Posted: 5/30/23 at 12:03am
First Broadway review thread of the 2023-24 season.
Let’s do it!
Posted: 5/30/23 at 7:56am
I'm expecting rave reviews for Metcalf and more mixed appraisals of the play itself. Chris Jones will write a love letter because the show originated in Chicago and that's his M.O.
Posted: 5/30/23 at 8:04am
Or... he already loved the show in Chicago?
Posted: 5/30/23 at 8:56am
Who is NYT is sending?
I think Critics Pix is more powerful than the review itself - which is behind a paywall
Posted: 5/30/23 at 10:32am
Apologies because my question is off-topic, but where are the lottery seats for this show? Given the lottery is $50, is it reasonable to expect a decent seat?
Posted: 5/30/23 at 11:25am
gibsons2 said: "Apologies because my question is off-topic, but where are the lottery seats for this show? Given the lottery is $50, is it reasonable to expect a decent seat?"
The Previews thread is not far below this one. You can probably find your answer there...
https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.php?thread=1156313&page=7
Posted: 5/30/23 at 3:58pm
Reviews held until Thursday, June 1 at 8pm, allowing time for critics to attend a performance featuring the full Broadway cast (due to Maslany's COVID absence)
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Photos-First-Look-at-GREY-HOUSE-on-Broadway-20230530
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:02pm
Theatrely:
GREY HOUSE Keeps Us Wondering — Review
https://www.theatrely.com/post/grey-house-keeps-us-wondering-review
"it feels like some mysteries are left vague because Holloway’s explanations might sound wacky if spoken aloud. Grey House is an absorbing and often brilliant work, but it never quite lives up to its own potential."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:03pm
Daily Beast:
Review: ‘Grey House’ on Broadway Serves Up Frights but No Bite
“Grey House” on Broadway is a ghost-meets-horror story that—despite the odd, delicious fright—never quite delivers on all its clanking, creaking, and frantic weirdness.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/review-grey-house-on-broadway-serves-up-frights-but-no-bite
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:04pm
NYT/Jesse Green is mixed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/theater/review-grey-house.html
"So another thing that has to be said for “Grey House” is that it has given artists who want to explore the opportunities and particular language of an unfashionable form a rare chance to do so. Metcalf and the rest of the cast turn that opportunity into a meal; by investing in its clichés without condescension, they do much to de-cliché them.
But what makes the effort meaningful to artists — Holloway began thinking about the story after a family tragedy — may not make it meaningful to us. And though the theater is already a kind of haunted house, filled with odd beings and strange noises, horror may simply work better in a less live medium. When Max and Henry show up at the cabin, unaware that anyone is there, they look around at the spooky surroundings, listen to the wind howling, and somehow find it all so familiar.
“I’ve seen this movie,” Henry says. Which is the problem exactly."
Updated On: 6/1/23 at 08:04 PM
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:06pm
B from Entertainment Weekly:
Grey House review: Laurie Metcalf and Millicent Simmonds delight in a haunting play full of heart
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:07pm
Variety:
‘Grey House’ Review: Laurie Metcalf Stars in a Spooky but Oblique Broadway Thriller
https://variety.com/2023/legit/reviews/grey-house-review-broadway-play-1235630674/
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:09pm
The last few saw Claire Kampen filling in for Maslany. Deadline saw Maslany:
‘Grey House’ Broadway Review: Laurie Metcalf & Tatiana Maslany Confront The Ghosts Of Man-Made Horror
https://deadline.com/2023/06/grey-house-broadway-review-laurie-metcalf-tatiana-maslany-1235375962/
"The cast is excellent. Metcalf scores another fine collaboration with Mantello (Three Tall Women, Hillary and Clinton), and Maslany (Orphan Black) demonstrates a stage comfort and depth that she hadn’t quite managed in Ivo van Hove’s Network. Sparks is suitably inscrutable as the wounded and wounding Everyman, and the children are terrific: Sophia Anne Caruso, as the protective Marlow, cements her well-earned reputation as the stage’s go-to girl for all things off-kilter (David Bowie’s Lazarus, Beetlejuice). Deaf actor Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place) gives her Bernie an ethereal quality that can seem both gentle and threatening, and Alyssa Emily Marvin as the oddly named A1656 conveys the only real compassion to be found. Colby Kipnes is suitably feral (and her movements superbly musical when called for) as Squirrel, Eamon Patrick O’Connell nicely weird as the cute little boy who never quite reveals his secrets and, as the Ancient, Cyndi Coyne seems as ghoulish as any banshee in Inisherin."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:11pm
Chris Jones in the Tribune saw Kampen:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/broadway/ct-ent-broadway-review-grey-house-red-orchid-20230602-y2d4cp7nkbhxjcfi7p75r3nqay-story.html
"Holloway created this fascinating, intermission-less play for the low-budget A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago with a different cast and director in late 2019. A Red Orchid is an artistic petri dish where the actors work just a few feet from your head. Back then, it both scared the bejesus out of me and compelled me with its emotional intensity and psychological sophistication. And I had no idea where it was going.
On Broadway, where the expectations are as different as the beefed-up budget, both fresh polish and a palpable tension has emerged between the oddball core of this play and the need to play up to the commercial expectations surrounding a marketable world like horror. The show, now directed with his typical craft and creativity by Joe Mantello, first titillates its audience with loud, scary music and a theater that immediately plunges into darkness and then, as the play takes a very different, avant-garde turn, hopes they will switch gears and come along for the ride.
I’m not sure those are the right initial expectations to raise, just as I am not convinced everyone around me at the matinee I saw understood what was going on, not least because Holloway wrote a much stranger play than anything typical of this genre and he refuses to pander. Good for him, and for Mantello for backing this young writer all the way, but I bet there will be plenty of question marks on the audience feedback surveys. “Grey House” is weird and complicated, more Sam Shepard and Tracy Letts than King, and very much of the Chicago storefront school."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:12pm
Theatremania saw Maslany.
Review: Grey House Is Broadway’s Camp Horror Guilty Pleasure
https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-grey-house-is-broadways-camp-horror-guilty-pleasure_1704086/
"Unfortunately, Holloway explains a little too much by the end, abandoning the exquisite burlesque of horror for a fashionable fairytale of female retribution. Some in the audience might find this cathartic, but for me it was a disappointment, causing the carefully woven spell of Grey House to unravel like an afghan made of human flesh.
Still, there’s no show on Broadway quite like Grey House, a play that manages (at least until the end) to exhale hilarity and horror in the same icy breath. Scream queens, take note."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:16pm
Washington Post saw Maslany; doesn't say much about her other than that she and Sparks are vivid presences:
This play aims to scare you out of your wits. But your wits remain intact.
Levi Holloway’s thriller ‘Grey House,’ on Broadway starring Laurie Metcalf and directed by Joe Mantello, is a near-miss
https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2023/06/01/grey-house-metcalf-mantello-broadway/
"apart from Laurie Metcalf’s enjoyable portrayal of an inscrutable mountain woman, and a set by Scott Pask out of the Grimms’ grimmest fairy tale, the play itself exists in a sort of gray zone — neither particularly terrifying nor profound. It belongs in that lesser rank of thrillers that whip up suspense by withholding vital information, the kind that requires gullible characters to take the bait and audiences to wait for clarification before the final bows."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:18pm
Vulture:
Knock-Knock: Grey House Brings Horror Tropes to Broadway
https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/theater-review-grey-house-with-laurie-metcalf.html
"“I’ve seen this movie,” Paul Sparks says as he’s being dragged, his leg broken, into a ominous house in the woods during a snowstorm. Watching Grey House, you’ll probably be inclined to agree, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Levi Holloway’s play is self-consciously sipping from a cauldron of familiar horror tropes, from classics like Misery (both that the broken leg and presence of Laurie Metcalf) to more recent “elevated” indie genre films—and like a lot of those movies, it soon becomes too proud of its own metaphors. But if you’ve seen a lot of this onscreen, capital-H horror of this kind is less often done on Broadway, and in that context, the scares are fresher. The production makes a good case for more full-on spookiness onstage, even if it’s a less convincing one for this play in particular."
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:22pm
I'm not familiar with this site, but if you want less of a review and more of an analysis of the plot, there's this:
Embracing Mist: The Questions, Not Answers, Grey House Proposes
https://brooklynrail.org/2023/05/theater/Embracing-Mist-The-Questions-Not-Answers-Grey-House-Proposes
Posted: 6/1/23 at 8:30pm
Two three-star reviews from NY Stage Review:
Grey House: Bleak Doesn’t Begin to Describe it
https://nystagereview.com/2023/06/01/grey-house-bleak-doesnt-begin-to-describe-it/
"I won’t reveal whether or not the couple actually manages to survive in this new thriller by Levi Holloway, but what transpires is definitely not like anything you’ve seen before. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a topic likely to be highly debated by theatergoers, many of whom can be seen emerging from the Lyceum Theatre with baffled looks on their faces. The new Broadway season has just begun, and it’s hard to imagine any future show proving more divisive."
Grey House: Goose-Bumpy Thrills, Chills Galore Plus Some Gore
https://nystagereview.com/2023/06/01/grey-house-goose-bumpy-thrills-chills-galore-plus-some-gore/
"It may be that the challenging intricacies of Holloway’s plot – of what unappealingly unfolds in the final few moments – will result in some head-scratching and “Huh, what?” mouthings from those exiting the hushed auditorium. Spectators who get Holloway’s full intentions, who follow his incriminating sentiments about the nectar of dead men origins will not only declare themselves scarily entertained but will continue considering the charges he has incorporated about man’s cruelty throughout the ages. "
Posted: 6/1/23 at 9:05pm
Green’s take mirrors the reaction of many of us. The question now: are these money reviews? They suggest a kind of watercooler convo around the show. But you can only achieve that level of consumer investment with Sleuth and Deathtrap attendance. Mine is an open question.
Posted: 6/1/23 at 9:21pm
DTLI Consensus: Not quite the full-on thriller Broadway was expecting, but certainly a worthwhile watch.
6 mixed (including the NYT), 5 positive.
https://didtheylikeit.com/shows/grey-house/
Posted: 6/1/23 at 11:34pm
Really glad to see all of the positive reviews.
I disagree with one review that said too much was given away at the end. For me, that was part of the horror as horror is not just jump scares. I do plan to see this again. Really upset I missed the talk back but hope there will be another one.
Posted: 6/2/23 at 5:12am
RUkiddingme said: "What's next at the Lyceum?"
Unlike some people, I wish Grey House a long and successful run! Cannot wait to see it again in a few days and again in July!
Posted: 6/2/23 at 6:38am
these reviews won't do much to ticket sales. They didn't even care about the Tonys...
RUkiddingme said: "What's next at the Lyceum?"
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