Review Roundup: Lust Drives Coward Revival and Rocky Horror Endures
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This powerful force, the comic engine driving the action of “Fallen Angels,” a riotous revival of one of Noël Coward’s early plays, is lust. The funniest, most combustible kind: suppressed lust. To be as precise as the deathlessly witty jokes littered through this play at the newly reopened Todd Haimes Theater, the transgressive lust of proper-seeming, upper-crust English wives suffering through stale marriages.
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The Guardian CultureFallen Angels has appeared only twice on Broadway since its stateside premiere in 1927, two years after the lustful comedy’s London premiere cemented Noël Coward as England’s drawing room enfant terrible. A sort of proto-Godot where two society women drink themselves into a stupor waiting for an old lover to arrive while their husbands are away, it was nearly censored by the office of the Lord Chamberlain for its sexual frankness. (That kind of historical description usually indicates that perhaps someone showed some ankle).
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From Jason Zinoman’s review: The dynamite performances of Byrne and O’Hara are the main event. Comedically, they’re intrepid, landing every joke, but also unearthing many new ones between lines. They play off each other with superb chemistry and deliver bon mots with the same snap. Their sly insults (“I should be following her around and picking up all the names she dropped”) come at you quickly, spoken with a rat-a-tat pace.
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The Guardian CultureThe two are stars of elastic, compulsively watchable talent, and the unexpectedness of their pairing only serves their dynamic in this expert staging of Coward’s play, as their characters goad each other’s worst impulses on until they come into conflict with their own. Their performances work – brilliantly – in the converse, with Byrne’s knack for bawdiness and O’Hara’s born gentility swirling around to intoxicating effect.
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Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, a campy 1973 musical inspired by sci-fi and horror B-movies, has lived a long and fruitful life. But its 1975 film adaptation, by some measure the longest-running theatrical release in US history, has almost inarguably overshadowed that legacy. The film’s song selection, plotting and performances – from Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and others – have been enshrined as the definitive Rocky Horror. Which doesn’t mean that a revival of the stage show arrives without fanfare, only that the experience of actually watching it may underwhelm.
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NYT ArtsNYT Critic’s Pick If you have a weird impulse to interpose the word “Picture” while talking about the new Broadway revival of Richard O’Brien’s “The Rocky Horror Show,” that might be because you grew up on (and with) the cult movie from 1975. Further, you may have been part of the cult yourself. Did you throw toast at a midnight screening? Did you scream choreographed insults — pretty vile ones, now that I think about it — whenever the actors said “Brad” or “Janet”?
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01 NYT Arts Through June 7 at the Todd Haimes Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
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02 The Guardian Culture That was, at least, my experience during the third Broadway mounting of Rocky Horror at Studio 54. The production’s announcement was much ballyhooed, with excitement particularly centered on the starry cast assembled. West End boy turned tough-guy movie star Luke Evans plays mad scientist cross-dresser Frank-n-Furter (the role made famous by Curry). Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu is Janet (played by Sarandon in the film). Juliette Lewis is Magenta, Saturday Night Live vet Rachel Dratch is the Narrator. Those in the know were also heartened that the revival is directed by Sam Pinkleton, who recently worked queer-comedy wonders with Oh, Mary!, a new member of the rarefied class of enduring Broadway hits.
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