THE PHILANTHROPIST First Preview Thoughts

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 3:17am

Hey All!

To any and all attending via the $10 ticket offer (or otherwise), by all means, please post your thoughts, comments, concerns, opinions here. I'm admittedly still reading the script to this one (that first sequence is super-intriguing enough, so I kept at it!), and am considering booking for later this month, or into the summer months. We'll see. Anyhoo, without rambling any more, here's my best to the cast and crew! Welcome back, Mr. Broderick!

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 10:19am

I'll be there tonight!

[ColorTheHours048]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 10:24am

I was at the final dress last night. I won't post my thoughts until tonight though.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 10:31am

I'll be there. I'm a little worried about this one. I hope Roundabout can surprise me tonight.

[MiracleElixir]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 10:36am

"I was at the final dress last night. I won't post my thoughts until tonight though."

Uh-oh, sounds ... not promising.

[mc1227]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 11:59am

I'll be there as well. It will be interesting to compare viewpoints.

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 12:01pm

This one's for my boy M-Brodz. Anyone else find it funny that he and Nathan are opening on Broadway around the same time in plays produced by theater companies?

[mc1227]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 12:53pm

It's certainly good for theatre to have both of them appearing at the same time regardless of what productions they are in. I believe Godot's production was not on the original schedule for the Roundabout, so perhaps Nathan was looking for something to fill in until Addams Family is ready to go?

[lindatnyc2]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 4:41pm

I am going with an open mind.

Updated On: 4/10/09 at 04:41 PM

[EugLoven]

Posted: 4/10/09 at 5:11pm

I nabbed the $10 ticket special for Easter evening (4/12 at 7:30pm) so am anxious too

[Cape Twirl of Doom]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:12am

I was at the first preview tonight.

I found myself laughing at much of it, and I definitely enjoyed it more than the last few Roundabout shows, but it's certainly got major problems. Several scenes are very dry & seem to drag on and on. (And since the show is only a tad over 2 hours, that's not a good thing.) But my biggest problem was with the actors. Why did everyone have to have British accents? There's no reason to set the show in England and it just drew attention to the horrible horrible accents. Jennifer Mudge as Araminta kept falling into some bizarre mashup of American southern/Cockney/RP. Steven Webber lost his accent several times (and his lines as well? Or was that meant to happen? At one point he started stammering & muttered "F*CK it, what was I going to say?" I wasn't sure if that was a flub or a character element.) Matthew Broderick's whole performance felt one-note, though I suppose that was intentional. The problem is it didn't make me care about his character.
The whole bit about the English politicians & the assassin? What the hell was that about? That had nothing to do with anything and could have completely been excised.

I liked how each scene was a vignette related to one of the seven deadly sins & the use of the letters on the back wall. I think this is a play that would benefit greatly from the actors getting comfortable in their roles. A lot of the scenes, while humorous, felt stilted & dry. Perhaps they will become more fluid later in the run.

Despite my criticisms, I was entertained, which I think is due more to the actual book than any of the performances. Although I suppose saying it was better than recent Roundabout fare is really just damning with faint praise.

I'm curious what other people thought, as I heard very mixed reactions from other audience members. The man sitting next to me loved the show, while someone else said it was dreadful.

Oh, and can someone tell me what the title is supposed to mean? I don't get how it relates to the show at all.

Updated On: 4/11/09 at 12:12 AM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:32am

Well...

I laughed (although not as much as the rest of the audience) here and there but I can't say I was entertained. I just kept thinking that nothing was happening and kept waiting and waiting for the plot to develop. There really is no plot...and nothing really happens or develops. For $10, I can't really complain but this is another totally forgettable production from Roundabout.

The cast was fine I guess; Broderick just seemed to be doing his usual shtick with a (terrible) British accent. No one really stood out.

There's not really much to recommend here...it's just kind of a pointless play with no plot. The set reminded me so much of THE STORY OF MY LIFE, the direction was almost completely non-existent, and I was really, really bored throughout much of the (what felt interminable) second act.

I just felt the same way I felt leaving the show as I did walking into the theater; was totally unaffected or (honestly) interested in much of what happened onstage.

A very "so what?" night at the theater for me.

*1/2 out of ****

Roundabout needs to step up their game...I'm excited for BIRDIE and I hope it doesn't disappoint.

[mc1227]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:33am

I agree with much of your assessment regarding this play. I'm not sure exactly what the writer was going for but he missed the mark. I understand that it's supposed to be a play about intellectuals and their various perceptions of events going on about them. I just found some of the scenes (especially the drawn out dinner scene) to be confusing, dull and not entertaining. There needs to be a lot of trimming and as Cape Doom said, it's not that long to begin with. There needs to be a bit more action, yelling or something to offset some of the long windedness.

Having said that, I did think that the performances were pretty good considering it's a first preview and they will get better once the actors are more comfortable with each other and the material. I will say that I thought the performance of Jonathan Cake was too over the top as he dominated that dreadful dinner scene, while Matthew needed to exert a bit more presence into this play. Granted, he had almost nothing to do in the first act except serve drinks, but I thought his interaction with Anna Madeley in the second act showed much more chemistry and more of a human element. His character appears to be almost identical to Charlie Baker, the character he played a few years back in The Foreigner.

I do agree with Cape that the play did not need to be set in England at all and that the actors having to focus on accents more than substance is a bit distracting. I don't think this play will appeal to the masses and from the people I spoke with after, it pretty much came down to tourists hating it and subscribers kind of liking it but wanting to see some changes before it opens. Personally, I liked much of it but thought that while the play opened strongly, it lost alot of steam in a very long winded and boring dinner scene. It picked up again in the second act but it was tough to recover from the one scene. Hopefully, they will cut a good portion of it since it wasn't funny at all and added nothing to the overall play.

Updated On: 4/11/09 at 12:33 AM

[dave1606]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:43am

I was there tonight as well and completely agree with everyone's thoughts. For ten dollars, not bad, but anything more and you run into problems.

Something no one has mentioned is the fact that the stage crew was STILL ONSTAGE after intermission. First preview or not that was pretty un-professional.

There were some really funny scenes, but overall it just didn't amount to much. I loved the set and the letters spelling out the 7 sins, but overall I still have no clue what the title means or what the show should mean as a whole.

[mc1227]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:48am

Yes Dave....you're right....I don't think I've ever seen that happen before in a play.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 12:51am

I'm back and I can't say that I thought much of the play. The first act was slow, but I kept telling myself there's going to be a big payoff in act two for all this exposition. Well I was wrong. The second act felt even longer.

I really didn't have a problem with a lot of the acting. Sure the accents were falling in and out all over the place, but hopefully they all find them by opening. I think the flub mentioned earlier that Weber made was unintentional.

I think Wickedrocks hit it on the head. The play seemed very pointless. Not very much happened. Just a bunch of people you really didn't care about sat in a room talking. If this is the route you want to take your play you best have amazing dialogue to support it. There were mild chuckles here and there, but this was no laugh riot.

****spoiler****

In the first scene someone accidently kills himself by shooting a gun in his mouth. This apparently had no bearing on the rest of the play and the incident wasn't really mentioned again.

Most of the play felt this way. A plot point would be introduced and then nothing would happen with it. The drama or comedy never built.
****end spoiler****

All in all not too much to recommend here.

One last thing to mention, the set DOES look like the set to The Story of My Life. Being a huge fan of that I kept hoping Malcolm and Will would come out to save the day, but alas it never happened.

[harper4]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:02am

So sad to hear all of this. Ugh. Not the biggest Broderick fan, so I'm not shocked, but I really do like quite a lot of the rest of the cast.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:12am

Well I don't think the fault lies with Broderick at all. He actually got the most laughs of the evening. To me it was all about the play, and possibly the direction. Most of the actors had to give their lines from sitting on the couch. Literally in the dinner scene no one moved, saved for Broderick getting up to refresh everyone's drinks.

As Colorthehours mentioned in another thread, the actors are all really trying. But you can't make something out of nothing.

[CyCoSpAz2]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:30am

The best character was Liz, who didn't have a single line.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:33am

I want her job.

She gets paid for saying nothing and doing nothing besides standing up to grab a piece of cheese.

Literally.
Updated On: 4/11/09 at 01:33 AM

[CyCoSpAz2]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:40am

She shook her head "no" once too!

But the only flaw in her job is that she has to sit through that dreadful scene. The problem I had with this show was that I just did not care about ANYTHING the characters were saying.

I almost started counting the books on the bookshelf during Act Two because the scenes were nothing more than two people just sitting around talking... the plot didn't really go anywhere.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:48am

Agreed.

Nothing happened. I kept waiting for some kind of plot development and there was none whatsoever...they just kept introducing new plots and topics that I thought they would expound on, but none of them are fleshed out.

If someone asked me what this play was about, I would have no idea how to answer them.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:48am

Between this and Godot, I'm just not exactly wanting to go see any of Roundabouts shows. I'll wait for the crazy discounts.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:49am

Does anyone remember if this show was part of the original season line up, or was it part of the Dancin' replacement package?

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/11/09 at 1:54am

I don't think it was part of the original lineup.

But I'm not 100% sure. And is DANCIN' coming next season? Or did I just make that up?