Posted: 6/12/25 at 8:41pm
First review thread of the 2025-26 Broadway season.
Let’s do this!
Posted: 6/12/25 at 10:11pm
Another late review embargo? Guess it's the new standard. Adam Feldman usually says when they'll drop but nothing yet.
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:13pm
Green in NYT raves about Smart, little else
Review: Jean Smart, Gritty and Poetic in ‘Call Me Izzy’
The “Hacks” star returns to Broadway after 25 years in a triumph for her, if not for the old-fashioned, flowery play about spouse abuse.
https://archive.ph/trfQS
Updated On: 6/12/25 at 11:13 PM
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:21pm
I’d say that’s spot on. Go for her. That’s legit the only reason.
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:22pm
USA Today
'Call Me Izzy' review: Jean Smart transcends a middling Broadway play
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2025/06/12/call-me-izzy-review-jean-smart/84099288007/
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:24pm
Variety
'Call Me Izzy’ Review: Jean Smart Dazzles in a Broadway Play That Treads All-Too-Familiar Territory
https://variety.com/2025/legit/reviews/call-me-izzy-review-jean-smart-broadway-1236428572/
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:25pm
Vulture
https://www.vulture.com/article/jean-smart-call-me-izzy-theater-review.html
"Jean Smart, heading back to Broadway after a career revival on television, has plenty of talent. The trouble is she’s stuck in a production that has little idea what to do with it, other than subject her character to grim and unenlightening suffering."
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:26pm
The Guardian
Call Me Izzy review – Jean Smart is better than her one-woman show
Studio 54, New York
The Hacks star is magnetic but the show, where she plays a woman finding herself late in life, can’t match her
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/jun/12/call-me-izzy-review-jean-smart-broadway
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:28pm
Deadline.com
Jean Smart Welcomes In The New Broadway Season With The Remarkable ‘Call Me Izzy’ – Review
https://deadline.com/2025/06/jean-smart-call-me-izzy-broadway-review-1236427982/
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:29pm
Jean Smart trades stand-up for stanzas in Call Me Izzy. — As veteran comedian Deborah Vance, Jean Smart has spent the last three seasons of the hit TV show Hacks ensconced in a luxurious Las Vegas estate. This summer, she trades the desert’s dry heat and LA’s misogyny for the swampy oppression of an abusive husband in a Louisiana trailer park circa 1989. But Hello Izzy’s 1989 time stamp and its harrowing circumstances never quite meet the caliber of its star performer. Full review here.
Posted: 6/12/25 at 11:51pm
DTLI Consensus: In her long-awaited return to Broadway, a resplendent Jean Smart more than elevates the occasionally muddled play she is given.
7 positive (including the NYT), 4 mixed, 3 negative.
https://didtheylikeit.com/shows/call-me-izzy/
Posted: 6/13/25 at 2:56am
Saw the show tonight and WOOF this might be one of the most depressing plays I have seen on Broadway. What is being sold as a comedy about a woman writing poetry is just a unrelentingly dark 80 minutes of unending disturbing domestic violence that doesn't quiet know what it is trying to say.
The fact this show has no content warning is also very odd, Jean Smart is the reason to see this and even then you really have to wonder why after 25 years this is the thing she said yes to coming back to Broadway, I found myself looking at my watch repeatedly counting down the minutes after each scene.
also that bathroom, just awful and distracting.
Posted: 6/13/25 at 8:34am
A broader topic: to me, most of these 7 "positives" are niche raves for the star with such major reservations about the piece's flaws, the categorization seems disingenuous. We all learn to accept the trade-off in many star vehicles: sometimes the machine isn't so well-oiled, yet the driver sails forward at 80 mph on the synthesis of talent, craft, charisma. This play feels like something from another era, an earnest story with a social conscience and great topicality wrapped up in the television defining tropes of regionalism and folksy truth-speakin'. One wonders if the summer audiences will be so enamored of experiencing the star in the flesh that the play she must enliven with focus and bearing will feel worth it. Open question. I can see the ads and pull quotes that rave about Smart and eliminate the serious critique of the text she must put over. Of course, that's hardly a new marketing challenge.
Updated On: 6/13/25 at 08:34 AM
Posted: 6/13/25 at 10:53am
I'd like to go see this just because it's Jean Smart but haven't been able to find a promo code anywhere and prices seem a little steep.
Posted: 6/13/25 at 11:02am
I saw this the other day and enjoyed it more than others (especially my friend with me who DETESTED it) but I do think it comes down to seeing Jean Smart onstage again after a quarter century of her being away. The script isn’t the best but it does allow for some fantastic acting from one of my childhood favorites and at the end of the day, I guess that was enough for me.
Posted: 6/13/25 at 11:19am
Huss417 said: "I'd like to go see this just because it's Jean Smart but haven't been able to find a promo code anywhere and prices seem a little steep."
I very easily got a TodayTix rush seat.
Posted: 6/13/25 at 11:34am
RippedMan said: "Huss417 said: "I'd like to go see this just because it's Jean Smart but haven't been able to find a promo code anywhere and prices seem a little steep."
I very easily got a TodayTix rush seat."
Thanks. I'll probably go down that route.
Posted: 6/13/25 at 10:13pm
Cancelled tonight due to illness. I have tickets for tomorrow but am assuming that’ll be cancelled too so planning alternatives (too bad MHE and Procter are both sold out already!).
Covid is low-key running rampant. That new variant seems like a weed.
Updated On: 6/13/25 at 10:13 PM
Posted: 6/14/25 at 11:55pm
So this did go on today. And I wish it didn’t.
I hated this show. Smart is great of course but why on earth is the vehicle she used to come back? The writing is imo quite terrible. It felt like a very long 85 minutes. And there were lots of empty seats.
Updated On: 6/15/25 at 11:55 PM
Posted: 6/15/25 at 12:10am
It is sad this is going to crash and burn its way to the finish
again, why this show?
Posted: 6/15/25 at 12:25am
BoringBoredBoard40 said: "It is sad this is going to crash and burn its way to the finish
again, why this show?"
Smart said she felt she had to play this part.
Posted: 6/15/25 at 9:28am
I saw it last week and really liked it. It took a bit for me to get into it but once it got me I was in.
Posted: 6/19/25 at 9:26pm
As someone who has been a domestic violence prosecutor and worked with hundreds of victims throughout my career, I felt it encapsulated the lived experience of many survivors with whom I have worked. I really enjoyed and appreciated the story, though I didn't know what to expect going in.
Now regarding the audience...I saw yesterday's matinee. I heard no less than a dozen phones ring throughout the show at top volume. At the theatre, there is a bathroom off on the right at the front of the orchestra. In the last minute of the show (when certain lights are shining on the stage), a man exited the bathroom, stood in the doorway, and then wandered off to his seat leaving the door wide open, the light on, and providing us all with a lovely view of the toilet. A lot of us were wondering, at least momentarily, if this was a part of the show, before realizing it was just a bumbling old man without the awareness to close the bathroom door behind him.
Posted: 6/22/25 at 12:15am
i understand Jean Smart wanting to play this part--and play it she does!-- but the script isnt strong enough to fill Studio 54, which feels ENORMOUS for this tiny little show, but especially when its empty. As it was tonight- id be shocked if the theater was more than 50% full; the mezzanine was at least 2/3 empty.
This belongs in a small off bway space that lets Smart soar. Shes lost here. The play picks up a bit in the last quarter, even as it gets loopier and less believable, and Smart is undeniably charismatic in a role that requires her to talk at us for a solid 90 minutes.
I couldnt help but compare this to Angry Alan- another celebrity driven one man show (sorta) where the performance itself cant save the story itself. Angry Alan, though, kept me interested plot wise at least. Call My Izzy is a little less cohesive.
Kudos to Jean Smart, though.
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