TV stars stinking up Broadway
March 2, 2009 at 9:50 am by David Warner
Lauren Graham with Craig Bierko in Guys and Dolls/NY Times photo by Sara Krulwich
Lauren Graham and Oliver Platt won critical raves for their roles in TV cult hits Gilmore Girls and Huff, but the New York Times‘ Ben Brantley says they’re not exactly lighting up Broadway in the new revival of Guys and Dolls. Gilmore and Platt are the latest TV stars to get bashed by the Times this season; Charles Isherwood eviscerated “a staggeringly miscast” Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under) and an “ill-used” Jena Malone (The Office) for their performances her performance in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (see the review’s truly scathing opening paragraph after the jump), and Mary Louise Parker (Weeds), usually a B’way darling, got slammed for her Hedda Gabler.
But the big names keep on coming: James Gandolfini in the hopefully not-prophetically-titled God of Carnage, Angela Lansbury in Blithe Spirit, Cynthia Nixon in Distracted, Jane Fonda in 33 Variations, Jeremy Irons in Impressionism. The biggest buzz? Another O’Neill revival: Desire Under the Elms out of Chicago, for which Sarasota-born Carla Gugino (Entourage, Karen Sisco), Brian Dennehy and Pablo Schreiber have already won rhapsodic reviews, including one from Isherwood.
Here’s the Isherwood opener for his review of that other O’Neill revival:
There are bad nights at the theater, and then once in a blue moon comes a lulu like the New Group revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra,” four hours of quicksand from which you begin to fear you will never, ever escape.
Ouch.
CORRECTION: The first version of this post confused Jena Malone with Jenna Fischer of The Office. The error was corrected above.
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