New York Theatre Workshop
(212) 279-4200
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Though Once is based on a movie, the show proves to be a powerful reminder of theater’s “singular capacity to enchant and transport us,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. Enda Walsh’s adaptation improves on the 2006 hit Irish film, “expanding its emotional breadth and elevating it stylistically” while retaining the appealing fragility of its love story. The two leads, still named merely Guy (Steve Kazee) and Girl (Cristin Milioti), meet cute in Dublin and, while singing and playing some “emotionally ravishing” original music together, fall in love without acting on their emotions. Director John Tiffany stages their brief romance with such precision and thoughtfulness that “even the scene changes pack visual poetry.”
Not everything translates well to the stage, said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. In the film, the “understated naturalness of the performances” kept the story from veering into cutesy romcom territory, but subtlety “has never been considered an asset in musicals.” That might be why Walsh took Girl, a forthright Czech immigrant, more fully into “kooky,” pixie dream-girl territory and transformed Guy “from a shaggy nerd” into “a figure of leading-man handsomeness.” Fortunately, “a merciful reversal occurs when Once breaks into music,” as the too-adorable characters acquire the depth and mystery that they lack when delivering their spoken lines.
In the end, “it’s impossible not to feel the love,” said Adam Green in Vogue.com. Even when the script “falls into the traps of cliché, over-explanation,” and forced whimsy, the show overall has a less-is-more aesthetic that’s “almost cinematic.” Likewise, the “soulful Kazee and the elfin, wide-eyed Milioti” have irresistible charm, and when they play and sing together, she on piano and he on guitar, they prove so well matched that “it sends shivers through the audience.” Even though Guy and Girl part “without ever having even kissed,” your sense is that “they’ve done something just as intimate.”
-
Weapons: Julia Garner stars in 'hyper-eerie' psychological thrillerThe Week Recommends Zach Cregger's 'top notch' new film opens with 17 children disappearing at exactly the same time
-
Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
-
Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
-
If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.