WELL Reviews

Broadway.com is A Rave:

"It's not everyday--or every year, for that matter--that an avant-garde theater piece opens on Broadway. In fact, I can't think of any "theatrical construct" remotely like Well that has played a Shubert house like the Longacre. Lisa Kron's "one woman show with other people in it" certainly isn't conventional or commercial, but its offbeat portrayal of a complicated mother-daughter relationship should strike a chord with audiences. And if Kron's smart, funny writing doesn't sell tickets, Jayne Houdyshell's Tony-worthy performance as her mother just might."
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"While Kron's unusual structure (or lack thereof) makes Well daring, it's her affectionate portrayal of her relationship with her mother that makes the work affecting. Most people can relate to Kron alternately wanting to hug her mother and strangle her. When Kron talks about how she feels like a 13 year old whenever she goes home and her years of therapy prove useless, Well is at its insightful best."
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Well may not resemble conventional dramas, but it's often hilarious, always clever and ultimately touching. What's more, it boasts an unforgettable character in Ann and a divine performance by Houdyshell. Long may she recline in that La-Z-Boy."

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=526903

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The Times is a Rave:

""Well," directed by Leigh Silverman, turns out to be about the mystery of human personalities, even and especially those of the people you think you know intimately. What makes "Well" much more than a clever, deconstructed theatrical riff is the way it keeps surprising itself with glimpses of an emotional depth, both murky and luminous, that goes beyond any tidy narrative.

I fell in love with "Well" when I saw it in 2004, but I worried about its chances on Broadway, a place where you have to shout to be heard. My anxiety was not without foundation. Starting with Tony Walton's new set for the show, much of "Well" has been scaled up in ways that create a sense of strain, of an electrified perkiness.
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Using enhanced grimaces and double takes as she pontificates on the nature of meta-theater, Ms. Kron seems too much the professorial buffoon, set up expressly to have the avant-garde stuffing knocked out of her. Self-caricature is not necessary to achieve the friction between Ms. Kron's perspective and her mother's.

Once again, though, Mom comes to the rescue. Ms. Houdyshell's performance as Ann Kron retains an anchoring authenticity that guarantees that "Well" opens doors of insight and emotion that no other play in New York is unlocking right now.
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Now that Spalding Gray is gone, Ms. Kron may well be the best stand-up memoirist of the American theater. She has an inspired gift for spinning the depths of personal mortification into high-flying comedy, a trait in evidence a decade ago in her "101 Humiliating Stories" and still alive and kicking in "Well." (Her accounts of dressing up in costume as a child are agonizingly funny.)

But more than any other monologist I can think of, including Mr. Gray, she uses autobiography to point out the limitations of the artificial forms we naturally impose upon memory. Even better, as she acknowledges those limitations, she tries to break out of the circularity of public introspection. Her "2.5 Minute Ride" (1999), a portrait of her father, whose parents died at Auschwitz, beautifully acknowledged the impossibility of fully entering another mind.

In introducing other, insubordinately active characters into her work with "Well," Ms. Kron gives physical life to this exasperation. Of course Ms. Houdyshell isn't really Ann Kron (who is still very much alive). But her rich, complex presence summons the tantalizing otherness of a complete personality. Lisa Kron may understand, painfully and regretfully, that we can never really know someone else. But the loving vigor with which she tries to do so here turns the natural selfishness of the memoir into a glowing act of generosity.


http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/theater/reviews/31well.html

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I certainly didn't see the show they're talking about.

speechless...

I had heard such TERRIBLE things about Well on this board...

Then I went to see it anyway and really loved it...

And I've felt confused ever since

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It's a really daring, challenging theatrical work. Obviously not everyone is going to get it. I'm kinda surprised the critics did. Bravo Lisa Kron!

kmc

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Talkin Broadway is a rave:

""It's not meant to be a well-made play," cries Lisa Kron, speaking of Well, the show she's written and is starring in, and which has at last opened on Broadway. And, she vociferously insists, it's not a play about her and her mother. No, she says time and time again, it's "a multicharacter theatrical exploration of issues of health and illness both in an individual and in a community." But your own eyes and ears tell you that this is a wild, and wildly affecting, comic ride in which there are apparently no rules. Which description is correct?

All of them. And none of them. Well is as deliciously unclassifiable now at the Longacre as it was when it opened downtown at The Public Theater two years ago. But the best part of the show - if one must pick just one from a host of superlative choices - is that specific details of what Well is or how it works don't really matter. All that does matter is that Kron, working in tandem with her equally visionary director, Leigh Silverman, has crafted a remarkable play that's lost hardly any of the luster that made it one of 2004's most exciting must-sees.
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Despite Kron's protestations, it is also absolutely a play about her and her mother, what they give to and take from each other, and what (if anything) that means. But it's as well a love letter to theatre's inherent inventiveness. And a coruscating star vehicle for two luminous talents. And a warmhearted drama about difficult, disparate subjects. And a chilly comedy about the control we can sometimes only maintain by relinquishing it. And... who can say what else?

In short, it's a terrific, all-consuming blaze of love, comedy, and theatricality. But what exactly is Well? It's... well; very well. That's all. And that's more than enough."

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

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Me too, Me2

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I've been talking up this play for nearly three years, since it was part of the New Works Festival at The Public Theatre back in 2003 or so. It was free and a friend and I went having no idea what to expect (though we were fans of Lisa Kron's previous solo work) and were simply blown away. It was basically the same play it is now with some of the same cast (including Jane Houdyshell). I saw it again the next year when it had a full run at The Public the next season and it was even better (the direction was sharper and there was some tightening up of the script). I never expected it to come to Broadway -- plays like this never do. We'll see if it catches on and finds an audience. These reviews should help. I wish it well.

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Updated On: 3/31/06 at 12:11 AM

Now I have to see the damn thing.

Margo, it is specifically because of YOUR efforts that I even knew about this piece! One would hope that being a Pulitzer finalist would give it some cache', but these across the board raves - which completely substantiate your point of view (and those of other theatre afficionadoes) - will hopefully get the word out a little more.

I'm very glad to have gotten tickets, despite some initial worry.

Variety is a Rave:

"In the age of high anxiety, the idea of a benevolent hijacking seems unorthodox. But that's pretty much what happens onstage in Lisa Kron's ingeniously oddball play "Well," arriving on Broadway with its many charms intact after a hit 2004 run at the Public Theater. That the pilot in this case allows herself to be so thoroughly commandeered by other forces, both as playwright and lead performer, only enhances the refreshingly self-effacing, generous and genuine qualities of this circuitous but clearly heartfelt tribute to Kron's mother, a maverick spirit and a champion of integration.

Despite its advocacy of accepting difference, this is no banal message play. A "solo show with other people in it," "Well" studiously defies categorization. It borrows as much from Pirandello as from more contemporary downtown metatheatrics to flirt willfully with chaos and derailment throughout much of the running time -- only to come together with bracing clarity in the final stretch when Kron appears to have lost control of the vehicle.

Of course, the anarchy is entirely artful and calculated, but in director Leigh Silverman's playfully loose-limbed production, it has the captivating air of reckless spontaneity.
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In allowing another character onstage to dismantle her method with charges that it's too easy, forcing her to "stop hiding behind this play and talk to me," Kron not only shows a willingness to delve deep into her relationship with her mother but to deconstruct, with rare wit and intelligence, the theatrical process on which she has built a career.

This concept of a performance piece undermined and rerouted by an unmanageable force could only work with a thoroughly credible actor portraying that disruptive force. In the disarming Houdyshell, "Well" has much more than that. As was frequently observed of Broadway legend Laurette Taylor, Houdyshell's extreme naturalness makes her seem like someone who just wandered in off the street -- a real flesh-and-blood woman who appears to be yakking away onstage without a script.
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When Lisa relinquishes control to her mother near the close of the play as she reveals confronting truths about her feelings for her, it seems churlish of her as a character but an uncommonly gracious gesture as a writer. And as Houdyshell gives back the final words to Kron in the form of one of Ann's speeches, the gesture is even more affecting. The exchange conveys a whole universe of tender, messy, mother-daughter attachments in just a few beautifully calibrated minutes of stage time.


http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117930100?categoryid=33&cs=1

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Updated On: 3/31/06 at 01:11 AM

Just bought tickets on TDF for Wednesday afternoon because of these reviews. So glad I read them. Leave for NY today.

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