Talley's Folly PREVIEW — Page 2

"When I saw the original production, the third or fourth cast was playing it, and it was lifeless, tired, not compelling"

When I saw the original production, the original cast was playing it, and it was lifeless, tired, not compelling.

In fact, it was unbearable.

Lanford Wilson wrote some good plays. This wasn't one of them.

I was a little taken aback by the breaking of the fourth wall as well. It doesn't happen again until the very end of the play. I didn't really understand the point of it.

John Lee Beatty's set design for the original was a masterpiece.

Original.

A friend saw it and said it was slight and boring.

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I saw this tonight. It was kind of weird...not necessarily bad weird, but still processing it. Leagues better than most stuff you'll see at the Laura Pels, and it certainly helped fumigate the place after If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake.

I definitely loved the two of them. Burstein and Paulson both are giving masterful performances. Paulson has her accent down beautifully; Burstein is charming and lovable.

The final 20-30 minutes of the play are very engaging, but it's the getting there that takes some patience. There's a lot of meandering around, and it's all very pleasant, but if it weren't for the skills of the two actors I would have been wanting to check the time every five minutes.

It's a shame they aren't doing Talley's Folly in rep with the other two plays. It would be much more satisfying to see this Norman Conquest/Orphan's Home Cycle style. Alone this felt like an appetizer and we were never served the main course or dessert.

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I was there tonight as well, and setting my own mixed feelings aside, the audience around me seemed totally lethargic. The woman next to me shut her eyes as soon as it began and her snoring started at about the 30 minute mark. I have never heard so much coughing and hacking in a theatre. I thought I was in a tuberculosis ward, and if my body is not currently incubating flu germs spewed by these people, it will be a miracle. Of course, it's my experience that audiences hack hysterically like this when they are bored our of their minds, so maybe they were doing it just to entertain themselves in the face of crushing boredom and not because they were all contagious morons.

Updated On: 2/13/13 at 10:40 PM

This is the same guy who wrote the talky 3 hour "Burn This" and the upcoming 2.5+ hour talky "The Mound Builders" which starts at Signature Theater in a week and a half. The last 10 minutes of Talley's Folly are very poignant and touching when the guy keeps pressing the woman for an explanation that is finally revealed, but the 87 talky minutes preceding it put many people in the audience to sleep. The 2 cast members are first-rate. This is *not* your modern fast-paced quirky drama with a downtown favorite like Susan Louise O'Connor.

any pics of this production? That set picture has me curious. Not what I was expecting from this.

Ha, thanks Pammy! I did a search twice, and it didn't come up on either of the first three pages.

Great to read all the thoughts. Having only read the play--I do wish, as others had said, that Roundabout had been more mabitious and was doing all three plays. Honestly the other plays are probably more interesting--and reading them back to back you really appreciate the whole thing more (or at least, *I* did.)

There's a pretty good TV recording of the first, Fifth of July, that was done for PBS and is on DVD as part of the Broadway Archive series, which is worth tracking down (and includes much of its original cast including Jeff Daniels and Swoosie Kurtz, and adding a young Cynthia Nixon, with Richard Thomas--yes, from The Waltons--very good in the lead as Kenneth Talley, a gay parapelegic 'Nam vet, a role he apparently played on Broadway after Christopher Reeve.) For those in the US, Amazon has it streaming for a couple of bucks http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-of-July/dp/B000YDI0GO

BUMPITY BUMP

Is there student rush for this? Or Hiptix?