowing one from The New York Times. TORn’s own review comes from staffer greendragon, who saw the production early in its run, before the press night.


Mike Bartlett’s play starts from an interesting point, exploring the notion that the Baby Boomer generation’s quest (during their youth in the Sixties) for personal freedom led them to grow into selfish, narcissistic adults. Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan play Kenneth and Sandra, a couple who meet in the Sixties (Act 1, most of which, Mr Armitage’s fans will be pleased to know, he spends shirtless…) We then encounter the pair again in the Nineties, when they are parents to teenage children; and finally, Act 3 shows us the now-divorced Sandra and Kenneth in retirement, their children grown and troubled.

Mr Armitage and Ms Ryan are thus tasked with playing three different ages through the course of the show, and the actors playing their children (Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield) of course age between Acts 2 and 3. Not everyone manages this with equal degrees of success. Mr Armitage is more convincing as a youthful college student than Ms Ryan; her strongest Act is the middle one, when she is a storming, ‘work hard, play hard’ career woman, who serves birthday cake with astonishing aggression!

The sets for the three acts are excellent, creating not only the different periods, but also the improving circumstances of Kenneth and Sandra as they make their way in the world, heading towards comfortable retirement. The atmosphere of the show is set before the curtain rises, with Sixties music playing in the auditorium; and the intimate theatre allows the audience to be drawn into the action throughout the play. The roles are generally well played, despite the difficulties of portraying varying ages. Alex Hurt, who plays Kenneth’s brother Henry (sadly only seen in Act 1), is particularly compelling.

The problem with the play is that the central characters are deeply unsympathetic. Kenneth and Sandra are self-involved, driven people who care about no-one except themselves – not even their own children. We don’t see any other side or depth to them; they persist in their blind narcissism no matter what life throws at them. The piece would be more satisfying if it explored fully the questions it poses. Is it the automatic destiny of each generation do better than the one before? Have the children of the Baby Boomers been let down by their parents’ generation? We see our antiheroes’ daughter, Rose, opting for a ‘straitlaced’ life, in a reaction against her parents’ smoking and drinking; and yet her seeming virtue is rewarded with deep unhappiness. Is it better to let one’s hair down; does a little of what you fancy (or a lot, in Kenneth and Sandra’s case) do you good? Rose follows her dreams as her career path, and ultimately feels that was a huge mistake; yet her parents seem to have spent their lives doing what they enjoy, and have come out on top. What should we make of all this?

These are interesting, thought-provoking scenarios, yet Mike Bartlett’s play doesn’t really explore them. We are presented with a couple who are rather caricatures of a generation, and neither we nor they are permitted to look further into the issues they encounter. Instead, the play glosses over them, just as Kenneth and Sandra blank out any problems in their own lives.

If this superficiality in the text makes for a rather unfulfilling evening at the theatre, still Love, Love, Love has plenty to make up for that. Well acted, staged and costumed, and expertly directed by Michael Mayer, it is an enjoyable and atmospheric comedy with a biting, dark centre. Catch it if you can! – it’s on at the Laura Pels Theatre, at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre in Manhattan, until December 18.

Monday, November 7, 2016
Bits and Pieces: Love, Love, Love and Tiger Style

Love, Love, Love is a Mike Bartlett play from 2010 that is only now receiving its first American production, by the Roundabout Theatre in its off-Broadway space (Laura Pels Theatre). Bartlett, who wrote Cock and Wild, as well as the acclaimed King Charles III, is one of the most talented of the current generation of English playwrights, and I had a fine time at this play for the first two acts, which are a highly stylized comedy of manners. In act one, set in a north London flat in 1967, a straight arrow named Henry (Alex Hurt) invites a woman he’s been seeing, Sandra (Amy Ryan), home for dinner, only to see her fall for Kenneth (Richard Armitage), the hippie kid brother he’s been putting up, with escalating exasperation. In act two, set in 1990, Sandra and Kenneth are married and living comfortably in suburban Reading with their two teenagers, Rose (Zoe Kazan), who is anxious about everything, and Jamie (Ben Rosenfield), who’s affable and skin-deep. The marriage falls apart by the end of the act, after they’ve owned up to infidelities on both sides.

Bartlett is a master of dramatic language, and each time out he wants to try something new. King Charles III is a political satire written in blank verse that suggests a contemporary approach to a Shakespearean history (though the play it references most is a tragedy, Macbeth). Cock and Wild are absurdist but vastly unalike: the first is a kind of post-Pinter comedy of menace in which a middle-aged gay man and a straight young woman fight over a young bisexual man, the second is a take on the Edward Snowden story that’s more like Tom Stoppard, but with crazier and more extravagant stagecraft. Both, I think, are terrific pieces of theatre. (I was less enthralled by King Charles III, though I admired its ambitions.) In Love, Love, Love, Bartlett takes on the persona of an English Paul Mazursky – particularly the young Mazursky of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and the more far-flung parts of Blume in Love – though he has a less affectionate attitude toward his discombobulated characters. What he’s burlesquing here is the sixties generation, and Amy Ryan, as a privileged narcissist entirely without a filter, who still, in her forties, carries the liberal banner of her youth, gives a brilliantly sustained – I’d say inspired – comic performance.

The problem is that Bartlett doesn’t have a third act. When we return to the characters in 2011, Rose, at thirty-seven, is unhappy in both her personal and her professional lives, and Jamie, two years younger, has had a breakdown (we see it happen, more or less, at the end of act two) and, barely functional, lives with his dad. The tone has shifted; except for Sandra’s contributions (that is, Ryan’s), it’s mostly dead serious. Rose delivers a screed about the way her parents’ generation has screwed over the world in general and its children in particular, and it’s such a sad-sack piece of dramaturgy you don’t know where to look while she’s ranting. It kills Kazan’s performance, too: in act two she delivers a dead-on caricature of a sixteen-year-old girl whose parents’ every move embarrasses the hell out of her, but she’s lost in act three, because it’s hard to do any real acting when you’re stuck as the voice of the playwright lecturing the audience.

Still, two-thirds of an uproarious comedy is nothing to sneeze at. Mike Mayer directed Love, Love, Love, and, Kazan’s understandable flame-out in act three aside, he’s done really good work with the actors, including Hurt, who is only in act one. (Having seen and liked him in Dada Woof Papa Hot last season, I kept wishing Bartlett would bring back his character – especially since his banter with Armitage, played very fast, is so entertaining.) Bartlett has written them such wonderful dialogue in the first two acts that you can imagine their gratitude. He’s a major talent, and a prolific one; at thirty-six, according to his bio in the playbill he’s written thirteen plays as well as pieces for radio and TV. I can’t wait to see the next one.

The first act of Mike Lew’s Tiger Style!, currently playing in the Huntington Theatre Company’s second space at the Calderwood Pavilion, is an inconsistently funny satire of the plight of twenty-something Chinese Americans, raised to be fierce overachievers and dissatisfied with the roles they’re stuck in. Albert (Jon Norman Schneider) and his sister Jenny (Ruibo Qian), who share an apartment in Irvine, California, are Harvard grads. He’s a medical software engineer; she’s a doctor with a Ph.D. as well as a medical degree, and among their other talents they used to have careers as classical musicians. But Jenny gets dumped by her white boyfriend (Bryan T. Donovan), who is in every way inferior to her but whom she’s been struggling to please, while Albert’s Asian boss (Francis Jue) passes him over for promotion in favor of a white guy (Donovan) who’s more or less an idiot but whose personality he finds more likable. Fed up with the way their lives have turned out, and the way they’re alternately forced into Chinese stereotypes and undervalued by the white world, the siblings decide – like Rose in Love, Love, Love – to confront their parents (Jue and Emily Kuroda), whom they blame for raising them “tiger style,” making them neurotic with their demands for perfection but not preparing them emotionally for failure and disappointment. When their parents deflect their complaints, they decide to move to China and see if Eastern solutions might work better than Western ones.

That’s when (in act two) the play goes south. Lew runs out of clever ideas and falls back on scenarios that are so broad and cartoonish they make your teeth ache. His satiric observations don’t add up to a play, and even in the first act he can’t sustain his humor. When Jenny and Albert lay out their beefs to their parents, their dad replies with a speech about his own father’s difficult immigrant life that is so earnest that it seems to belong in some other play; it’s as if Lew, who sends up everything else, just didn’t have the heart to make jokes when a Chinese man is talking about the previous generation’s struggles with poverty and racism. And though Lew can write funny one-liners, just as often he resorts to banality. When he doesn’t have a punch line, he throws in an expletive, as if holy shit or motherfucker were irresistibly hilarious on their own.

The best thing about Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s production is a combination of Wilson Chin’s set and Alex Koch’s witty projections. The worst thing, I have to say, is the acting, which is mostly shameless mugging, often at a surprisingly amateurish level. Kuroda and Donovan are perfectly OK (she also plays Jenny’s therapist and the siblings’ Chinese cousin), and Jue matches up well with Kuroda when they’re cast as the parents, but the funnier his characters are supposed to be the worse he gets. In the roles of the play’s dual protagonists, Schneider and Qian run out of ideas about halfway through act one. The show appears to be fighting to turn into a play until intermission, and you think that maybe it could get there with better acting and better direction. Almost as soon as act two gets going, you feel Lew has thrown in the towel, and you feel like doing the same.

– Steve Vineberg is Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches theatre and film. He also writes for The Threepenny Review and is the author of three books: Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style; No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade; and High Comedy in American Movies.

Love

Love Love Love Roundabout Theater

Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love is a darkly comedic play that focuses on selfishness and its repercussions. It is a story of an insular couple whose own happiness matters more than anyone else’s around them—including their own children.

Love, Love, Love is told over the course of three different decades, in three different acts. We first meet two young men—Kenneth (Richard Armitage) and Henry (Alex Hurt)—in the mid-1960s. Henry is working in London, and his younger brother, Kenneth, has come to live with him during his summer off from school. Henry’s girlfriend, Sanrda (Amy Ryan), comes over and is enamored with fellow-Oxfordite Kenneth. The two, naturally, fall for each other, and The Beatles’s “All You Need is Love” blares from the television. From there we jump to the 1980s where Kenneth and Sandra have abandoned their “free spirit” and “free love” lifestyle and succumbed to office jobs. They have created a middle-class suburban home for themselves and their two children, Rose (Zoe Kazan) and Jamie (Ben Rosenfield). However, despite growing older, they have not actually matured out of their “I’m the center of the universe” thinking. Fast-forward again to mid-2000s. Kenneth and Sandra are in their mid-60s; their children are grown and each struggling with their lives. Again, everyone may have aged in years, but they have not aged in maturity.

Love, Love, Love‘s satirical look at the nature of these two people falls a bit short. The characters, while engaging in their deficiencies, are broad generalizations and stand-ins for a generation of people, but it doesn’t dispel the fact that they are mostly unlikeable and irritating characters. So, even though the intention is for Kenneth and Sandra to be goofily self-involved and bad parents in order to comment on the narcissisticness and self-centeredness of the baby boomer generation (and the repercussions of that), it doesn’t quite make a lasting statement that will echo for years to come. Love, Love, Love is not a play that is making a unique statement.

Despite the fallacies of the play itself, the production was slick and well-done. The set design by Derek McLane was superb. From young bachelor pad with minimal furniture to middle-class family home to upper-middle class home, every little detail was accounted for. Additionally, the acting was all-around fantastic. Alex Hurt’s Henry is resentful—made up of many quick flashes of shock, humiliation, and hurt that seem so natural and of the moment. Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan age from 19 to mid-60s, changing mannerisms to match, but never changing their essential selves. They are quick with their snark and at ease with each other. Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield capture their troubled children quite well. Kazan brings Rose to life with her whininess, constant attempts at grabbing her parents’s attention, and unhappiness. On the other hand, Jamie’s willful ignorance to the troubles around him manifest in mind-numbing actions that Rosenfield uncomfortably portrays. The ramifications of the older generation on the younger one is heartrendingly clear.

In the end, Love, Love, Love makes the irony of the song “All You Need is Love” that begins and ends the play dishearteningly clear.

Love, Love, Love: With One Casualty For Each
Posted on November 18, 2016 by ross
84779-9Love, Love, Love: With One Casualty For Each

by Ross

For each love in the title, there is one casualty left on the side by the two lovers at the center of this play as they journey from the age of 19 to 64, with one pit stop at 42. This seems to be the rule over at the Roundabout Off-Broadway theatre where the near perfect production of Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love is hilariously and brutally being performed nightly. This stellar cast, expertly directed by Michael Mayer, includes Richard Armitage, Alex Hurt, Zoe Kazan, Ben Rosenfield, and last but not least, the stupendous Amy Ryan. At the end of act one, the Beatles tell us that all you need is love, and for these two that does seem to be the case, but I’m guessing Barrett has a few other ideas beyond that.


This play is difficult to write about. Or maybe it’s just difficult for me to write about a play, any play, at this moment in time one week after a traumatic historical moment for the country I have chosen to live in. I can’t tell, but I can tell you that I was thoroughly pulled in to this examination of ‘Love, Love, Love‘ and the relationships that exist within over the years. It is a fine distraction from what happened, but also a reminder that years from now, we will look back with questioning eyes. Looking back at our youth and our ideals and trying to get a grip of what it all means is what we do as we move through life. This play is quite an indictment of the baby boomer/hippie generation by the playwright. Of those that were in their teens during the late sixties, and how over the years these freethinking hippies changed, while also staying pretty much the same.



The couple that we will follow through life meet at the expense of his brother, Henry beautifully and intricately played by Hurt. Disregarding his feelings, 19 year old Kenneth (a perfect Armitage) and Sandra (a delicious Ryan) are fully embracing the new world order of the 1960’s. Both of them relishing the sense of experimentation and freedom that the age of free love brings. They have stopped worrying about others and their reactions to their selfish desires and ego gratification. They cast those ideas aside as old and boring, jumping in to ‘love’ like the drunken bastards they both sort of are, leaving Henry on the side of the road licking his wounds. Casualty #1: the brother.


In the 1990’s the casualty of their love is a bit harder to pin down to one. Sandra and Kenneth are now a well off married couple with power jobs and highly educated teenage children. This should be heaven but all four seem to be off track. Both kids are suffering from their parent’s distractions and selfishness. Sandra barely registers family commitments in her life, choosing work and affairs over family commitments and support. Blindly grabbing what she wants and masking it as freedom, Ryan plays Sandra as a woman we want to dislike, but are drawn to despite ourselves. Now in their 40’s, these two are feeling trapped and not gratified enough in their ‘love’ and domestic family lives, itching to break out and break away. The end scene as we watch one child, Rose (Kazan) flail and the other Jamie (Rosenfield), retreat into some non-connected emotional void, makes one wonder which one has been the victim here of their obliviousness. My money goes on Jamie. Casualty #2: the son.



The third act finds us in 2011, the afternoon after Kenneth’s brother, Casualty #1’s funeral. Dad and son are living together in a luxurious home in the country like two retired gentlemen going to the pub and seeing shows. It’s quite sad to watch the young son, casualty #2, sleepwalking through his life. Jamie, exactingly played by Rosenfield, is like a survivor suffering from PTSD. Drinking, stammering, and forgetful, he tends to lose his train of thought, derailing into disconnection in the garden.



Into this well appointed home (perfect set designs by: Derek McLane) comes Rose, (the earnest and fantastic Kazan) the daughter who fought the hardest to get attention and gratification from her two selfish parents. She fought hard in Act two for their ‘love’ and attention, and now, 20 years later, she has asked them to come together as a family once more because she has something to say. It seems to be something important, as she looks like a boiling pot of porridge about to overflow. The mother finally arrives, with a very apt description of her journey over: “There she is safe and sound, but a trail of destruction in her wake, no doubt,” perfectly stated by Kenneth. Only than does the magnificent Kazan dive into her soliloquy that is basically a denouncement of her parental care. It’s devastating, but ultimately pointless as her complaints are met by deaf ears. Casualty #3: the daughter.



loveThis play begs us to ask the question, what will this generation have to say for itself years from now? What about my generation? The one that came just after the baby boomers? Or the generations to come. Ultimately, the thread that holds Love, Love, Love together is the larger question that begs to be answered. Is it wrong that their parent’s love for each other and their deep passion is more important than anything or anyone else? Are they selfish or are they simply passionately blind to others and only capable of seeing each other? They obviously left a trail of despair behind but in the end; they do come together in each other’s arms, because nothing in life comes even close to what they feel for each other. What will our story look like in 20 to 40 years?

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE: THE BOOMERS AND THE XERS

Posted on: November 25th, 2016 by Roundabout
Boomers and Xers
Google “Generation X vs. Baby Boomers,” or “Millennials vs. Generation X” and you’ll find results that, true to the “versus,” bring to mind a boxing match. Not just in the comments sections (Millennials and Gen Xers urging Boomers to retire or die; Gen Xers and Boomers scolding Millennials for participation-ribbon entitlement), but in the articles themselves. “Who’s worse off financially – Baby Boomers, Generation X or Millenials?” asks Canada’s Financial Post. “Baby Boomers: Five Reasons They Are Our Worst Generation,” trumpets a Philly Mag listicle. “Generation X has it worse than baby boomers,” laments the Boston Globe. “Crybaby millennials need to stop whinging and work hard like the rest of us,” admonishes London’s Telegraph. The stakes of the match seem not to be a victory, but an admission of defeat: who’s been hit the hardest, and how much have they lost?

The answers aren’t easy – but they also aren’t qualitative. Though we love to throw personal accusations around (the Boomers had no foresight, the Xers were slackers, the Millennials are narcissists), the real roots of the generational divide can be traced back to hard economic truths. In Rose’s words, “It is all about fucking money.”

Baby Boom and Bust

THE MONEY EQUATION: INPUT ≠ OUTPUT

One of the most controversial issues between Boomers and their descendants is that of government support for retirees. In 2015, a significant portion of US Government spending went towards Americans of retiring age. 24% of the federal budget went towards Social Security, and another 16% went towards Medicare. That means about 1.4 trillion dollars, or nearly 40% of the nation’s $3.7 trillion spending, went towards Americans over the age of 65 (generally speaking; 17% of Medicare beneficiaries are younger Americans with disabilities). As more of the nearly 75 million Baby Boomers age, this percentage will only increase. The rising costs are compounded by the fact that healthcare has gotten exponentially more expensive in the United States over the past century. In 1964, health care spending was about $197 per person per year, which would adjust to about $1,450 in 2012 dollars. But in 2012, health care spending per person per year was actually $8,915. The massive cost increase is the result of multiple factors, most notably waste (a 2012 Atlantic article, citing an Institute of Medicine report, estimated that the US spends about $750 billion on unnecessary healthcare costs each year). As aging Boomers encounter more health problems, their monetary strain on the system will continue to grow, and younger generations will be left paying the price.

Of course, if Gen X and the Millennials could count on similar government support in their old age, they might not mind paying their taxes towards Boomer-benefitting services. But unfortunately, younger generations can’t count on the same safety net. Workers born in the 1960s and onwards (a group that includes Rose and Jamie) have paid a higher percentage of their incomes into the Social Security tax than the Baby Boomers before them, but will receive less Social Security benefits in retirement. Baby Boomers didn’t just get their tax dollars back – they actually got more money in benefits than they’d paid for. A 2012 Urban Institute study estimated that a typical (Boomer) couple retiring in 2011 would draw about $200,000 more from Medicare and Social Security than they’d paid in taxes towards the same programs. Millennials and Xers will be lucky if they see their contributions come back at a 1:1 ratio.

Education Attainment Levels through Generations

THE MOBILITY TREND: UPWARD → DOWNWARD

The problem with Social Security benefits isn’t just about payout – it’s also about what higher contribution taxes, plus a myriad of other negative economic factors, means for the ability of Gen Xers and Millennials to save for retirement. When early-wave Baby Boomers (including Kenneth, Henry, and Sandra) entered the workforce, they could expect a steady upward climb in salary. They did better than their parents, and they also did better than their younger selves, seeing salary gains throughout their twenties, thirties, and forties before a wage peak (of 60-70% above their starting salary) in their early fifties. This lifelong rise allowed early Boomers to save for retirement and buy wealth-accruing assets (like stocks and houses). In retirement, Boomers could expect to live off of their accumulated wealth, in combination with employer-sponsored pensions and government-supported services. As a result, the net wealth of early-wave Baby Boomers in retirement is essentially the same as it was pre-retirement.

Richard Armitage and Zoe Kazan (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Richard Armitage and Zoe Kazan
(Photo by Joan Marcus)

Now, compare that to the state of mid to late Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. While early Baby Boomers enjoyed a lifetime upswing, the following generations (those born in the late 50s and onwards) experienced downward trends across the board. A 2015 Washington Monthly article, “Wealth and Generations,” neatly lays out the contrast: “Today’s fiftysomethings may be part of the first generation in American history to experience this kind of lifetime downward mobility, in which at every stage of adult life, they have had less income and less net wealth than did people who were their age ten years before. Yet these mid-wave Baby Boomers shouldn’t feel too sorry for themselves. That’s because, as we shall see, they were far better off as twentysomethings than were subsequent cohorts of Generation X twentysomethings, and especially better off than today’s Millennials.”

Unfortunately, it’s true. Gen Xers and Millennials have had many obstacles to overcome: lower starting salaries than their predecessors, fewer wage increases in their 20s and 30s, earlier and lower earnings peaks (early Xers saw a 50% increase at their peak; later Xers and Millennials may see only a 20% increase), fewer employer-sponsored pensions, and lower rates of asset ownership. As a result, these generations have a limited ability to accumulate wealth – and a more precipitous drop in post-retirement income. While early Boomers enjoyed nearly 100% of their pre-retirement income in their golden years, Gen X will subsist on about 50% of their pre-retirement income. And even that has come at a personal price. While the typical Generation X household makes (when adjusted for inflation) about $12,000 more per year than their parents’ household did, they also do more work and have less wealth; more families have two wage earners, and the hours worked by those wage earners have increased over time. In the past, more work meant higher wages; from 1948-1973, the productivity of American workers went up 96.7%, and wages followed, increasing by 91.3%. Productivity also increased from 1973-2013 (by about 75%), but, in contrast to previous decades, wages lagged far behind, increasing only 9%. As a result, American families are experiencing downward mobility. Nearly one-third of Gen Xers born in the late 1970s to middle-class families fell out of the middle class in adulthood. And fewer than half of Gen Xers (in every income bracket) are wealthier than their parents were at the same age.

Hot Button Issues through the Generations

THE COMMON VARIABLES

So what happened to cause this downward spiral? Two major economic shifts are significant to the story: the 1990 Recession, and the 2008 Financial Crisis. The first occurred just as Gen Xers were entering the workforce and the latter in the midst of what should have been their peak earning years. The results were catastrophic for the total financial narrative of Xers, causing them to have low starting salaries, lesser savings, and major savings losses. Generation X lost 45% of their wealth during The Great Recession, 2007-2010 (Boomers lost only 25%). And those difficult years have had reverberations for every generation: Boomers have stayed in the workforce at unprecedented rates (keeping jobs that, in other circumstances, would have opened to Xers and Millennials), asset values have decreased, and wages have stagnated. As a result, many younger Americans have opted to delay their entry into the workforce (and up their appeal as a job candidate) by going to college – an ostensibly wise move, considering that high school graduates today make only 62% of what college graduates make (as compared to 77% in 1979).

Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan (Photo by Joan Marcus)

But college, of course, poses another set of financial problems. In the best-case scenario, college delays earnings but ultimately pays off in a more skilled (and higher-paid) job. In the worst-case scenario, which is currently playing out for many Millennials, you graduate with mounds of student debt (college costs more than doubled between 1982 and 2012, and the average student borrower graduating in 2016 will owe some $37,000) and no job openings in your field. Many Millennials are choosing to bide their time (and pay their debts) by working jobs unrelated to their degrees. What will happen when jobs return (some 30 million are estimated to open as Boomers retire over the coming years) and these Millennials haven’t been building their resumes – and a new batch of graduates is ready to hire? We’ll see.

But while Millennials are looking at an uncertain future, Xers are living in a tenuous present. Often called the forgotten or neglected “middle child” between the Boomers and Millennials, Gen X is also currently a “sandwich” generation, meaning they are paying for aging parents as well as dependent children. The results are dire for finances. A 2015 survey found that nearly 40% of Generation X respondents reported that they do not feel “at all financially secure,” and nearly as many (38%) reported having more debt than savings.

Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan and Alex Hurt (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan and Alex Hurt (Photo by Joan Marcus)

THE SOLUTION

It’s important to remember that the factors above don’t exist in a vacuum. The economy, the job climate, and the college system are maintained and shaped by policy decisions. And for the past twenty years, those decisions have been made by Baby Boomers. Boomers make up only one-third of the American voting-age population, but they the hold nearly 2/3 of the seats in the House and Senate. The Congressional Boomer legacy still has some time to change; it’s estimated that Generation X won’t gain a majority in the House or Senate until at least 2018. But the generation’s record thus far has been, in a word, contentious. Jim Tankersley, in a 2015 Washington Post article, offered a harsh view of the Boomers’ achievements: “…they cut their own taxes, they deficit-financed two wars, they approved a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that their generation will be the first to enjoy in full. Partly as a result of those policies… Boomers let federal debt, as a share of the economy, double from where it was in 1970… Every generation wants to leave a better world for the ones to follow. I truly believe that boomers had no idea, for a long time, that the sum of their choices — of their quest to make life as good as it could be for themselves — might be a worse world for their children. But it’s apparent now.” Apparent, and illustrated onstage in Love, Love, Love – though, at least in the play, the Boomers aren’t watching.

Top 10 Plays and Musicals
Richard Zoglin Nov. 23, 2016
w. Still, it has come to Broadway with its bold theatricality and infectious score intact — plus a new star, pop singer Josh Groban, who has the pipes that a big Broadway house needs.


3. Dear Evan Hansen


A misfit teenager becomes an unwitting high school hero after the suicide of a classmate. A small musical with big ideas — about parenting, about the Internet, and about our desperate need for connection — and a big new star in Ben Platt, who plays Evan. The score, by hot songwriting team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, is serviceable, but few musicals are as psychologically acute or strike as powerful an emotional chord as this one.


2. Love, Love, Love

A couple hook up in the free-spirited, drug-fueled ’60s, then (in two successive acts, spaced 20 years apart) see their marriage, kids and lives unravel. This piercing new play from Mike Bartlett (King Charles III), imported from London’s Royal Court Theater, is admirably lean and mean, a portrait both of two severely mixed up characters, and of an entire generation’s ambiguous legacy.


1. Shuffle Along

The 70th Annual Tony Awards
John Paul Filo—CBS /Getty Images
It was submerged by the Hamilton tidal wave, but in any other season George C. Wolfe’s splashy re-creation of a landmark black musical of the 1920s (and the story behind it) might have been the toast of Broadway. Part revival, part theater history, part backstage drama, the show was not only a tribute to the African-American contribution to the Broadway musical, but also (with an all-star team of performers like Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Billy Porter) a showcase for the contemporary fruits of that grand tradition.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016




Love Love Love



One of the things I most enjoyed about Mike Bartlett's play is the ease at which he gets the audience just before he slides the knife in. Biting, cunning, humorous, and genuinely quite an accurate indictment he makes of the Baby Boomer generation (with a dash of Millennial choke-on-this thrown in).


Three acts. Three different times. One family. Husband and wife meet at 19 yo kids in London in Act I. Idealistic, free-thinking, oxford types -break the mold 60's is the time. We watch them rebel against authority, their parents, and ultimately themselves (the brothers). When we slide into Act II, we are in the 80's. Free thinkers all grown up - still smart, still entitled, and still thinking they are on top of the world - but now they have their own kids... their own problems... their own demons - yes - we see them generally neglect their children, fight, drink, smoke, and act exactly like the ME generation they were. Clearly the family if affected. We learn just how much at the end of Act II,


As we glide into Act III we are now in the 90's - although they seem to have taken some liberties with an iPad and cell phones (i think that is the millennial mixture thrown in just to stir the pot even more). Parents are still assholes. Funny, but assholes. Kids are still damaged - some more than others although the parents wouldn't even notice because that would be admitting to something they don't want to deal with. The younger generation drives this act - and we start to see the millennial whine and complain about their awful parents who have it all and they have none.
This ensemble cast is superb Richard Armitage (Kenneth, father), Alex Hurt (Henry, brother), Amy Ryan (Sandra, wife), Zoe Kazan (Rose, daughter), Ben Rosenfeld (Jamie, son), Sets, divine and period appropriate (Derek McLane). Michael Mayer must have had so much fun directing this one - letting some lines hang - and pounding others down our throats.

If you don't think enough wine was poured in Act II and III - just top yourself off before you head over to the Laura Pels off-Broadway house for Roundabout Theatre Company