IMPRESSIONISM first preview reviews? — Page 2

Sweden, don't be so sad for Aaron Lazar - he still has been cast in another role on Broadway despite what you might think of the previous one. And honestly, do you really need to blame "A Tale of Two Cities" for an actor's career choice or what you consider the terrible work of another playwrite? Brandi Burkhardt seems to be doing okay after "Tale", replacing a lead role in a sell-out musical. What's your explanation for that? Did you even like Aaron Lazar's work in "A Tale of Two Cities"?

It seems like the whole show needs clarification. If half the people who saw it last night didn't understand it, then obviously something is wrong - be the actors, direction, design.

Despite PG natural nastiness (I think he took an extra nasty pill today) a lot of what I said was in jest.

People bashing a show here without seeing it is nothing new. To soothe your troubled heart PG, I am paying for the tickets & Juniors.

I am not thrilled to be seeing it but she wants to see it so I will go with her. Not everything I want to see she does but she goes along nyway. Many times she said I was right & she was wrong & sometimes the reverse takes place. It is called give & take PG. Try it sometime instead of constantly bashing me.

I thought I could not sleep at night knowing you do not like me . Somehow I managed though

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Did anybody try rushing this? Playbill lists a rush policy on their website, so I was wondering where the seats are. Despite the negative reviews, Joan Allen & Jeremy Irons are two that I cannot miss on Broadway.

Based on these comments, it seems that the play is a complex, challenging piece of theatre that a select few will appreciate, while most will find inexplicable, be confounded by, and then hyperbolically shout from the heavens that it's the worst thing they've ever seen.

So, basically, it's this season's TOP GIRLS.

Personally, I can't wait.

TOP GIRLS was one of the strongest productions of last season.

I'll be at IMPRESSIONISM later in the week.

I'll be happy to share my thoughts WhizzerMarvin, I see it tonight!

(kind of regret my performance date decision, given the weather)

Sometimes, I just don't understand what people want from theatre. Is this an easily digestible play? Perhaps not (though I don't think it's as difficult as some on this board are making it out to be), but anyone who's even a little bit willing to work with a play that doesn't feel the need to offer easy emotional and intellectual beats should at least feel mildly nourished when it's over.

I didn't full-on love the play (the abstract first act was significantly more interesting to me than the more conventional -- if still, very satisfying -- second), but I struggled to see what was so hateable about it. The pacing could be quickened a bit at times, but it was a pleasure to see a play that actively tries to engage you, while being injected with just the right amount of warmth and humor to balance its intellectual viewpoints.

And just to answer earlier criticism, there is in no way inconsistency in the cutaway scenes. They're all depictions of memories that our leads correlate with the artworks on display; for the paintings, it's the moment in their past that they connect to the painting (e.g.: Joan Allen playing her own mother in the child-bathing scene) and for the photos, it's a flashback to the event surrounding their taking of the photograph. Given the construction of the play, it makes complete sense that the photo "flashbacks" would be the characters playing the same people.

Besides the obvious points of looking at something a different way altering our perception of it/them, I found the play to also be a surprisingly moving depiction of our relationship to art in general, and how we thrust our own meanings onto them, and why.

I'm clearly going to be in the minority on this one, as much of my audience spouted hyperbolic, judgmental opinions akin to what's on this thread (statements like "truly painful" and "horrible"), I was surprised how much I liked "Impressionism," a lovely -- if not BRILLIANT -- night at the theatre. My earlier comparison to "Top Girls" isn't really applicable -- this is much more accessible -- except for, like that play, it features a challenging first act that will leave people confused and bored if they're not grasping the conceit of the play. I'll take something like this over a bland, profit-driven revival like "Blithe Spirit" anyday.

Updated On: 3/3/09 at 11:43 PM

Ended around 10:05 tonight. 70-minute first act, 40-minute second act.

Painfully bad first act. Badly written and listlessly acted, especially by Jeremy Irons who just walks through it doing the barest of possible minimums. Joan Allen tries to make her character(s) interesting, but it is a losing battle, her character is just plain too drab to matter. The bottom line is that I simply didn't give a damn about anyone on that stage.

The idea of having the paintings on the wall reflect certain episodes in the characters' lives is an interesting one, and might have worked if the characters' lives had been even remotely interesting. That hideous little scene in the artist's garrett was just unforgivable: it played like something out of a textbook on how to write for sitcoms, and Irons' accent was all over the place.

At the intermission, after that interminable scene in Africa, my friend and I turned to each other, and he said to me, "What the hell was that?" I took the opportunity and fled. My friend stuck it out, and said that the play improved in the second half, but not by nearly enough.

Poor old Andre De Shields. Poor old Joan Allen. Poor old Marsha Mason, and etc. Couldn't they have found a real play to appear in? Hard to feel too bad about Irons in this play, he wasn't even giving it the old college try.

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I really enjoyed THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, which I fervently hope will transfer. An infinitely more interesting play than that IMPRESSIONISM thing.

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"dreadful, horrible, painful, boring, heinous"

My my, how nuanced some are with their opinions. Seriously, can anyone give an articulate explanation why they hated this challenging (if admittedly flawed) work? or shall we keep posting blanket statements, hyperbolic adjectives and synonyms for "bad"?