Thomas Kail to direct Michelle Williams, Tom Sturridge, and Bryan D'Arcy James in ANNA CHRISTIE — Page 2

Tom Sturridge replaces Mike Faist; Bryan D'Arcy James joins the cast

Faist was the most appealing part of this. Disappointing.

Are they offering refunds, that is a pretty major casting switch

Going to be the only one in this thread to say the recasting actually pushed me over the edge to buy tickets. I have yet to be disappointed by any show I've seen Tom Sturridge in. 

The casting of Sturridge pushed us into buying tickets.  Faist would have been good - Sturridge could be great.  Can see better chemistry  now.   The previews are very well sold so far. This one will sell out with the play and Michelle Williams attached.   The team is quite high profile.

I assume he booked a film.

I was at the first preview tonight. Calling it a disaster would be generous.

There was a show stop -- almost an hour long. The latter half of act 1 has hundreds of glass bottles stacked all the way across the stage, and they were clearly not supported properly; they fell, smashing into pieces on the ground. Shoutout to the team for handling this properly and making sure it was safe, but I cringed every time I heard another bottle smash during act 2 (which happened multiple times, undercutting emotional moments and dialogue).

That aside, the production is a mess. Michelle Williams, talented and beautiful though she is, is no 20 year old, and it's ridiculous that we are expected to believe that she is. It breaks the brain, and when her age was said for the first time in the show, I thought to myself that Michelle Williams must not be playing the title character because it would be ridiculous for her to play a 20 year old. She also seemed to not be able to recall her lines in the latter half of act 2, which led to some very awkward pausing, stumbling, and retreading of words. I'm sure that will be worked out by opening, but it was very noticeable (Sturridge had the same problem, though to a lesser extent). D'Arcy James, thus, is completely misused as her father -- they've grayed him up to try to make him appear older, but it just means that he has to portray a tottering old grandpa. That is so far from what BDJ is good at that it makes one wonder why he was cast for this role.

The direction borders on incompetent. I've never thought highly of Kail's work, and that continues here. He has no clear direction or aim here, and he seems to be just completely leaving his actors out to dry. It doesn't help that the play has not aged well at all. I found myself extremely uncomfortable at the resolution of the show and wondering why Kail chose this play in specific. That is actually a question that two different people asked him at the impromptu talkback he held during the show stop, and his answer boiled down to "I wanted to do an early O'Neill play and give my wife the chance to play a great leading role in the stage canon." While not a ridiculous answer, it kind of speaks to the reality that he has no real purpose in putting on the show beyond wanting a showcase piece for Williams, meaning that the play feels unnecessary and uncomfortable.

I'm kind of glad I saw it if just to witness the hilarity that was hundreds of glass bottles knocking each other over and smashing into pieces across a huge stage. But I saw 30-50 people get up and leave during the show stop and another 10 left during the course of act 2. My sentiments are rather echoed with those actions.

Noooooooooooooooooo.

Photo on Reddit from 1st night

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fis-anyone-going-to-the-opening-of-anna-christie-tonight-v0-ayi52botbi3g1.jpeg%3Fformat%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3975b1660a2383c7292a2521dd9420437d312e6e

Wait, is Anna meant to be 20 in the play??  I haven't read it in years and years but I always thought she was a bit older (otherwise, just how long was she a prostitute for?)  I don't think it's all that strange to revive it, there have been somewhat recent successful revivals including a Donmar production (Anna is almost always played by an actress around 30 years old--so still quite a bit younger than Williams--including, since Cabaret got mentioned, Natasha Richardson in two productions.)

Sweeney Todd really was horrendous.

WldKingdomHM said: "FANtomFollies said: "I'm not really surprised to hear these reports. I saw Michelle Williams in Cabaret and found her to be so bland with absolutely 0 stage presence. I've also never seen a fantastic show ruined by a director like Thomas Kail's Sweeney Todd. That was absolutely criminal."

Really I found her to be amazing along with Emma Stone, but she was stunning in Blackbird and deserved that Tony Award"

Yea, just my opinion of course. I actually found that entire remount of the Cabaret revival to be a shell of what the '98 revival was. It had lost any bite and just felt very manufactured - and that includes Alan Cumming's performance.