Very Brief Thoughts About JOURNEY'S END — Page 2

It took me so long to figure out what that puddle of water was...it was reflecting so nicely I thought it might be some sort of mirror or something. It wasn't until someone stepped in it that I realized it was water.

Let me add to what everyone else is saying about this revival. I waited until yesterday to see it because I had seen the play in London when it first (re)opened there, and felt that while the London production was fine, I didn't need to see it again. Boy was I wrong! The production now at the Belasco is much more taut and moving than the London production. Dancy gives what I think is the best male lead performance of the past season--nuanced and powerful--with Langella a close second. And Stark Sands, who I wasn't all that taken with at the start of the play, pulled off one of the most moving death scenes I've ever seen. The matinee audience I saw it with was gripped from the get-go and you could hear a pin drop (except for laughing at the comic lines). Go, go, go, if you can, before it closes. There are good discounts for which you can get great seats.

very true wendi. don't know what they have stuck up their asses but lordy is it prickly...but the show and the actors more than make up for them

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"Dancy gives what I think is the best male lead performance of the past season--nuanced and powerful"

I agree.

At the end, the sound of bombs dropping gets louder and louder and louder, shaking the entire theater.

I just wanted to provide a link, for those who haven't seen, that from now until the end of the run, JOURNEY'S END is offering a $35 discount code for the entire house.

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardname=bway&thread=935653

I also just wanted to say -- I know that my avatar sells me out as a major admirer -- but, all of the nominations for theatre awards this season have been announced; Outer Critics Circle, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Theatre World Awards, and Tony Awards. Not one of these groups even nominated Hugh Dancy's performance.

I don't understand such an extreme oversight. It's not as though this is a featured performance that could easily be forgotten. Dancy took that show in the palm of his hands and guided the cast beautifully and powerfully from beginning to end. The only awards that recognized Dancy were the Drama League Awards -- which listed him as one of their 80-some honorees, and still, Liev Schreiber won the performance of the year award.

Boyd Gaines gives a powerful supporting performance in JOURNEY'S END as well, and I'm glad that he won the Drama Desk Award. But since he was, in my opinion, wrongly kept in the Leading category for the Tonys, I feel as though his slot should not only have gone to Dancy, but that Dancy deserved to win this season. Boyd Gaines is a 3-time Tony Winner and an amazing actor but this seems to be a case of the Nominating Committee being blinded by an actor's history as a multiple Tony winner without seeing the show's true Leading breakout performer.

I hope that Dancy comes back to Broadway soon, but really, his performance in JOURNEY'S END is the role of a lifetime, and I'm sad that he did not get any major award recognition for it.

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Updated On: 5/23/07 at 07:15 PM

I have to send a big THANK YOU to all of you out there. There has been such wonderful reactions to this play on this board, that I decided to check out today's matinee. I was absolutly amazed. I can't tell you how disturbing and enlightining the play is. The ensemble were just magnificent, both in their own right and as a team. By the end of the show I could not move and my throat was dry. I was perticurally impressed by the way they did the ending. It was much more moving not to have a typical curtain call.

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Updated On: 5/28/07 at 06:12 AM