A pan from Variety.com though I give the review itself half a star, when did Variety stop caring about theatre? What a throwaway review:
Jim Belushi wants to do right by Harry Brock, he really does. Although he isn't the gangster Belushi makes him out to be, this crude, cruel millionaire junkman is pretty repulsive if you take him at face value. Even more so if you take him out of his postwar time frame -- when rich, powerful men had more freedom to abuse their underlings and kick their women around -- and judge him by contemporary standards.
Movie star or no movie star, the audience doesn't like this Brock, a big bully who is so used to getting whatever he wants that he smacks Billie when she stands up to him. More critically, Belushi doesn't seem to like him, either -- not enough, anyway, to keep him in historical perspective and avoid the temptation to misrepresent him as a charmless Tony Soprano.
Newcomer Nina Arianda is no Judy Holliday, but she's great fun to watch as she gleefully examines the exciting bits of knowledge that have begun to penetrate Billie Dawn's newly awakened mind. (Books! With words in them!) Arianda, who proved her understanding of the inner life of dumb broads in "Venus in Furs," is also plenty cute when she's flaunting Billie's curves and shaking the golden curls on her empty head.
What eludes her, though -- and it's no small thing -- is the sweet, pure, guileless, childlike, honest-to-god, America-the-Beautiful innocence that makes Billie Dawn the immortal character she is. Arianda's Billie is a nice kid and a good sport, but innocent? Nah.
Robert Sean Leonard is every bit the heartthrob he plays on "House," and that sad little grin he relies on to convey his disappointment with the world works very well for Paul Verrall. But his infatuation with Billie is less than convincing, and the lack of energy in his courtship of her makes us question what kind of a catch he actually is. Variety.com
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
