High Reviews

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 12:05pm

High opens tonight. Curious to see what kind of reviews it will get.

[Huss417]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 12:40pm

I'm more curious to see how long this hangs on after the reviews.

[nexttotheheights]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 12:58pm

I think they'll wait till Tony Nominations and depending how they do...

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 1:48pm

If the reviews are bad, there's a chance a Tony nod wouldn't even help. They're barely selling half the house right now. The Tony nods will most likely be for sets. Turner and Jonigkeit, although worthy, may not get a nod.

Im curious to hear the reviews myself.

[thismyshow]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 2:00pm

unless this gets raves (which i think it might) this shows in alot of trouble....

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 2:13pm

Sadly, I dont see how even rave reviews will help this show find a paying audience.

[wdwfreak]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 2:16pm

This show is unfortunately doomed. I don't think rave reviews of a show that the public doesn't know about isn't going to help it. I'll give it 2 weeks.

[#1Elphie]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 3:36pm

Do people think it will get raves? That would really surprise me. I've seen a wide variety of reactions on this board (I'm part of the camp that did not like it), and I'd expect the critics' reactions to be varied as well. Anyway, I agree that even if it got raves, that probably wouldn't help it much.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 3:37pm

Who knows. Look at Motherf**ker. That got raves and people here hated it.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 4:00pm

This has nothing to do with box office, show's survival chances, etc., etc. I do think it would be CRIMINAL, however, for Jonigkeit not to be at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor, even if the show can't pull through (I'm keeping my fingers crossed, anyway). Turner deserves a Tony nom nod, IMO but Jonigkeit is giving a brilliant performance. Hopefully, whatever happens with High, we haven't heard the last of him.

[jbm2]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 4:37pm

seeing the show tomorrow...
I was suprised there were no tickets on TDF for tomorrow @ 2.
Looking at the threads, it appears the theateris never full.
So, why not on TDF?

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:05pm

We saw it last Saturday night & thought it was outstanding

Hope it gets the reviews & hangs on but trying to sell drama now is next to impossible.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:07pm

I loved the show. I hope it gets the raves it needs for a longer life.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:12pm

At least we are in agreement here Hook

Totally disagree with you on Wonderland but it is what it is.

[April Saul]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:16pm

I'm one of the posters who liked it, and I'm rooting for this show as well...although betting the reviews will be as mixed as ours were here!

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:20pm

I think the reviews will be as mixed as all of us. I also think they will be divided in terms of praising performances yet horrified by the cliched and unnecessarily salacious script.

Several reviews likened it to "Law and Order." I concur.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:31pm

Hollywood Reporter praises Turner and Jonigkeit, but he pans the play and the production:

"Turner’s trenchant performance, and that of gifted newcomer Evan Jonigkeit, elevate Matthew Lombardo’s three-character drama, High, above the level of its tritely sensational movie-of-the-week plotting and boilerplate construction. It’s more convincing as an actor’s vehicle than as a play, an imbalance that Rob Ruggiero’s pedestrian, minimally designed production fails to correct.

...

Lombardo and Ruggiero were on Broadway last season with the short-lived Tallulah Bankhead bio-play Looped, which starred Valerie Harper. The playwright clearly is drawn to boozy larger-than-life women, and there’s an echo of Bankhead’s withering drawl as Sister Jamison shoots down Cody’s hasty assessment of her, saying, “Ohhh, little boy, little boy.” But beneath all the tough talk and dented armor, Turner exposes the character’s deep well of compassion and the festering wounds of her self-reproach. Too bad the writing isn’t sufficiently nuanced to make her calvary more affecting."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/high-theater-review-179853

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:37pm

Backstage is also highly negative all around:

"There are 20 names in the producing credits for playwright Matthew Lombardo's three-person drama "High," starring Kathleen Turner as a foulmouthed recovering alcoholic nun trying to help a drug-addicted male hustler. As this well-intentioned but poorly written script played out, all I kept thinking was, "Didn't any of them see 'Looped'?" That was Lombardo's poorly written female-star-of-a-certain-age vehicle that tanked on Broadway last season. The same outcome for his latest effort seems highly likely.

The numbingly repetitive structure regularly rotates among backstory-revealing soliloquies for Sister Connelly, combative scenes between her and the priest, and treatment scenes between her and Cody. The climax, of course, brings all three characters together. Unfortunately, no character achieves flesh-and-blood humanity; instead, each is a collection of carefully chosen neuroses, weaknesses, and secrets intended to dovetail with each other to create a desired outcome. In that vein, everyone behaves at one time or another in unbelievable ways, because the playwright needs them to do so. Lombardo's flair for snappy laugh lines, ironically, does him no favors. They too often fail to come across as gallows humor and instead only trivialize the dark and depressing subject matter, most damagingly in Sister Connelly's final, post-climax soliloquy. There's also an unfortunate use of sensationalistic and gratuitous nudity in an attempt to bring down the Act 1 curtain with a bang.

Rob Ruggiero's obvious direction does little to mask the writing's flaws, nor do the actors transcend them. The fiery Turner reminds us of her ability to command a stage, but she's hard-pressed to find Sister Connelly's emotional fragility, despite the fact that the plot depends on it. Stephen Kunken, who last season shone brightly while going down with the "Enron" ship, is less successful here, unconvincing as a bullying administrator but then equally unpersuasive in the simple-mindedly weak and foolish choices his character makes. Evan Jonigkeit brings an admirably focused intensity to Cody but provides little variance in the character's surly defiance and textbook anguish."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-broadway/ny-review-high-1005144112.story

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:41pm

A pan from AMNY. 1.5 stars (very weak)
Calls Turner "respectable" and "undistinguished."
http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-high-1-5-stars-1.2827218

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:41pm

amNY is negative with 1.5 stars with a decent review for Turner, but that is all (negative for the two men):

"It’s too bad Kathleen Turner never got a chance to play Sister Aloysius in “Doubt.” It might have spared her the embarrassment of now playing a nun in Matthew Lombardo’s disappointing psychological melodrama “High.”

...

Lombardo, who is a former meth addict, earnestly tries to convey the drawbacks of drug addiction. Nevertheless, the play comes off as a dull three-character mystery that pales in comparison with more compelling thrillers such as “Equus” and “Agnes of God.”

Turner, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, delivers a respectable if undistinguished performance that emphasizes her trademark husky voice and comic timing. The same can’t be said, however, for her male co-stars.

Jonigkeit overplays his role physically — especially the twitching and shaking — to the point of absolute ridiculousness. Meanwhile, Kunken, whose character is ill-defined, seems lost amid all the sparring."

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-high-1-5-stars-1.2827218

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:42pm

Haha, same time, broadwaydevil.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:43pm

Yup, whoops! I'm going to go out on a limb here (not really) and say this show is in HUGE trouble.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:44pm

Definitely.

[nexttotheheights]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:48pm

Goodbye High... I give it two weeks.

Updated On: 4/19/11 at 09:48 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/19/11 at 9:51pm

^Got that one already.

New York Observer is negative with positive things for Turner (also apparently hated War Horse and Wonderland):

"Thank God for Kathleen Turner. I say this not just because she plays a woman of God, a foulmouthed nun, in her new star vehicle High. No, I thank God for Ms. Turner because without her measured, commanding and utterly compelling performance as Sister Jamison Connelly in this melodrama about addiction, religion and redemption, sitting through High would be like sitting through an ABC After School Special.

...

The playwright Matthew Lombardo, who explains in a note distributed to the press that he based his script on his own recovery from addiction, plainly means High to be about the power of transformation, of faith, of believing in miracles. But it doesn't come close. Instead, like his campy Tallulah Bankhead romp Looped last season, it ends up being about the power of a bravura leading lady to at least somewhat salvage a mediocre piece of writing.

Looped opened and closed in a month last year. If High does much better, I'll believe in miracles."

http://www.observer.com/2011/getting-high-not-fun-it-sounds-war-horse-and-wonderland-fumble-and-being-harold-pinter-strikes-