Grand Slam Homerun!!

We have been waiting for one of the oodles of plays we are seeing this week to blow our socks off. We have seen good plays, really good musicals, interesting revivals but nothing that ranked as a home run until today. We saw all three plays in The Norman Conquests trilogy, and they hit the ball out of the park. These are some of the funniest hours the CBs have ever spent in the theater. Ben Brantley said it best in his New York Times review: "These plays cripple you with laughter and more subversively fracture your soul."

We saw the plays in the order in which they were written. We saw Table Manners at 11:30, Living Together at 3:30 and Round and Round the Garden at 8:00. The plays take place over one weekend and involve the same 6 people - two married couples and one unattached couple. The plays are connected, showing the action from different times and places within and without the house during the weekend. Seven hours of theater in one day sounds exhausting, but this was an exhilarating experience and left us wanting more.

The main character is a hilariously, naughty Lothario named Norman who is played to perfection by Stephan Mangan. He manages to seduce all three women in the play at various times. The six actors are so hilarious that the CBs had stomach aches from laughing and - at times - were actually guffawing, as were the rest of the audience. Being at the theater with the same audience for all three plays and getting to know and understand the characters so well was a wonderfully communal experience.

Alan Ayckbourne wrote this series of plays in the 1973 (it feels like it was written last week, not 36 years ago!) and this revival transferred from the Old Vic in London with the great London cast intact. The director is the amazing Matthew Warchas who is directing God of Carnage a couple of blocks away and directed the hilarious Boeing Boeing last season. No one directs a farce better than he does. Although all six actors were wonderful, we especially enjoyed the performances of Amanda Root as the uptight Sarah, wife of the equally hilarious Reg played to perfection by Paul Ritter.

We urge you to rush to see these plays and recommend that you see all three in the same order that we did. You won't be disappointed. This is a chance to see this classic series of plays with a truly A level group of actors. If you are a theater lover, this is a not to missed experience.
Blythe Danner and Richard Kind saw all three plays with the CBs today!

Waiting for Godot

We had great tickets to see Waiting for Godot last night. Although the play itself is a little weird at times, we would wager that this is the best production of it you could ever hope to see. Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin (both Tony winners) play Vladimir and Estragon, two seemingly homeless men waiting near a tree on a barren stretch of road for someone—or something—named Godot. To pass the time, they engage in absurd conversations and comical wordplay and nonsense. Irwin and Lane play off each other brilliantly and make an unusually tender pair of wanderers--they sound like an old married couple repeating recycled stories and trying to remind each other what happened yesterday. They are also very funny--Lane goes for the laughs a bit too overtly at times, but their comedic timing definitely makes this an entertaining production. Irwin's performance is Tony worthy in the CB's humble opinion. Amazingly enough, he didn't even receive a nomination.

John Goodman (who is huge!) plays Pozzo, an "upperclass" bully and windbag who is attached by a rope to his subhuman slave, Lucky. John Glover plays Lucky, and his performance is pretty amazing--he brings out Lucky's madness, his stubborn determination to stick with Pozzo at all costs, his bursts of violence, and his vulnerability, all the time looking like a cross between a ghost and a man. These four actors are at the top of their game and bring this classic to life in a completely memorable way. We were glad to have seen it!
Once again Jeff Goldblum was in the audience with the same young lady as last night!