New Broadway farce The Play That Goes Wrong opened last Sunday at the Lyceum Theater near Times Square but it’s been given a controversially tepid reception by the New York Times, which still manages to be a force to be reckoned with in the realm of theater.
On the surface The Play That Goes Wrong is inoffensive and highly entertaining. It’s an old-fashioned British slapstick production revolving around a student amateur theater company’s struggle to stage a murder mystery while dealing with falling props and onstage calamities.
The show has been a huge hit in London but, not featuring any stars, it needs good reviews to thrive on Broadway. New York Times chief theater critic Ben Brantley loved the show in London when he covered it in 2015, calling it “an unexpected gut-busting hit…you laugh till you cry despite yourself.”
Even though the production of The Play That Goes Wrong at the Lyceum is almost identical to the one he saw in London, Brantley has now changed his mind. When he saw it the first time, he wrote in his new Broadway opening review, “I was glassy-eyed with jet lag and, as far as I can remember, had a swell time. Revisiting it at the Lyceum, after a restful weekend, my responses were more tempered.
“That’s partly because I think the cast is pushing harder to win over us subtlety-challenged Americans. In any case, my reactions ranged between thinking this play was exhaustingly funny to finding it just plain exhausting.”
No specific examples are given of the show’s attempts to “win over subtlety-challenged Americans” and the comments from Times readers underneath Brantley’s review almost all praise the show and wonder why has he changed his mind?
This prompts the question: has an increasingly politically correct New York Times reached the point where it can’t bring itself to like an old-fashioned farce? Is it now reluctant to admire such straightforwardly accessible, humorous fare which was produced by Star Wars; The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, and has received positive reviews in most other media outlets?
After all, Elizabeth Vincentelli, Brantley’s fellow NYT critic, took issue on Twitter with the actions of the show’s actresses:
Deeply disliked that the 2 (out of 8 actors) women in “The Play That Goes Wrong” end up in a catfight. A hoary cliché we really don’t need.
— E Vincentelli (@EVincentelli) April 3, 2017
The fuss surrounding the controversial firing of Times critic Charles Isherwood has only just died down. But it’s worth noting that in the last year Brantley has got facts wrong relating to Eugene O’Neill plots, Stephen Sondheim openings and directors of significant Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals, all of which all would seem like meat and drink to a leading Broadway critic.
But perhaps these days getting prolific entries into the Corrections column is something of a badge of honor for any self-respecting Times reviewer….
