Backstage is
Very Negative:
"In Roundabout's revival, Philip is played by Matthew Broderick in a retread of his Leo Bloom?Felix Ungar pathetic-nerd persona, only this one has a slight British accent. It's an almost impossible role to bring off. You have to garner sympathy for a dry-as-toast intellectual whose passions are limited to words. During the course of the play, Philip witnesses a gruesome act of violence, is seduced by a beautiful undergraduate, breaks up with his equally gorgeous fiancée, and is inadvertently betrayed by his best friend. Through all of this, he barely reacts outside of offering to freshen everybody's drinks, which is what drives everyone around him bonkers. Granted this is quite a restraint for an actor, like playing golf with a tremendous handicap. Even so, Broderick fails to display much of Philip's inner life, and his witty dialogue rings hollow."
http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-broadway/the-philanthropist-1003966555.story USA Today gives the show
2 1/2 Stars out of 4:
"At a glance, the lead in Christopher Hampton's "bourgeois comedy" ? produced by Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, where it opened Sunday ? might seem like a perfect fit for Broderick, who has done well for himself playing innocuous beta males. But the play, which addresses the limits of civil contemplation, requires a more complex protagonist. Even with gray hair and a tentative English accent, Broderick can't convey sufficient weight or weariness.
That's a shame, because the ensemble here generally thrives under the thoughtful direction of David Grindley, who helmed a production of this play for the U.K.'s Donmar Warehouse in 2005. Anna Madeley, the one holdover from Donmar, is a pert, winning Celia, and Steven Weber brings a convincing ennui to Philip's more comfortably cynical colleague, Don. Jonathan Cake nearly steals the show from everyone as a smug, flamboyantly miserable novelist."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2009-04-26-stage-reviews_N.htm
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
