33 VARIATIONS Reviews — Page 2

Backstage is NEGATIVE:

""The art of variation is transforming something into its better self," explains Jane Fonda as Dr. Katherine Brandt, the musicologist at the center of Moisés Kaufman's muddled play 33 Variations. Kaufman, who also directs, attempts to transform a subject of academic interest -- Beethoven's obsession with a simple waltz, upon which he based the titular project -- into a theatrical event. But he layers the story of the elderly genius with the melodrama of Dr. Brandt, and the result is like Amadeus meets Lifetime TV.

Kaufman has turned a potentially engrossing drama into a banal soap opera. Dr. Brandt is gradually succumbing to a debilitating disease as she researches the topic and reconnects with her estranged daughter, Clara. Parallels are drawn between scholar and subject as they lose their health. Meanwhile, a romance develops between Clara and Mike, a nurse treating her mother. Somehow they all wind up in Bonn, Germany, where the Beethoven archives are located, and form a temporary family along with Gertie, the head archivist, whose frosty Teutonic exterior soon melts."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003949583

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There's nothing odd about it. He liked Fonda's performance and thought the others were appealing, he thought the play lacked originality. He saw the same things in AMADEUS and ARCADIA, but Kaufman isn't as strong a dramatist as Peter Shaffer or Tom Stoppard.

Where the hell does it say that? It's a love letter to her.

ETA: The review reads

"Ms. Fonda’s layered crispness is, I regret to add, a contrast to Mr. Kaufman’s often soggy play, which sends her character on a quest to unlock, with a mortal deadline looming before her, a musical mystery about the Beethoven composition of the title. Still, I’m willing to forgive a fair amount in a production that returns Ms. Fonda with such gallantry to the Broadway stage after an absence of 46 years."

That's hardly "The play isn't that great, but it brings Jane Fonda back, so I'm willing to overlook most of that (although her performance isn't great, either)."

Updated On: 3/9/09 at 10:33 PM

Not to the old gray lady.

It's not so much that, Tulita: Brantley has a responsibility to say what he honestly thinks of the play.

What really bothers me, as I said before, was that his love for Fonda seemed to blind him to the fact that maybe the fact that her performance isn't passionate enough is a bit damaging to a play about passion.

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Wow. I kinda expected the comparisons to Amadeus, but didn't think there would be so many Lifetime TV references. The play's problem is that there have been other plays that essayed the same subject matter much better than 33 Variations. No critic is providing an out and out rave....

I think Fonda was just so one note, but the whole play seemed one note to me.

For me Brantley's review was eclipsed by the stunning production photo that accompanies it. Talk about a picture worth a thousand words.

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TheaterMania is mixed to positive:

"...Kaufman juggles these elements in ways that are sometimes rewarding and convincing -- particularly in the mother-daughter reconciliation that slowly unfolds -- and sometimes not. For example, Kaufman's depiction of Beethoven can be excessively along what-a-bombastic-cuss-he-was lines. Moreover, Kaufman not only equates to the point of incipient dyspepsia the composer's eventual deafness with Brandt's illness; but in a couple sequences, the characters in the present and those in the past mouth the same sentiments in unison (or shall we say in variations). It's a theatrical conceit that cheapens rather than enriches the work.

Although he stumbles in the writing, Kaufman makes no noticeable slips in a stunning production that's designed by Derek McLane to include archive stacks on casters and is enhanced by Jeff Sugg's projections of sheet music with replicas of Beethoven's writings. As for the cast, Fonda -- in her first Broadway appearance in over 45 years -- does a reputable job of growing progressively infirm; Grenier is the Beethoven that Kaufman wants; and Mathis and Hanks fall sweetly in love. Indeed, the entire ensemble sees to it that verbal music is made with the literal music. "
Full Review

I liked it too. Didn't love it but I liked it. These reviews are pretty accurate though...if a little too harsh.

Is GOD OF CARNAGE considered a new play? I'm assuming so.

It really bugs me when shows with female protagonists get written off as "Lifetime Movie" material. That is so dismissive, sexist and ignorant.

Jane's character is an intellectual, a scientist, a researcher, so she is not going to do cartwheels or jump up and down over manuscripts, she is too busy "in her head" trying to make sense of things. It is the very reason she did not connect to her daughter-she was stuck in her head, the very place she ends up when her body fails. The sudience was into the show when I saw it and there was audible crying.

Critics were hard on "Rabbit Hole" as well, but audiences loved it and Cynthia Nixon won the Tony. I think critics have issue with grief, loss, and disconnection in general.

If any failed plays were "Hallmark" or "Lifetime" potential it was "The Story of My Life" which was about two men.

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Roscoe, I respect and totally get your points about some of the formulaic aspects of the show. One of the things that I tend to like about some plays, that many others seem to not, is when I struggle to care about a character.

I like the parallel process that I as an audience experienced with Mathis. I have never subscribed to the idea that I needed to "care" necessarily about a character, but I need to be engaged. Jane engaged me in many ways. Also, psychologically speaking, many audience members may have had similar issues with their own primary care givers, so they don't necessarily get touched by caring about Fonda, but just seeing a story that they can relate to, thus feeling less alone.

I loved the show, but respect those that didn't. There is so much intangible that impacts how someone likes a show, most of the reasons very personal psychological ones, including the audience member's own history.

I love how Jeanne Tresori put it, saying that it all comes down to an audience member's "emotional temperature", as to whether or not a show resonates for them.

Also, having loved people with terminal illness, there is a tendency to shut down and I think Jane's character was doing that from the very moment we meet her.

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Updated On: 3/10/09 at 11:45 AM

The Bergen Record is NEGATIVE:

"...That time-sharing idea activates an observer's comparison gene: How does what's happening on stage measure up against Tom Stoppard's dazzling 1993 play "Arcadia," the gold standard in present-past drama?

The urge to compare is encouraged by the fact that "33 Variations," which opened Monday night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, goes back to the same era as "Arcadia," and has the same basic plot as the earlier play: a modern-day scholar attempts to solve a historical mystery.

Kaufman's effort has its distinctive, and even lovely, moments, but, overall, it doesn't stack up very well against Stoppard's play. In fact, it demonstrates how hard it is to find the right style, among other elements, to pull off such a bravura scheme."

http://www.northjersey.com/entertainment/stage/Beethoven_piece_drives_mystery.html?c=y&page=1


The New York Daily News gives the show 3 STARS OUT OF 5:

"The Oscar winner brings everything to this role that's made her an iconic film star: Pure enthusiasm, toughness tempered by vulnerability, and that distinctive voice which makes every line fascinating.

Too bad this handsomely designed but unconvincing drama isn't as big an event as Fonda's return. Writer-director Moises Kaufman ("Gross Indecency," "The Laramie Project") is known for visually inventive works that blend fact and fiction.

He delivers both in this play, seen earlier in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. But what begins as an exciting journey of discovery, with hints of "Amadeus," sinks into a conventional Lifetime momand-daughter reconciliation."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/arts/2009/03/10/2009-03-10_jane_fonda_back_on_broadway_for_33_varia.html


New York Magazine is POSITIVE:

"In Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations, Jane Fonda plays an American musicologist—a Beethoven specialist—who decides to go ahead with a research trip to Bonn, Germany, even though she's just been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). It's a grim prognosis for her, but maybe it's worse for us: Nothing can kill a night of pleasure at the theater faster than a play about death, life, and the meaning of art, the kind of thing in which characters exist only as mouthpieces for disembodied ideas.

But 33 Variations isn't, blessedly, that sort of play: Kaufman, who also directed this production, clearly wants to keep our nerve endings alive, not deaden them..."

http://nymag.com/arts/theater/reviews/55276/


Newsday is VERY NEGATIVE:

"Jane Fonda is lanky and wry, with a great chin and a flat, deep voice that, more than once in her return to Broadway, may make you think about her late father, Henry. By opening last night at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in an ambitious new work - rather than in a brand-name vehicle or a star-driven fluff ball - she is also very brave.

This does not make "33 Variations" a good play or suggest that the actress, 71, has bounced back onto the stage with all the easygoing confidence of someone who hadn't left it 46 years ago for other worldly adventures."

http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/partii/ny-etfonda106062128mar10a,0,4210117.story

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Updated On: 3/10/09 at 12:49 PM