"After The Fall"----- Falls !!!

Just got back... you may notice that my post is a bit early, being that the show began at 8PM. Yes, we left... The fact that my wife is a bit under the weather made the decision a lot easier. This is news for us. We have NEVER before left a show at the intermission. Came close at "Cats", but stuck it out. This was too much.

A lot of talk about Peter Krause being miscast. Dont know if that is true or not, because I am not familiar with this work from Arthur Miller. Loved every other piece that we have seen from Miller. So, cant say that he is miscast. Can say that he is bland, and seems bored. Best way that I can describe it. I dont know what type of character Quentin is supposed to be. Old? Young? Crabby? Confused? Brilliant? Not? .. what I do know is that Krause shows just about no emotion at all in this role.

15 minutes in, we knew we would be in for a long night. 20 minutes in, we counted 5 people that left. At intermission, at least 20-30.

There was hope that the 2nd act would be better. Carla Gugino was very good, for the brief amount of time that we saw her, but by that time, it was like getting excited for a baseball game after a 2 hour rain delay. We could not understand much of the dialogue from Holga (Vivienne Benesch) due to the accent. As the mother, Candy Buckley seemed to be overacting to the max. Dan Ziskie as the father was okay. As a whole, this cast seemed to be the anti- "Death of a Salesman" Bway cast.. and I am not even thinking about Dennehy and/or Franz. The other members of "Salesman", in my opinion, were all superb.

Overall, this seemed like a bad college production, written by one of the greats. Well, we did think the set was pretty cool !!

Well, you win some, you lose some. Off to "Wicked" tomorrow !!

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Testing, you should have stayed because Carla Gugino was wonderful in the second act - she had everything the role asks for. Just an amazing performance. For me she was worth the price of admission.

As to Krause, what can one say? It needs an actor of real charisma and weight to pull off this deeply ungrateful role and he is not that actor. I liked Jessica Hecht as the wife, Louise, sympathetic and plausible in another part that can be deadly in the wrong hands. Also Mark Nelson as Lou, the HUAC victim, had some nice moments.

I don't know what to say about the production. It certainly didn't solve the play's many problems. Only the Maggie scenes have life but --- this show has a great Maggie.

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shut up! CATS is an awsome show (only if you see it in NY or london) and i didnt even read the rest of your post after that all i herad was "almost left CATS." If there was a god, CATS would be its gift to theatre.

Seeing it early August.. I hope they get their acts together!

J. - Everyone has their own opinions. Most of the people that I know did not like Cats. If they loved it, good for them. I wont tell them to "shut up", but that's just me.

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I am not familiar with this show at all. What is it about?

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Is the character of Maggie a movie star like Monroe?

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In the original production Maggie was costumed to look like Marilyn.

I didn't see it but I remember the production stills.

I had a friend who saw it last week and said the EXACT same thing. He said that 15 minutes into it he was looking for the exit and realized it would be difficult to leave the theatre without being noticed, so he waited until intermission.