Seeing Tarzan would nothing to do with anything. The major critics saw it and Shining City days ago (they typically have three or four days to write their reviews though a few due to scheduling may not have seen it till last night) and likely filed their reviews no later than this afternoon.
Newsday is Mixed:
"Concluding the unofficial Irish portion of Broadway's spring season, we have "Shining City," a meandering footnote of a Conor McPherson drama that the Manhattan Theatre Club opened last night at the Biltmore Theatre.
You remember McPherson. He began gently activating the radar screen in the late '90s, not long after his flashier young compatriot, Martin McDonagh, started hacking his way into theater history with such bloody Gaelic-Gothic satires as "Beauty Queen of Leenane" (a tradition that is continuing as we speak with the hit splatter-tragicomedy "Lieutenant of Inishmore").
In "Shining City," at least one character - a widower played by the bizarrely cast Oliver Platt - is literally haunted. Unfortunately, this is not the same as being haunting. The play, told in five duets over 90 minutes, recounts clumsy attempts at intimacy by lonely but not especially interesting people who punctuate their limited social exchanges with lots of "You know ..." and "I mean ..." Comparisons with "Faith Healer," the four exquisite monologues by the Irish master Brian Friel that opened on Broadway last week, are obvious but unkind.
If the pivotal character were played by anyone less fascinating than Brían F. O'Byrne, it would be hard to justify the effort in Robert Falls' conscientious production. O'Byrne, who made a pedophiliac murderer almost appealing in "Frozen," and made us hate to doubt the priest in "Doubt," is compulsively watchable as the connecting link here.
________________________________________________________________
Ian's office, designed by Santo Loquasto, has a rough yet inviting feel of the conversion of an old church. The sky is lit (by Christopher Akerlind) with what must be intentional artificiality, though we know not why. Action, such as it is, gets separated by slow-dance country songs, which must mean something to someone. We also can't figure out the meaning of the title. We do enjoy watching O'Byrne gracefully change his shirts (costumes by Kaye Voyce) and rearrange the office between scenes. Too bad the room evolves more theatrically than the characters."
Hollywood Reporter/Reuters is Positive:
"Most of us have had to wrestle with ghosts at some point in our lives, but in "Shining City," the new play by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, the situation is quite literal.
In this provocative comedy-drama from the author of "The Weir" (which also dealt with specters in the night), a troubled widower sees a therapist because he's being haunted by the spirit of his deceased wife.
Brilliantly played by Oliver Platt in his Broadway debut, John is the sort of everyman with whom it's easy to identify. An overweight, middle-aged sales representative, he was not exactly faithful to his marriage vows. Now, after his wife was killed in a horrible car accident, he deals with his guilt in the office of therapist Ian (Brian F. O'Byrne).
________________________________________________________________
The interplay between these two troubled souls forms the heart of this alternately amusing and deeply moving work, a vast improvement over the playwright's far more oblique earlier efforts. Although he's still overly reliant on the use of monologues, McPherson here has crafted a subtly devastating portrait of human desperation and loneliness that proves the irony of its title (it refers to Dublin).
Director Robert Falls sets just the right somber tone for the proceedings and has elicited superbly nuanced performances from his two leads. Platt expertly mines all of the humor and pathos of his far showier role, and his tour de force delivery of a lengthy monologue in which his character describes events including a visit to a massage parlor is absolutely riveting. O'Byrne, though necessarily more restrained, is ultimately deeply moving as the therapist attempting to help others cope with their troubles even while finding himself incapable of gift wrapping a present for his child. "
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
.gif?width=300)
