OLD ACQUAINTANCE Reviews

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 7:27pm

I guess I'll be the de facto review poster, now that Margo's gone.

The nobodys on Broadway.com seemed to enjoy the show. The video doesn't seem to be working, but the less of actually seeing the people, the better.

"There were plenty of laughs. It was quickly written and the dialogue was really smart and funny. It was really natural," said Phyllis, 46, the "domestic goddess."

"Margaret Colin was great. She's very pretty and a very good actress," said Phil, 73, the retired cop.

And Audrey, 63, the nurse raves, "Harriet Harris, who plays Millie, was really very, very funny."



http://www.broadway.com/gen/general.aspx?ci=550073

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 7:31pm

Matt Windman of amNY was more-or-less negative, with raves for Harriet Harris.

He likened the chestnut to "a bottle of Coca-Cola made in 1940. It's very flat, far beyond its expiration date and the flavor is gone."

"Roundabout has previously scored with revivals of old-fashioned broad comedies with great starring roles like Kaufman and Hart's "The Man Who Came to Dinner" with Nathan Lane, and Somerset Maugham's "The Constant Wife" with Kate Burton.

But unlike those American classics, "Old Acquaintance" simply has not aged well at all...

All that is left for enjoyment in Michael Wilson's tame production is the clowning performance of Harriet Harris, who is significantly more fun to watch than her co-star Margaret Colin, who plays the duller of the two women. In Harris' best bit of comedy, she is in the midst of throwing a telephone in frustration; suddenly it rings, and she picks it up and speaks calmly..."

http://www.amny.com/entertainment/am-acquaintance0629,0,4908529.story?coll=am-ent-headlines

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 7:43pm

Can't believe they brought Word of Mouth back this season. Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn DAMN!!!!!!!!

Updated On: 7/4/07 at 07:43 PM

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 7:47pm

Variety is mixed-to-negative, also pointing out that the play shows too much of its age.

"There are plenty of old-fashioned plays that can still sparkle onstage, but "Old Acquaintance" is probably not high on that list. Despite the handsome upholstery of Michael Wilson's Broadway revival for Roundabout, John van Druten's 1940 drawing-room comedy about the long-running friendship/rivalry between two successful authors is mildly diverting but rarely much more. The comic verve of Harriet Harris and the elegance of her co-star and foil, Margaret Colin, make the three acts pass painlessly, but the play's catfight lacks claws just as its lovefest struggles to summon warmth.
...
Harris provides similar relief here with her precision timing, nonchalantly serving up bitchy backhanders while balancing self-aggrandizing hauteur with tantrum-prone, infantile neediness. But despite the amusing bravado, it's a one-note characterization, constrained by stale writing.
...
In this production, at least, the play never really gives either woman a chance. It's hard to invest much in the survival of a friendship when one character is a joyless drag and the other a gauche, tactless monster."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117934027.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

[Calvin]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 9:41pm

Although I enjoyed the show overall, I'm not surprised the reviews aren't glowing, because the play has not aged well. The actresses are deserving of the praise, however.

My biggest problem with the show was that the daughter character was so obnoxious to me that I could not have cared less how her romantic entaglements--such a central part of the plot--worked themselves out.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 10:02pm

Talkin' Broadway Review

[Calvin]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 11:09pm

Brantley's up. Mixed to negative, I'd say. He was much more complimentary of the play than others and adored Colin, but he thought Harris' campiness threw off the balance too much.

Two very different roads to the past are being traveled by two very different actresses in the Roundabout Theater Company’s mildly entertaining, maddeningly disjunctive revival of “Old Acquaintance,” John Van Druten’s 1940 comedy of high-heeled and round-heeled sexual mores in literary Manhattan.

Ms. Colin comfortably inhabits the era in which the play is set; she makes the decades fall away. Ms. Harris presents the same world through the perspective of a contemporary comedian who has watched a lot of old movies; she makes a distant age look even more distant. Fans of fine-grained acting will admire Ms. Colin, while fans of diva-spoofing drag queens may well adore Ms. Harris.

*********************

As she demonstrated in her disarming portrait of a monster movie star in “Sweet Bird of Youth” at Williamstown last summer, Ms. Colin is a virtuoso of textures of ambivalence. She presents characters who act one way, think another and feel, deep down, another way altogether.

Ms. Harris has become a droll and stylish caricaturist in musicals like “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (for which she won a Tony) and “Mame” (at the Kennedy Center). And the vain, self-dramatizing Milly brings out her archest comic excesses. Hysteria, drunkenness, spitefulness all come with exaggerated punctuation.

*****************

If only everyone could stay on the same page. “Old Acquaintance” has the potential to be a tasty slice of summer chick lit, with its sumptuous sets (by Alexander Dodge) and expensive-looking costumes (David C. Woolard).

But it’s all too revealing that the scene for which the movie is most famous almost passes beneath the radar here. That’s when Kit, having finally had enough of Milly’s selfishness, takes her by the shoulders and shakes her. It is hard, of course, for a moment of physical contact to have much impact when you feel that the participants have been spliced together from mismatched celluloid strips.


Full review Updated On: 6/28/07 at 11:09 PM

[Heybeenfood]

Posted: 6/28/07 at 11:46pm

Wow, I actually agree with Brantley.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 1:44am

Brantley's review is predictable.

It's interesting to go back and read the Times review of the original production that opened in 1940 (there's a link to it on the page of this Times review).

I agree most with Murray's sentiments.

Brantley has his favorites, that no matter what they do, he will *gush* with praise for them. Colin is one of those performers. Not that her performance here, in my opinion, isn't worthy of praise, but he does the same thing here that he did with his review for DEFIANCE. He sacrifices the entire production leaving Colin's performance as the only redeeming factor. I'm tired of his stalker love letters. I'm also tired of his making reviews for the theatre about movies -- comparisons to movies, if it's as good as the movie, the performances in the movie, if the scenes that made the movie so great are lived up to in this production of the play. First off, the movie of OLD ACQUAINTANCE was an adaptation of the original play. Second, this is a singular production of the original play. It stands on its own. Shut up about the damn movies. Brantley should move to Hollywood and become a film critic, where he can write stalk letters as a side gig. I'm so tired of reading pages detailing how the third eyelash on Kristin Chenoweth's left eye is the only hope left for American theatre.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 1:49am

Well, he WAS a movie critic. I don't see why it's so bad to compare things to movies.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 2:05am

A perfect example as to why I loathe Foster.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 3:46am

Exactly, Brantley was a movie critic and he ALWAYS connects his movie comparisons to what he is talking about. It's not like he randomly refers to a movie and fails to make a point.
I certainly don't see why anyone would be bothered by his references. He is simply trying to connect his review to something that general audiences (those who can't make it to the theater as often as New York audiences). I don't get Foster's complaint.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 10:24am

Foster, I'm with you here. I've grown weary of the Brantley stalking since he sold us the overly sophisticated, less than raucous Murphy Ruth in WT -- fighting words at this board, but I stand by them. His narrow recommendations are increasing limited to the diva du jour whose underplayed performance deconstructs a role. Often, underplaying means desaturated -- emptied of brighter colors.

Here, the Colin performance is perfectly adequate, and she's a lovely actress. But her Kit is hardly the sort of intricately worked out characterization that magically transports us back to a bygone era, as he claims. All of the layering -- the amvibalence -- Brantley finds in her interpretation mystifies me. She gives intelligent line readings -- often of some pretty ordinary lines. But when she's off stage -- as she is for a lot of act two -- she's not missed. And when she's dueling with Harris, why can't her brilliant underplaying make us care or even watch her? We don't. As directed by Wilson, she's not a very compelling center for a production that needs a luminous presence with a comic edge to hold it together.

That puts too much pressure on her sparring partner...

Yes, Harris is over the top in places, but she also injects the proceedings with the sort of comic zest that drives us through the creaking and unsatisfying plot twists. What Brantley ignores is how little the low-key Colin Kit serves the play's machinery. She's almost entirely reactive, at times flat.

On a day when we're reeling at the YOUNG F. ticket prices, might I rant vis a vis ACQUANTAINCE: Brantley's remarks about it possibly being passable chick lit are of course in a vacuum. A man who never buys his own theater tickets fails to take into account that $86 bucks isa helluva price tag for passable chick lit. Commerical venue is a powerful context. If this were at the Berkshire fest or Williamstown, we'd enjoy its creakiness far more. But on 42nd street, with these prices? In 2007 , if a broadway production is created around an old chestnut, it better be damned tasty chestnut.

Updated On: 6/29/07 at 10:24 AM

[folkyboy]

Posted: 6/29/07 at 12:39pm

normally the Times gives all the sh!tty productions from Roundabout a "Critic's Pick". maybe this means i'll actually like this one!