Seascape Review Thread- Page 2

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 1:22am

Theatremania is Mixed-To-Positive:

While the two lizards with bugged eyes and darting tongues are initially startling, they don't distract for long from the fact that the play is basically an amiable gabfest with little to promote other than everyone's need to reckon with emotion and the daily ups-and-downs of the average meaningful relationship.

Still, with Mark Lamos directing watchfully and movement coordinator Rick Sordelet presumably seeing to lizard behavior, the Seascape actors are delightful. Grizzard, who was the original Nick in Virginia Woolf and who later won a Tony for the revival of A Delicate Balance, is a quintessential Albee player. He's now giving his idea of a Nick-like guy 40 years on: cranky, bemused, and likable. Just casting him means that Albee's requirements are met. The same can be said of Sternhagen, with her little hands fluttering, her feet flat on the sand, and her voice fluting. Weller and Marvel, who have been chameleon-like in previous performances, are wise choices to play lizards. It can't be easy to do what they do on all fours, but they make it look easy.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was off to see Seascape, he remarked, "I don't care if it's got lizards, it's still The Bickersons." (He was referring to the beloved radio and television series about a squabbling couple.) There's quite a bit of truth to that statement. But, as I noted to my chum, The Bickersons was always amusing and perhaps slyly revelatory -- and, even when he's doodling, so is Albee.


http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7154

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 1:28am

The Newark Star-Ledger is Positive:

"Probably the most playful piece that Albee has ever written -- so far, anyway -- "Seascape" returns to Broadway for a limited engagement that opened yesterday at the Booth Theatre.

Lincoln Center Theater's production proves to be an agreeable occasion of smart talk and expert acting.
______________________________________________________________

It's scarcely this reviewer's responsibility to assess Albee's myriad philosophies about life, except to note that his often whimsical discourse easily wafts along like seashore breezes. Exactly how much of it may be profound is up to the beholder to decide.

Under director Mark Lamos' gentle yet firm guidance, the actors clearly express the play's flow of intellectual reveries.

Grizzard and Sternhagen are charming together; their comfortable rhythms and physicality really suggest a pleasant couple who've spent decades in the same groove.

Their reptilian makeup and forms perhaps not as sleekly attractive as they might be, Frederick Weller and Elizabeth Marvel ably slither through the tricky lizard roles. Weller depicts Leslie with a glowering stare and a pugnacious attitude. Marvel lends Sarah a sweet voice and far more warmth than one might expect from a cold- blooded creature.

A conversational picnic that offers some tasty food for thought, "Seascape" is an upbeat sojourn with a great American playwright.




http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1132638344136240.xml&coll=1

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 1:36am

Well done, Margo!

And thanks for all your work collecting those reviews...

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 1:58am

Hollywood Reporter is Positive:

"Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning but too rarely produced 1974 play "Seascape" receives a beautiful rendition in this Lincoln Centre Theatre Broadway revival featuring a quartet of sterling performances.

Although the play ultimately adds up to somewhat less than the sum of its parts, it has many hilarious and incisive moments along the way, and they are beautifully realised in director Mark Lamos' production.
_______________________________________________________________

This simple setup provides ample opportunity for Albee to dispense a great deal of insightful, philosophical dialogue about life and love, leavened with generous doses of witty humour. While the comedy centering on the suspicion and hostility between the two male members of their respective species becomes a bit obvious at times, it also provides plenty of fuel for the playwright's thoughtful observations.

Grizzard and Sternhagen are absolute perfection in their roles, with Sternhagen particularly irresistible as the still frisky and ever enthusiastic Nancy. Weller and Marvel, unrecognisable in their green bodysuits and makeup, also are terrific, handling the emotional and strenuous physical demands of their roles with great skill.

Peter Kaczorowski's gorgeous lighting, Aural Fixation's sound design, and particularly Michael Yeargan's highly realistic sand dune set design provide a perfect illusion of a windswept beach in autumn.


http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2005-11-22T064010Z_01_KWA223908_RTRUKOC_0_UK-STAGE-SEASCAPE.xml&archived=False

Updated On: 11/22/05 at 01:58 AM

[Mamie]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 9:37am

I'm also curious about these costumes. I did find this pic of Frank Langella's long torso in his lizard costume:

He must have given an incredible performance to have won a Tony while wearing that costume!

---

www.thebreastcancersite.com
A click for life.
mamie4 5/14/03

Updated On: 11/22/05 at 09:37 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 11:42am

The Daily News is Positive:

"As works of art go, seascapes tend to be light and airy rather than profound. Because the casting was confusing 30 years ago, the play seemed more pretentious and weighty than it does now. This time, however, it's thoroughly entertaining.

Sternhagen brings a crotchety charm to her role. Grizzard suggests the bewilderment of aging males beautifully.

Needless to say, Frederick Weller and Elizabeth Marvel - in brilliantly detailed costumes designed by Catherine Zuber - are wonderfully droll as the lizards.

The dunes that set designer Michael Yeargan has created have a powerful sculptural quality, heightened by Peter Kaczorowski's moody lighting.

Thirty years have not made the play seem deeper, but the clarity of this production, directed by Mark Lamos, makes it more enjoyable."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/367868p-313087c.html



The New York Post gives it Three Stars:

"I believe Albee's plays are never lovable, nor are they intended to be. I admire "Seascape" a great deal, and find it, then as now, infinitely more stimulating than at least 97 percent of the plays out there.

It is the work of a master, provocative and funny, although there are plays in the Albee canon that I admire even more."

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/31669.htm



Newsday is Positive:

"Two unusually articulate, monogamous, glorious lizards have crawled from the sea and over the sand dunes at the Booth Theatre, where the Lincoln Center Theater is rediscovering another of Edward Albee's underestimated Pulitzer-Prize winning plays.

"Seascape," which opened last night in Mark Lamos' exquisitely wise and wistful production, is a smaller work than this same theater's revelatory 1996 revival of the 1966 masterwork, "A Delicate Balance." "Seascape," which won the 1975 Pulitzer but ran little more than two months, is a more gentle - dare we say hopeful? - view of the world than the better-known devastations by the theater's great emotional terrorist."

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-etledew4522497nov22005326,0,3074420.story?coll=ny-theater-headlines



Variety is Positive:

"In one of those stimulating New York cultural synergies that sometimes result from careful planning but, almost as often, from serendipitous accidents, Lincoln Center Theater's sparkling revival of Edward Albee's "Seascape" opens just two days after the American Museum of Natural History's "Darwin" exhibition. Creationists no doubt will sneer, but this diptych entertainment offers a kind of philosophical theme-park ride: Audiences can contemplate personal growth by tracing primordial man's journey out of the slush on Central Park West before heading to the Booth to watch interspecies understanding being fostered between brute beast and modern man.

No less a happy coincidence is the timing after last season's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" revival. Premiered on Broadway in 1974 in a production that underperformed commercially, "Seascape" was the second of three plays that earned Albee the Pulitzer Prize he had controversially been denied for "Virginia Woolf." Two decades later, few would argue "Seascape" is Albee's best play, its significance perhaps underlined a touch too diligently. But director Mark Lamos and his remarkable cast bring clarity and perceptiveness to this ideal production, creating a bracing experience."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117928933?categoryid=33&cs=1

[wexy]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 12:03pm

I saw the play and I really enjoyed it all around.The costumes were great and the way Weller and Marvel carried themselves as lizards was very impressive. Grizzard and Sternhagen were wonderful as well.
It is one to see.

Updated On: 11/22/05 at 12:03 PM

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 12:33pm

Brantley's review is quite possibly the worst case of "Had my review, fit the show into it" I have ever read.

It is so internally-conflicted, it had me laughing out loud at its absurdity. When will this man retire, so they can get someone capable in there?

[zelda]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 1:19pm

Seascape shows what acting, directing and the entire theatrical process are about when dealing with non-musicals, Pure relationships, with past, present and future, with pain, with consequences. with longing.
this show is a gem, the production is a gem
it should not be missed it should be seen by everyone.

[twogaab2]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 2:49pm

I saw it in previews and thought it was absolutly great.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 3:51pm

The Post is positive.

AN elderly, comfortably off couple are on a beach, chattering and bickering about their past and present, and considering what they might do in the declining years of their future.
Suddenly, two giant lizards emerge from the sea and clamber onto the beach beside them.

Luckily, the lizards speak English, and the couples exchange notes on life and its evolution. After some initial hesitation, the lizard couple decide to stick it out on Earth.

That is the central premise — virtually the entire story — of Edward Albee's wry, wise, witty and altogether delightful comedy of species, "Seascape," revived last night by the Lincoln Center Theater at the Booth Theatre.

The two couples — Frances Sternhagen and George Grizzard as the prickly human couple, Nancy and Charlie, and Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller, as Sarah and Leslie, their scaly opposite numbers — banter ideas around like an urbane, if uncertain, game of shuttlecock.
---------------------------------------------------
The 1974 production was staged by Albee himself. Here Mark Lamos does the very fluent honors, stressing the crotchety criss-crossing dialogue of both couples.

Michael Yeargan's sandy beach setting, swept with a blue sky and lit by Peter Kaczorowski's lively imitation of the sun, is by itself a pleasure to watch, as are the performances.

Sternhagen seems to have distilled "charming eccentricity" and bottled it like a patent medicine; Grizzard, gruff and craggy, his eyebrows constantly signaling skepticism, perhaps reveals the golden years more realistically.

The lizards — wonderfully costumed by Catherine Zuber — turn their anthropomorphism to deliciously comic effect, with Weller's high-plumed, scaly-tailed machismo neatly matched by Marvel's proto-feminism.

Go and see "Seascape" — tell them God sent you!

3 STARS
REVIEW IN FULL

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 3:53pm

Look 5 posts up -- The Post review and link are there.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 3:57pm

I'm very pleased with those reviews.

Is it just me, or do the reviews this season seem to be more positive than those of recent seasons?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/22/05 at 4:19pm

I don't know about that. Let's not forget we've had In My Life, The Blonde in the Thunderbird, Latinologues, Lennon, After the Night and The Music, which all received pretty terrible reviews and Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Absurd Person Singular, The Odd Couple (which got many more mixed notices than raves) and Woman in White which got mostly middling reviews. Seascape joins just Sweeney Todd, Primo, Jersey Boys, and Souvenir (though many liked Kaye a lot better than the play) as the only shows to get mostly positive notices so far.

Last season Twelve Angry Men, Democracy, 700 Sundays, Gem of the Ocean, Dame Edna, Virgnia Woolf, Doubt, The Pillowman, Piazza, The Rivals, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and Spelling Bee all got mostly positive notices.

The season before had standouts like Sight Unseen, Frozen, A Raisin in the Sun, Assassins, Jumpers, King Lear, I Am My Own Wife, Wonderful Town, Henry IV, The Caretaker, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Retreat From Moscow, Golda's Balcony, Avenue Q and Deaf West Big River which were mostly well-reviewed.

We have a lot to open yet, but thus far, this season is, if anything less impressive than the last couple of seasons.