TO BE OR NOT TO BE Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 3:20am

"To Be or Not To Be," Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film comedy about Polish theatre troupers trying to outsmart the Nazis, opens on Broadway tonight (Tuesday, October 14) in a new stage adaptation penned by Nick Whitby, at MTC's newly-refurbished Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Break legs, all!

Post 'em here!

[EugLoven]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 1:50pm

I'll be there tonight (and the party), and will prob share some brief thoughts come midnight.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 6:30pm

The Hartford Courant is MIXED for the show, POSITIVE for Maxwell...

http://www.courant.com/entertainment/stage/reviews/hc-toberev.artoct15,0,7304878.story

The production that opened Tuesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (formerly the Biltmore), seems made for live theater. Most of its characters, after all, are actors, members of a Polish troupe headed by Josef and Maria Tura. And the adaptation by Nick Whitby cleverly reworks the material for the stage.
________________________________________________________________
Under the direction of Casey Nicholaw (" The Drowsy Chaperone"), Maxwell gives an enthusiastic, highly watchable performance with some wonderful moments. When offered a cigarette by Silewski, suavely acted by Rocco Sisto, she takes it, allows him to light it, then discovers she already has been smoking a one of her own. Maxwell stares at her foolishness, then smiles and spins her hands, like twin whirly-gigs.
________________________________________________________________
This is an elaborate physical production, with theatrical lighting by Howell Binkley and a series of grainy projections of marching troops and swooping planes designed by Wendall and Zak. All of this makes for an enjoyable evening, though not always as funny as Nicholaw obviously hopes. But then again, that was also true of the overrated "Drowsy Chaperone."

[SingingCats]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 9:36pm

Variety is negative.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117938687.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

With its backstage milieu, farcical comedy of intrigue and deception, delicious depiction of vainglorious actors and eccentric ensemble of characters, the film must have seemed a logical candidate to be refashioned for the stage. Nice idea, but at least in this clumsy attempt, it's not to be.

[pli1018]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 9:55pm

Just got back from the opening night performance. I tried to like this, but the material this great cast was given was pretty terrible.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:04pm

WORD OF MOUTH seems mixed.

Two of them liked it but seem very unenthused. One of them hated it.

http://www.broadway.com/To-Be-or-Not-To-Be/broadway_reviews/5012846 Updated On: 10/14/08 at 10:04 PM

[scaryclowns223]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:06pm

Word of Mouth runs the gamut.

One woman hated it.
One woman felt it was mediocre.
The guy felt it was good, but not great. However, he seemed to have genuinely liked it.

http://www.broadway.com/To-Be-or-Not-To-Be/broadway_reviews/5012846

[Sauja]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:24pm

Egad--the full review isn't up yet, but the blurb does show Ben Brantley referring to it as a "walking corpse of a comedy." Between this and Romantic Poetry, MTC seems to be in a bit of a spot this season!

[SingingCats]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:28pm

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/theater/reviews/15tobe.html?ref=theater

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:39pm

The Associated Press is Negative:

'The fall theater season is still young, but Nick Whitby's "To Be or Not to Be" may turn out to be the most unnecessary Broadway production of the year...'

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=114&sid=1497293

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:40pm

Ben Brantley at the New York Times is Negative:

'If the producers of the walking corpse of a comedy “To Be or Not to Be” are feeling unappreciated this morning — and it’s a safe bet that they are — here’s a consoling thought for them. It took years for the Ernst Lubitsch film that inspired this play to get any respect. Greeted with sad critical head-shaking when it opened in 1942, Lubitsch’s bizarrely merry tale of a theater troupe in Nazi Poland is now considered a masterpiece of American cinematic farce.

To be honest, though, I can’t imagine many of us who attended the “To Be or Not to Be” that opened last night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater looking back in a couple of decades and thinking: “Doh! How could we have missed the greatness of it?” As translated to the stage by the playwright Nick Whitby and the director Casey Nicholaw, with a heartbreakingly game cast led by David Rasche and Jan Maxwell, this Manhattan Theater Club production has the spring, color and freshness of long-refrigerated celery...'

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/theater/reviews/15tobe.html?ref=theater

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:42pm

Wow. That TIMES review is not good.

In the first sentence alone, he calls it a "walking corpse of a comedy." And from there on he continues to compare it to celery...something tells me that's not going to make the billboard ads.

"TO BE OR NOT TO BE has the spring, color and freshness of long-refrigerated celery!"- Ben Brantley, The New York Times....not so much.
Updated On: 10/14/08 at 10:42 PM

[karen24]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:50pm

OK, I'm a relative newbie here--can someone explain to me how Brantley can get his review posted less than 45 minutes after the curtain comes down? Does he go to previews and write most of it in advance? Does he write it on his Blackberry during intermission?

It's too bad it's getting such negative reviews. I just read the interview with Maxwell in the Sunday Times and she sounded so happy to be in it.

[#1Elphie]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:57pm

Critics see the show before opening night (usually sometime the week before it opens). They have their review written and just release/publish it on opening night.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 10:59pm

The press usually attends a special "press preview" a day or two prior to opening.

[MiracleElixir]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 11:37pm

I was at opening night tonight also -- it wasn't AWFUL, but it seemed clunky and forced above all else, and it was depressing/awkward to watch such broad, playing-to-the-audience comedy with barely any chuckles. The whole cast was certainly game and trying their hardest though.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 11:49pm

TheaterMania is NEGATIVE

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/15589

"...For all the production's many flaws, some of the script's dialogue -- much of it lifted bodily from the film -- successfully lands. One of the funniest lines comes from invading Colonel Erhard (Michael McCarty), who says about attending one of Josef's performances of Hamlet: "What he did to Shakespeare, we are now doing to Poland." Sadly, the same could be said about what's being done by Nicholaw and company to the original To Be or Not to Be. "

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 11:54pm

Talkin Broadway is NEGATIVE...I think. It's an odd review.

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/index.html

"...This is not to say it isn’t funny. If its cast of well-tooled theatre types, headed by David Rasche and Jan Maxwell, doesn’t match those led by the irreplaceable duos of Jack Benny and Carole Lombard (in the first film) or Brooks and his real-life wife Anne Bancroft (in the second), these are nonetheless adroit comedians incapable of imparting a bad time. And the jokes that playwright Nick Whitby has retained for his adaptation from the 1942 screenplay are of the highest quality, guaranteeing that keeping a completely straight face is impossible."

Basically, he thinks the cast is good, the show sucks, and it's a pointless production.

[bschneid76]

Posted: 10/14/08 at 11:56pm

Tis a pity the critics are tearing it apart. I enjoyed it for what it was...definitely not as good as the film, but it was an enjoyable evening.

[EugLoven]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 12:02am

Definitely a so-so evening... Updated On: 10/30/08 at 12:02 AM

[AntonEgo]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 11:50am

How was the party, though?

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 12:17pm

Hopefully, Brantley's massacre will put at least a temporary moratorium on movie-to-play adaptations. You can keep your GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? and your RAIN MAN. Enough already!

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 12:26pm

I was there last night...the play was pretty dreadful. You could tell there were were problems with the playwright and the play. Most times it was mechanical and predictable, and there was so much superfluous dialogue, and for me most of the actors had this passive frustration about themselves.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 2:54pm

The Post is NEGATIVE (1/2 a star):

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10152008/entertainment/theater/dull_direction__dowdy_set_and_no_jack_be_133683.htm

"...Here, David Rasche as Tura and, especially, Jan Maxwell as his wife are both good, but certainly no patch on Benny, with his double-takes, or Lombard, with her voluptuousness.
...
The staging wasn't helped by depressingly dowdy settings by Anna Louizos and the projection design by Wendall Harrington and Zak Borovay of grainy newsreel footage of Hitler and company.

So what is it: To be or not to be?

Not. Definitely not."

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/15/08 at 3:03pm

So far (I know we missed a few but I can't find any more now...)

NEGATIVE
New York Times
New York Post
Theater Mania
Talkin Broadway
Associated Press
Variety

MIXED
Word of Mouth
Hartford Courant
Updated On: 10/15/08 at 03:03 PM