China Doll Previews Thread — Page 2

Hey After, you are the only one who had anything relatively good to say about it. What gives?

I noticed people leaving tonight and saw they had black and white Playbills? Could the producers know they have a turkey and are trying to cut costs?

Oh boy. The reviews of this sound like what I said about The Anarchist...not even entertainingly bad, just awful and boring and repetitive for no reason. And this is double the length of that play?! The Anarchist was about 65 minutes when I saw it in previews and felt interminable.

"You could literally feel the energy of the audience fading as each minute dragged on."

Supersam,

In these environs, you've got to be very careful when you comment on an audience's (obvious) distaste for a show. Because as we have seen before, some people will hurl themselves at you like a bat out of hell demanding polls, charts, and graphs to substantiate your observation. Ridiculous? Of course. But that's how it works around here. Or more precisely, that's how it works when you're commenting on such rank audience-displeasers as Passion, Sunday in the Park With George, Pacific Overtures, the stinkers by La Chiusa, Brown, Stoppard, Baker..... --- in other words, the critics' darlings and the snob set's pets.

So in this case, maybe you'll be spared.

But you can never be sure!

Updated On: 10/22/15 at 07:20 AM

After Eight, It never ceases to amaze how you can turn any thread into an excuse to bash Baker, Sondheim and LaChiusa.

supersam,

You got it exactly right. I was also sitting in the last row of the mezzanine last night and struggling to hear Al, too. I won't rehash what you already said, but at intermission a woman sitting next to us, asked us to explain the play to her. She was half-kidding, because she understand the plane/taxes plot, but we were all kind of gobsmacked at how awful the play was.

Another thing that kind of floored me, was that towards the end during a (finally) dramatic moment, people were laughing. That wasn't good.

After seeing "The Anarchist" and "China Doll" and being incredibly disappointed in both, I'll be hesitant to jump into Mamet World again.

RippedMan said: "I noticed people leaving tonight and saw they had black and white Playbills? Could the producers know they have a turkey and are trying to cut costs?

"

The last two or three Mamet plays, including GGGR with Pacino, had black and white Playbills. I'm sure it's just a preference by now, not a pre-conceived assumption of a "turkey."

Can someone explain the final moments in a spoiler tagged post or a PM? I won't be seeing this and am curious to hear how it ends!

Ouch... I'm so disappointed that this sounds like such a mess! I wasn't a big fan of the Pacino revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, but at least that production had one of Mamet's best texts at its core. How has he become so lackluster as a playwright? I think fault lies in immediately bringing these works to the Broadway stage without any smaller scale productions where he could meaningfully revise the works. Does Mamet think he's above out of town, or even Off-Broadway, try-outs? And why would Pacino and MacKinnon sign on for this? I know it must be a huge payday, but if it's as bad as these early reports suggest I'd think they'd want to avoid the embarrassment.

Are their any changes that they can make during previews that could turn this thing around?

As much as we all want to bash THE ANARCHIST, I think it would have turned out to be a decent play if Mamet had written a second act... but I guess he got busy or distracted or something.

That last revival of GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS approached laughable several times. I had hoped with Pam McKinnon on board that CHINA DOLL would be light years better, but there's not much you can do directorially (is that a word?) if the script is a guy on his cell phone.

As described here the characters (1-2), structure and heavy reliance on one way phone monologues would seem to make this an exact duplicate of Craig Wright's very funny MISTAKES WERE MADE (sans fish). I would have loved to see Pacino doing Michael Shannon's part. It would seem to be a perfect fit. Having read a bit of The Anarchist (all I could manage) it would seem to me that the long great Mamet is still great but has stopped caring about the audience.

Sadly, Pacino was not as crazy as usual in this, which would make any play he is in way more boring to watch. It truly was a snooze fest. The Audience, Therese Raquin, and other plays that would be considering boring to some were thrill rides compared to this show. It's like Pacino talking to this guy on the phone, then this guy, then his girlfriend, yadda yadda yadda. I was hoping for more conversation between him and the assistant, making for a Scent of A Woman kind of vibe. Nope. Mamet strikes again. If you are borderline, dont see it.

If this show manages to sell out - even with this horrible word of mouth and the likely negative reviews - I would definitely still try to do standing room if they offer it and if it's under $40. I know I definitely won't be buying the cheapest balcony seats, which would be over $100 with fees...