reasons to be pretty Reviews- Page 2
reasons to be pretty Reviews
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#25
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:48pm
Miracle: I am asking you to please stop. From now on, please post about reasons to be pretty reviews, which is what this thread is about - not making fun of which adjectives I used to describe the show. Thank you.
Updated On: 4/2/09 at 05:48 PM
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#26
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:51pmMy question - and I'm putting this out to everyone - why are you so surprised that a show that got rave reviews Off-Broadway will get rave reviews ON Broadway?
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#27
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:51pm
Ha! Oh, it takes serious nerve to say this, "I know, right? It's JAW-DROPPING when critics don't have the exact same opinion as you," and then be offended when someone thinks you're "bitchy."
But the reason I actually wanted to comment was that I'm quite pleased with the AP review. I feel like LaBute is so hit or miss (I truly despised In a Dark, Dark House) and this show felt like his most warm, mature work. There is one cast member I didn't think was up to the level of the other three, but that's a quibble. I expected to have mixed feelings about the show and was very pleasantly surprised.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#28
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:51pmDid IRENA'S VOW get rave reviews off broadway? Just curious...
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#29
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:52pmWe aren't all surprised, just the narcissists.
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#30
Posted: 4/2/09 at 5:56pm
IRENA got respectable-to-positive reviews, from the 3rd-string Times critic and other first-stringers from papers that have 1 critic.
All I can suggest is look 'em up.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#31
Posted: 4/2/09 at 6:00pm
never really been a huge LaBute fan but i did like reasons to be pretty when I saw it off broadway. It's a shame Pill didn't transfer because she was a revelation! Still, I'm hoping for some good reviews! I'd love to see this do well, it's such a roller coaster.
My god, this is not "pleasant" or "fun" show. goodness!
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#32
Posted: 4/2/09 at 6:39pmSorry, Caroline, I was trying to be kind. If we're being honest, I found REASONS to be unpleasant and boring. Just my opinion...
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#33
Posted: 4/2/09 at 6:54pm
This is more fun than that "Exit the King or Blythe Spirit" thread.
It's that old WAT schtick. Although I'm beginning to think KingKong is TooDarnHot/TheCharleston's latest incarnation. Maybe you'll be a bit more careful keeping your secret identity a secret this time, dearie!
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#34
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:17pm
I'm with you PG2.
I'm really intrigued by the possibilities of this show. I didn't have a chance to catch this off bway....and am now struggling to fit it into my upcoming schedule.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#35
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:39pm
The Bergen Record is Very Positive:
""reasons to be pretty" (the lower case is the author's choice) had a successful off-Broadway run last year, but some notable changes have been made.
Greg is now a clearer figure, and four monologues addressed to the audience which were awkward and impeded the dramatic flow ? have been eliminated...
..."reasons to be pretty" has its bumpy moments, including a scene in which Greg and Kent have it out physically, in a clichéd reversion to the boys' world of previous LaBute plays.
Ultimately, though, the playwright delivers the goods, in a work that's lively and compulsively watchable and that offers a fresh take on the eternal matter of achieving adulthood."
http://www.northjersey.com/entertainment/stage/reasons040209.html
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#36
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:42pmI'm glad he called the fight scene a "bumpy moment" in the show. It was very poorly choreographed.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#37
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:46pm
Backstage is Mixed-to-Positive:
"Off-Broadway, under Terry Kinney's hyperrealistic direction, Reasons to Be Pretty had the feel of a documentary. It seemed as if we were watching a surveillance tape from the break room of a Costco-type warehouse, which is where most of the action is set (designer David Gallo accurately re-creates a tacky suburban world of malls, chain stores, and apartment complexes). In the transition to Broadway, there have been cast changes and script tightening?with mixed results. Thomas Sadoski as Greg remains the play's rock. His stumbling journey to manhood forms the through-line, and the actor documents each step with detailed attention in a multilayered performance. Marin Ireland replaces Alison Pill as Steph, and she matches her predecessor's intensity. Piper Perabo has deepened her characterization of Kent's insecure wife, Carly, who knows she's a fox but fears that her looks are all she has. Steven Pasquale gives a caricatured reading of the brutish Kent, lacking the veracity Pablo Schreiber brought to the role.
That may be due to LaBute's cutting of monologues in which the characters revealed their attitudes about their inner psyches and outer beings to the audience. Some called these speeches unnecessary, but Off-Broadway they gave the play a richness it now lacks. We could see deeper into the lives of these blue-collar combatants; it was almost like reading a complex novella. Yes, fiction and drama are two vastly different forms, but in the previous incarnation, LaBute combined the best qualities of both."
http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003958568
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#38
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:55pm
The Wall Street Journal is Very Negative:
"Except for this latter plot twist, which is both sentimental and unconvincing, "reasons to be pretty" is standard-issue LaBute, a fast-paced sequence of ante-upping scenes in which the men are pigs, the women are victims and everyone (including the women) talks dirty. If you've never seen any of Mr. LaBute's plays, you might well find this one fresh, but this is the sixth one I've reviewed, and I'm sorry to say that his style has hardened into a set of tricks and mannerisms that he uses to say the same things over and over again. Stephen Sondheim summed up the whole of Mr. LaBute's vision of human possibility in a single couplet from "A Little Night Music": Men are stupid, men are vain,/Love's disgusting, love's insane. He may be right, but that doesn't mean it isn't long past time for Mr. LaBute to change the record, and tacking a semioptimistic ending onto "reasons to be pretty" isn't quite what I had in mind."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123870777269284023.html?mod=article-outset-box
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#39
Posted: 4/2/09 at 7:57pm
The Word of Mouth panelists liked the show, and they found the guys (both the characters and the actors) were more interesting than the girls.
http://www.broadway.com/Broadway-com-VIDEO-ON-DEMAND-Word-Of-Mouth-Reviews/broadway_information_html/5015935
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#40
Posted: 4/2/09 at 8:04pm
Variety is a Rave:
"As its title suggests, "Reasons to Be Pretty" deals to some extent with a culture in thrall to physical beauty. However, the real subject of this taut, unexpectedly affecting drama is a man forced to take a long, hard look at himself after a flippant comment about his girlfriend's appearance kills their relationship. Nobody's going to call Neil LaBute a redemptive playwright, and even in this reflective mood, he's not exactly forgiving about men's failings and women's weaknesses. But there's compassion and even tenderness running through this play that make it one of his best."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939992.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#41
Posted: 4/2/09 at 8:08pm
Talkin Broadway is a Rave.
"The flow of blood may have slowed to a trickle, but the pain is as vibrant as ever. For his Broadway debut with reasons to be pretty, the brutally beautiful play that just opened at the Lyceum, the famously controversial Neil LaBute has pushed aside the usual destructively dangerous he-she relations he normally documents in favor of revealing his softer-than-predicted heart. And what a dazzling trade he's made.
Rather than diffusing the details of either the war between the sexes or the wars within the sexes, as he?s done in previous plays, he tackles both head on as the same battle. The resulting play, which has been directed here by Terry Kinney and is fueled by a star-making performance from Thomas Sadoski, may be LaBute's tamest, but it's also his best."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/index.html
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#42
Posted: 4/2/09 at 8:40pm
The Hollywood Reporter is a Rave:
"Playwright/provocateur Neil LaBute has explored our obsession with physical appearance and the way it wreaks havoc on relationships in such works as "Fat Pig" and "The Shape of Things." But "reasons to be pretty," the third entry in this unofficial trilogy, cuts even deeper than its predecessors. Marking the playwright's belated Broadway debut, this lacerating and extremely funny work should appeal to younger theatergoers especially."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/theater-review-reasons-to-be-pretty-1003958682.story
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#43
Posted: 4/2/09 at 9:15pm
USA Today gives the show 3 1/2 Stars out of 4:
"Thomas Sadoski's wry, earthy Greg is certainly never a bore; there isn't a false note in his heartbreaking performance. The other actors also thrive under Terry Kinney's vigorous but careful direction. Marin Ireland makes Steph's fragility as affecting as her fits of temper are hilarious, while Piper Perabo lends subtler nuance to the sturdier Carly, the unfortunate wife of Greg's buddy/co-worker, a dog named Kent.
Steven Pasquale plays the boorish Kent perfectly, so that he is by turns funny, creepy and pathetic. This is not one of LaBute's smoother operators; like everyone in Reasons, Kent is to some extent a product of circumstance. The playwright asks us less to judge these people than to consider what moves them, and us, to cause and feel pain ? and why some of us are better at rising above it."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2009-04-02-reasons-pretty_N.htm
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#44
Posted: 4/2/09 at 9:23pm
Once again Wall Street is out of touch. 
But big props for throwing in a Sondheim quote.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#45
Posted: 4/2/09 at 9:36pmHow is Wall Street out of touch? Just because he gave a negative review in the midst of positive reviews? Wall Street stated that this was his sixth LaBute play he reviewed...is that out of touch? and yes, the Sondheim quote was fantastic!!
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#46
Posted: 4/2/09 at 9:49pm
How is Wall Street out of touch?
It agrees with you.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#48
Posted: 4/2/09 at 10:13pmI was just making a little joke linking the Wall Street journal's review to the whole economy fiasco. Didn't mean to offend.
re: reasons to be pretty Reviews#49
Posted: 4/2/09 at 10:16pm
No big deal, Singtopher. It's all good.
I wonder when Brantley's review will be posted...
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