Post by Jules on Apr 30, 2009 1:10:24 GMT -5
Post any you find here! (links only might be best)
To kick off here's the NYT review:
New York Times:
Too Old to Be Hot? Not This Guy
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
CLICK
Age has not exactly withered “Accent on Youth,” a 1934 comedy by Samson Raphaelson about the storms besetting a May-December romance in the theater world. But it has not done this personable but minor play any great favors either.
“I’m 51,” says Steven Gaye, the playwright portrayed by David Hyde Pierce who represents the wintry half of the story’s romantic duo. “I can smell 60.”
In our era of trophy wives and proudly prowling cougars, of Viagra and Cialis and Botox and Restylane, 51-year-olds are more likely to be smelling 16. The dramatic question the play poses — can a man of such advanced years reasonably and respectably hope to find love with a woman half his age? — seems preposterous.
Still, the Manhattan Theater Club revival, which opened Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater under the direction of Daniel Sullivan, offers cozy comforts understandably prized by a significant subset of Broadway theatergoers. Namely those for whom a couple of hours of light laughs in the presence of a likable star and some ogle-worthy period scenery will suffice for an afternoon of diversion. (Did I hear someone sighing over the ornate moldings on John Lee Beatty’s set, or was that me?)
Mr. Hyde Pierce, who won a Tony Award for his performance as a star-struck detective in the backstage murder-mystery musical “Curtains,” seems breezily at home in more or less the same milieu here. As a playwright who pens a drama about late-life romance and then finds himself caught up in a similar adventure offstage, Mr. Hyde Pierce hits his comic marks with the precision we’ve come to expect from his priceless turn on the long-running, exceptionally literate sitcom “Frasier.” (Now and forever in syndicated reruns, I hope.)
Steven has settled into a life of plush professional satisfaction and romantic isolation — “I’m a one-divorce man,” he quips — when he suddenly finds himself tugged back into the tides of romantic attraction. After an informal reading of his new play, “Old Love,” he receives a visit from an ex-flame, the actress Genevieve Lang (Rosie Benton), who doesn’t particularly want to play the lead in his play but wouldn’t mind taking that role in his life.
Just as Steven is about to book passage for a madcap adventure with Genevieve in Finland, however, his dutiful secretary, Linda Brown (Mary Catherine Garrison), confesses that she has long carried a torch for him. Suddenly, Steven’s doubts about the plausibility — and the tastefulness — of his drama about a love affair between an older man and a younger woman evaporate in the face of overwhelming evidence of his magnetic allure.
Comforting the sobbing Linda, Steven is forced to confess his own appeal. “Funny, when you get right down to it, I can’t think offhand of a man who could make you forget me,” he says. “I am a unique combination — witty, sensitive, imaginative, worldly, gay — and yet with a feeling for tragedy. ... And I know myself too well, I’ve been around too much, to deny that I’m charming.”
Mr. Hyde Pierce strikes the right note of self-mockery in this speech. He brings a light touch to the more expressly emotional passages in the play, too. After casting Linda as the leading lady in “Old Love” — making for a rather implausible career upgrade — Steven falls in love with her. But he is tempted to step aside and gallantly offer her the chance to find happiness with a more age-appropriate man, her love-struck co-star, the boyish leading man Dickie Reynolds (David Furr).
As Steven’s loyal butler, Flogdell, who himself strikes up an affair with a much younger woman, Charles Kimbrough (“Murphy Brown”) provides some tasty comic flavor. Byron Jennings is equally amusing as Frank Galloway, the older actor whose performance in Steven’s play reawakens his zest for the high life of a Broadway matinee idol, even one on whom evening is quickly descending.
The female roles are less stylishly played. Ms. Benton doesn’t bring enough sparkle to the worldly Genevieve, and the baby-faced Ms. Garrison seems too pouty and deficient in charm in the first act, when Linda tearily confesses her affection. Nor is she wholly convincing as a suddenly sophisticated actress. When she gives a passionate speech about missing the mad, maddening, glorious tumult of the stage in the second act, it fails to convince. Ms. Garrison’s wholesome sweetness seems more farm-friendly than Rialto-centric.
Raphaelson wrote many Broadway plays, including “The Jazz Singer,” but today is better known for his screenplays, the most celebrated being Ernst Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise” and “The Shop Around the Corner,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion.” A more brisk, clipped cinematic style would probably benefit Mr. Sullivan’s direction of “Accent on Youth.” The second act is draggy. (The play was written in three acts, and here is played in two.)
But there are a few choice showbiz jokes to enliven the proceedings. The best belongs to Mr. Jennings’s Frank, musing on the box office fate of “Old Love,” which has changed all the players’ lives in one way or another.
“I thought either it would be a smash hit, like a Eugene O’Neill play,” he observes, “or a dreadful failure, like — like a Eugene O’Neill play. But who would have predicted that it would turn out just a show.”
Plus ça change. The current Broadway revival of O’Neill’s mythic potboiler “Desire Under the Elms” has provoked strongly divergent reactions. “Accent on Youth,” by contrast, is not going to fuel too many arguments. While perfectly amiable, it too is “just a show.”
To kick off here's the NYT review:
New York Times:
Too Old to Be Hot? Not This Guy
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
CLICK
Age has not exactly withered “Accent on Youth,” a 1934 comedy by Samson Raphaelson about the storms besetting a May-December romance in the theater world. But it has not done this personable but minor play any great favors either.
“I’m 51,” says Steven Gaye, the playwright portrayed by David Hyde Pierce who represents the wintry half of the story’s romantic duo. “I can smell 60.”
In our era of trophy wives and proudly prowling cougars, of Viagra and Cialis and Botox and Restylane, 51-year-olds are more likely to be smelling 16. The dramatic question the play poses — can a man of such advanced years reasonably and respectably hope to find love with a woman half his age? — seems preposterous.
Still, the Manhattan Theater Club revival, which opened Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater under the direction of Daniel Sullivan, offers cozy comforts understandably prized by a significant subset of Broadway theatergoers. Namely those for whom a couple of hours of light laughs in the presence of a likable star and some ogle-worthy period scenery will suffice for an afternoon of diversion. (Did I hear someone sighing over the ornate moldings on John Lee Beatty’s set, or was that me?)
Mr. Hyde Pierce, who won a Tony Award for his performance as a star-struck detective in the backstage murder-mystery musical “Curtains,” seems breezily at home in more or less the same milieu here. As a playwright who pens a drama about late-life romance and then finds himself caught up in a similar adventure offstage, Mr. Hyde Pierce hits his comic marks with the precision we’ve come to expect from his priceless turn on the long-running, exceptionally literate sitcom “Frasier.” (Now and forever in syndicated reruns, I hope.)
Steven has settled into a life of plush professional satisfaction and romantic isolation — “I’m a one-divorce man,” he quips — when he suddenly finds himself tugged back into the tides of romantic attraction. After an informal reading of his new play, “Old Love,” he receives a visit from an ex-flame, the actress Genevieve Lang (Rosie Benton), who doesn’t particularly want to play the lead in his play but wouldn’t mind taking that role in his life.
Just as Steven is about to book passage for a madcap adventure with Genevieve in Finland, however, his dutiful secretary, Linda Brown (Mary Catherine Garrison), confesses that she has long carried a torch for him. Suddenly, Steven’s doubts about the plausibility — and the tastefulness — of his drama about a love affair between an older man and a younger woman evaporate in the face of overwhelming evidence of his magnetic allure.
Comforting the sobbing Linda, Steven is forced to confess his own appeal. “Funny, when you get right down to it, I can’t think offhand of a man who could make you forget me,” he says. “I am a unique combination — witty, sensitive, imaginative, worldly, gay — and yet with a feeling for tragedy. ... And I know myself too well, I’ve been around too much, to deny that I’m charming.”
Mr. Hyde Pierce strikes the right note of self-mockery in this speech. He brings a light touch to the more expressly emotional passages in the play, too. After casting Linda as the leading lady in “Old Love” — making for a rather implausible career upgrade — Steven falls in love with her. But he is tempted to step aside and gallantly offer her the chance to find happiness with a more age-appropriate man, her love-struck co-star, the boyish leading man Dickie Reynolds (David Furr).
As Steven’s loyal butler, Flogdell, who himself strikes up an affair with a much younger woman, Charles Kimbrough (“Murphy Brown”) provides some tasty comic flavor. Byron Jennings is equally amusing as Frank Galloway, the older actor whose performance in Steven’s play reawakens his zest for the high life of a Broadway matinee idol, even one on whom evening is quickly descending.
The female roles are less stylishly played. Ms. Benton doesn’t bring enough sparkle to the worldly Genevieve, and the baby-faced Ms. Garrison seems too pouty and deficient in charm in the first act, when Linda tearily confesses her affection. Nor is she wholly convincing as a suddenly sophisticated actress. When she gives a passionate speech about missing the mad, maddening, glorious tumult of the stage in the second act, it fails to convince. Ms. Garrison’s wholesome sweetness seems more farm-friendly than Rialto-centric.
Raphaelson wrote many Broadway plays, including “The Jazz Singer,” but today is better known for his screenplays, the most celebrated being Ernst Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise” and “The Shop Around the Corner,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion.” A more brisk, clipped cinematic style would probably benefit Mr. Sullivan’s direction of “Accent on Youth.” The second act is draggy. (The play was written in three acts, and here is played in two.)
But there are a few choice showbiz jokes to enliven the proceedings. The best belongs to Mr. Jennings’s Frank, musing on the box office fate of “Old Love,” which has changed all the players’ lives in one way or another.
“I thought either it would be a smash hit, like a Eugene O’Neill play,” he observes, “or a dreadful failure, like — like a Eugene O’Neill play. But who would have predicted that it would turn out just a show.”
Plus ça change. The current Broadway revival of O’Neill’s mythic potboiler “Desire Under the Elms” has provoked strongly divergent reactions. “Accent on Youth,” by contrast, is not going to fuel too many arguments. While perfectly amiable, it too is “just a show.”