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William Saroyan’s Pulitzer-winning 1939 play about ruin and redemption among a group of eccentric bar patrons “captures America on the defining cusp of World War II,” said F. Kathleen Foley in the Los Angeles Times. The play bears certain resemblances to Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, yet over the years O’Neill’s play has ascended while Saroyan’s has waned. There are legitimate reasons for this. Saroyan’s at-times-sentimental tale of a wealthy boozer named Joe’s attempt to play cupid with a sad young prostitute named Kitty and a young patron named Tom can be an odd mix of “the caustic and the corny.” Yet Matt McKenzie’s ambitious direction overcomes such shortcomings by highlighting the nonlinear narrative and other aspects of the play that “prefigured American theater’s segue into alternative forms.”
McKenzie does a meticulous job of “exploring all the different corners of Saroyan’s saloon with understated finesse,” said Terry Morgan in Variety. Saroyan’s play hinges on the unconventional, propulsive dialogue. Both director and cast understand this. As Joe, Robb Derringer anchors the
helter-skelter atmosphere of the bar, coming across as a sage and world-weary drunkard “who understands the negative but opts for the positive.” Shiva Rose plays Kitty with fitting wistfulness, and Matt McTighe nails Tom’s bleary-eyed, winning enthusiasm. As the bar’s owner, Nick, Christopher Shaw plays a decent man who runs a decent place with winning charm. Together, the ensemble brings Saroyan’s classic to “warmhearted, boisterous life.”
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Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
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Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
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Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.