Lahti, Potts, Smits and Stott to Bicker as Broadway's New GOD OF CARNAGE Leads 11/17 — Page 2

My favorite Potts role. I prefer her in comedy.

What self respecting young gay boy hasn't seen Designing Women!

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These are quite strange choices...I'm thinking they were hoping that the previous success it's already gained will keep people coming, because these names certainly won't. As others have said I'm sure they were interested in keeping the actors' paycheck low.

Also, don't know if I qualify as the 'younger' folks you all are referring to, but I'm 21 and am familiar with Smits, Lahti, and Potts.

Aren't Lahti and Pott going to read a little too old to be the parents of young boys?

BLAH.

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You aren't God of Carnage's target audience.

I'm sure your parents know who Smits and Lahti are. They've been on major television shows and around for a very long time.

And even if people don't know Potts by name they'd recognize her by voice and face.

You're not the standard for the "average opinion" hon. And the only thing I have against you is your wide generalizations as fact.

"I'd don't know them so nobody else would".

Lahti has been on Broadway more times than the average actor. And Smits was in a major tv show, is currently on a tv show, and was in one of the biggest film trilogy's of all time. The average target audience for Carnage knows who he is.

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Maybe I'm the only one, but I think this cast could be pretty great. Maybe their names won't drive folks to the box office right away, but if these folks are as good in the roles as I think they might be, re-reviews will be incredibly strong, and those will push people to go out and catch it.

Lahti has given incredible performances on stage and screen that are well-remembered by many people, if not the people on this board. Tons of people love Designing Women and therefore Annie Potts (again, most of them not here). The idea of bringing an original member of the London cast over is a thrill. And Jimmy Smits is incredibly charismatic and pretty famous. I like to think the producers cast this for relative fame and actual talent rather than just throwing some hack with a name on stage (I'm looking at you, Katie Holmes). I say Bravo.

Some of us in the late teens/early 20s know Annie Potts as Bo Peep in the Toy Story movies. At least, I do.

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Oh wow, Tamsin Greig was in the original (reading Stott's profile here...) I wish they brought her over. She's great.

DCR, I'm going to have to agree with Mildred Plotka that 1) you're not God of Carnage's target audience and 2) your parents would at least know who Jimmy Smits is.


And I feel really old now that everyone's commenting that these people aren't even well-known. And I'm not that old.

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Smits is a fine actor, and he certainly has quite a following of middle-aged women who remember from NYPD Blue and the last two seasons of The West Wing (where he did his best work, IMO). He's not as well-known as Gandolfini (none of the replacements) are, but he's certainly not the no name that some people are making him out to be.

Lahti may be less well known, though I imagine most remember her face, seeing as how she's been on television pretty consistently for years now (however, I think she's been horrendous on SVU this year- completely over the top, but she's done great work in the past).

Gandolfini was clearly the main draw of the original foursome. Everyone at work I ever spoke with about this show wanted to see "the play Tony Soprano is in." As another poster mentioned, they may have recognized the faces of the other actors after seeing the show, but it was Gandolfini's name that got them in the door. Yes, Harden is an Oscar winner, but its not exactly as if her films are that well known. And sadly, despite some of his great work, most people know Jeff Daniels as Jim Carrey's Dumb and Dumber sidekick.

Inevitably, the grosses are going to fall, but I imagine the show will do all right with these actors, though it will be easier to get tickets, and I expect it to be at TKTS a lot more consistently.

Wow. You guys are all "age age age!", and I'm sitting here thinking "holy crap, the Atlantic makes a difference!". I've only just got to the Jimmy Smits episodes of West Wing, I only know who Annie Potts is because of Ghostbusters, and Lahti... pass. No clue.

But KEN STOTT, YOU GUYS! He's freakin' AMAZING. Listen to yankeefan! His Eddie Carbone is one of the stand-out performances I've seen in UK theatre this year (certainly the best lead actor I've seen in anything, although if you made me choose between him and Ronald Pickup, I'd be stuck), and as I'm currently rocking an "8 shows a month" average, that's a lot of performances to sift through.

After all these years, cultural divides still surprise me. The internet hasn't yet shrunk the world to the size of a pomegranate after all. :)

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The first thing I think of when I hear Christine Lahti's name is how she was in the bathroom when they called her name for her Golden Globe win. It was all over the news at the time. She won the Golden Globe with her panties around her ankles. Good times.

Me too, and then I think of Robin Williams going up onstage, killing time, and pretending to BE Christine Lahti.