Review Roundup: Jesse Eisenberg's THE SPOILS Opens Off-Broadway

The New Group presents the world premiere production of The Spoils, a new play written by and featuring Jesse Eisenberg, directed by Scott Elliott. This production features Erin Darke, Annapurna Sriram, Michael Zegen, Jesse Eisenberg and Kunal Nayyar. The show opens tonight, June 2, for a limited Off-Broadway engagement slated through June 28 at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street).

Nobody likes Ben. Ben doesn't even like Ben. He's been kicked out of grad school, lives off his parents' money, and bullies everyone in his life, including his roommate Kalyan, an earnest Nepalese immigrant. When Ben discovers that his grade school crush is marrying a straight-laced banker, he sets out to destroy their relationship and win her back.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: Directed by Scott Elliott, "The Spoils" stars Mr. Eisenberg, who has once again written for himself the part of a colossal, charismatic jerk...Most important, while Ben would surely say "The Spoils" is all about Ben, Mr. Eisenberg has seen fit to surround his leading narcissist with characters who live and breathe and react independently. Chief among these is Kalyan, and Mr. Nayyar (of "The Big Bang Theory") finds layers of ambivalence within a character who on the surface is too sweet and serene for words...as played by the excellent Ms. Darke, Sarah - like Mr. Nayyar's Kalyan - allows us to see Ben through eyes that are affectionate as well as exasperated. This softening is crucial, since otherwise the human car crash that is Ben might be impossible to live with for the play's 2 hours and 20 minutes...Every relationship in "The Spoils" has been given fluid and specific physical life...Mr. Eisenberg's acting experience serves him well as a playwright, and his clever, frantic dialogue assumes an irresistible authenticity when it's spoken by the right actors. That of course includes Mr. Eisenberg, who combines a panoply of tics and tremors and real tears into a radioactive cloud of self-loathing.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: ...Eisenberg demonstrates a real talent for crafting sharp, acerbic dialogue, and for a while this play gets by thanks to zingers expertly delivered by him and the rest of the ensemble. But The Spoils eventually winds up spinning its wheels throughout the course of its overlong running time, with the perpetually pot-smoking, condescending Ben proving so relentlessly off-putting that we wonder why the others would endure spending any time with him at all. He does indeed get a satisfying comeuppance by the play's conclusion, although the final moments, in which Sarah reminds him of a good deed he performed as a child, add an intriguing complexity to the proceedings. Eisenberg plays his twitchy, overbearing character to unsurprising perfection, but it's hard not to wish he would go in a different direction in his future writing endeavors. It's nice to see Nayyar stretching from his sitcom role, and the other performers are equally fine. But The Spoils seems far too intent on leaving a sour taste in your mouth without being particularly illuminating.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: The cast is terrific and director Scott Elliott...finds it in his heart to extend some compassion to Eisenberg's perfect little beast...Ben, the insufferable character he plays here, is another one of those boyish brats you love to hate, and the writer-actor plays his unlovely creation with all the love-hate he deserves...The performance is especially astute on a physical level. Not cutting Ben the least bit of slack, the actor has given him the self-protective (and self-loathing) posture of a rounded back and caved-in chest. Kicking it up a few notches, he's also saddled him with facial tics and, more sympathetically, a tendency to bury his face in his hands...while "The Spoils" (what means this dumb title?) is more of a "Day in the Life of ..." character sketch than a fully constructed drama, it leaves us wanting to find a kind way to put Ben out of his misery.

Adam Feldman, Time Out NY: It's not just that the plays themselves are good, and getting progressively better; it's that [Eisenberg] seems almost perversely intent on making audiences hate him. Ben, the rich New York idler he portrays in The Spoils, is his most deplorable creation yet. He's a liar, a user, a phony, a jerk, a slob, a bigot and a brat; but he's also lonely, and sometimes funny, and his addiction to weed may be a smoke screen for mental illness. The cast of Scott Elliott's razor-sharp New Group production is stellar...When Ben's crap inevitably hits the fan, The Spoils counterbalances it with decency. In Eisenberg's intensely awkward performance, Ben is both repellent and riveting. He's a self-dramatizing tragedy: a terror and a pity.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: An unpleasant play can still be satisfying. But an aimless one? Not so much. "The Spoils," a modern Manhattan dramedy with a mean streak wider than Broadway, falls, alas, into both categories...Antiheroes can intriguing, as "Mad Men" and "House of Cards" have shown. But Ben's not fascinating. Other characters are more interesting - and wonderfully acted under Scott Elliot's direction for this New Group production. Sarah's complicated take on her job teaching kids with criminal pasts and Reshma's jones for "working on dead people" make you want to know more about them. But Ben? Who cares. A last-ditch effort to humanize and redeem him doesn't do it. As a playwright Eisenberg is stuck in a groove going round and round - there's no point in that.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: Probably no one does tense, awkward nerd better than Jesse Eisenberg...Eisenberg wrote "The Spoils," and in it he takes his familiar avatar to its logical conclusion, going from oddball to sociopath...it's rewarding to see Eisenberg fully commit to Ben's craziness. A generation's arrested development and entitled narcissism are presented as plain awful. Speedily directed by Scott Elliott, this New Group production barrels through, and the young cast navigates the dense dialogue and snarky remarks with expert ease. The one caveat is a scaredy last-minute cop-out, as if Eisenberg couldn't quite face what he'd wrought. Still, for the first time in his short career as a playwright, we can't wait to see what he'll do next.

Matt Windman, AM New York: ..."The Spoils" is [Eisenberg's] best work to date, indicating that he is starting to develop as a playwright. It is built around an unbelievably unsympathetic main character...Even if the play is more of a character study than a narrative, "The Spoils" is a strangely compelling look at young New Yorkers struggling to achieve their professional ambitions and hold on to their personal identities and values. As directed by New Group artistic director Scott Elliott, the scenes have an unusually naturalistic flow, especially when everyone is joking around over beer and marijuana. Eisenberg gives a highly invested, hyperactive performance that stresses Ben's self-concerned mentality while adding enough subtlety to suggest some self-loathing.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Ben can hardly utter a word that isn't insincere or hostile or, on the other hand, narcissistic and maudlin...it's as if Eisenberg set out to see what would happen if you took a basically cheerful sitcom, like Friends, and dropped a raving sociopath into the middle of it. What happens isn't very nice or, alas, very good...I'm actually worried for Eisenberg, who is a little too good at this sort of material; after all, he wrote it for himself. The skeevy giggles, the Tourettic yips, the chest taps as if to see if his heart is still there: No one does them better. But if he has shaped the first act to provide an opportunity for displaying this catalog of expressive behaviors, what is he trying to do in the second act, which reveals Ben's supposedly profound fantasies to be merely sick, and delivers several dramatically necessary but overdone comeuppances? The result is like watching a YouTube loop of some hapless jerk jumping into a frozen pool, over and over...Perhaps that's irrelevant. But even looked at as an anonymous text, The Spoils disappoints...There are no meaningful antagonists to Ben's madness.

Steven Suskin, The Huffington Post: With The Spoils, Eisenberg seems to be advancing as a playwright. Thanks in large measure to four compellingly-written characters, he holds our attention almost to the end. The play seems slightly hampered by what is a relatively unusual problem: when the leading character goes over the top--in some stretches of self-degradation, and in an extended finale which leaves him crumpled and broken--one can't help but wonder whether it's the character speaking or the unrestrained actor/star/playwright indulging his histrionic whims. That said, The Spoils quickly grabs our interest and sustains it...The author acts up a storm as the hero, threatening--almost from his first entrance--to explode in front of our eyes. Nayar...does a fine job as the roommate and makes a perfect companion to the star; he and Eisenberg manage to convey a whole range of unspoken layers to the characters' problematic relationship...The Spoils is one of those plays that walk the line between dramatic believability and "too much".

Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer: Skinny pale arms stick out of a droopy white t-shirt. He plucks at his skin in meaningless, jumpy gestures, and sometimes talks -- faster than seems possible -- with his eyes closed as if he's reading off the inside of his eyelids. This is Jesse Eisenberg's terrific portrayal of Ben, an extreme neurotic personality and the central character in The Spoils, which boasts a supporting cast just as good as he is. Eisenberg also wrote this disturbing and very contemporary play..."Self-hating" pretty much describes Ben, Eisenberg's character in The Spoils -- too smart to be self-deluded, too self-deluded to be sane...Scott Elliot's direction is dead on...The dialogue sounds absolutely authentic, as does the pitch perfect delivery of that dialogue...together with body language that speaks a world of meaning. All this creates a troubling picture of life as it is lived, clothes as they are worn, hair as it is combed, talk as it is talked. Looking around at the millennials in the audience, they looked like dead ringers for the people onstage.

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Photo Credit: Monique Carboni

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