Tell Billie for me... bye-bye, blackbird.
Blackbird
http://blackbirdbroadway.com
The winner of Olivier Award, they say. I say: Olivier Award, you're stupid. Go home read Lolita, of which this little play is a rip-off.
Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams indulgent empty play: Lo hunts Humbert Humbert down and wants... Umm, it's actually not clear what it is she wants. Neither it's clear what David Harrower, the playwright, wanted to say with it. Love conquers all? It's not cool to sleep with teenagers? Time doesn't heel? I'm at loss.
The premise of the story is much more promising then the actual story: he sleeps with her (unlike Lolita, she's a virgin), does time, gets out, moves away, and then she finds him 12 years later. What we actually get is 80 rather tiresome minutes of their meeting, with a lot of screaming, kicking, punching, and throwing the trash around. She complains and howls, he keeps saying how sorry he was, and then it's over on a high note that these two actually love each other, but his wife is waiting and it's time to leave the theater. Sorry about the spoiler, I just saved you about $70.
Ms Williams is a perfect little screamer, there was not a single line she delivered without a hysterical screech. Jeff Daniels is trying to redeem his character and Joe Mantello's straightforward and flat staging, but he seems so... old and so disinterested in Ms. Williams, her antics, and all the sexual exaltations, and the only thing that gets across as plausible is that he really really wants to go home to his wife. And it's time to leave the theater.
http://blackbirdbroadway.com
The winner of Olivier Award, they say. I say: Olivier Award, you're stupid. Go home read Lolita, of which this little play is a rip-off.
Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams indulgent empty play: Lo hunts Humbert Humbert down and wants... Umm, it's actually not clear what it is she wants. Neither it's clear what David Harrower, the playwright, wanted to say with it. Love conquers all? It's not cool to sleep with teenagers? Time doesn't heel? I'm at loss.
The premise of the story is much more promising then the actual story: he sleeps with her (unlike Lolita, she's a virgin), does time, gets out, moves away, and then she finds him 12 years later. What we actually get is 80 rather tiresome minutes of their meeting, with a lot of screaming, kicking, punching, and throwing the trash around. She complains and howls, he keeps saying how sorry he was, and then it's over on a high note that these two actually love each other, but his wife is waiting and it's time to leave the theater. Sorry about the spoiler, I just saved you about $70.
Ms Williams is a perfect little screamer, there was not a single line she delivered without a hysterical screech. Jeff Daniels is trying to redeem his character and Joe Mantello's straightforward and flat staging, but he seems so... old and so disinterested in Ms. Williams, her antics, and all the sexual exaltations, and the only thing that gets across as plausible is that he really really wants to go home to his wife. And it's time to leave the theater.