Brits Open Broadway Season on a Solid B+

The fall season finally kicked off this past week with a pair of period ensemble pieces from Britain, both imported by New York's two big nonprofit companies, and both receiving solid B+ grades from StageGrade: Brief Encounter at the Roundabout's Studio 54 and The Pitmen Painters at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Neither got quite the smash-hit reviews that might have been expected--the Kneehigh's extravagant adaptation of Brief Encounter got raves (and a StageGrade A) when it ran last year at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, but there were a few more dissenting voices on its Broadway transfer. And Lee Hall's miners-as-artists drama, The Pitmen Painters, was not as unanimously adored as its London notices might have promised.

Another British play fared more poorly. Critics' median grade for Michael Frayn's Alphabetical Order, in an Off-Broadway production by the Keen Company, was a C+. And a Stateside premiere of Thomas Bernhard's sibling-rivalry drama Ritter, Dene, Voss got a respectful B.

Meanwhile, American writers held their own: Both Daniel Beaty's one-man show about fathers and sons, Through the Night, and Carly Mensch's quirky romance Now Circa Then landed a B+.

This coming week on Broadway we're looking forward to Cherry Jones in the title role of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, and Laura Linney and Brian D'Arcy James return (rather soon, if we may say so) in Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still. And Off-Broadway, it's Gatz and Gaza, as Elevator Repair Service's marathon take on The Great Gatsby and journalist Lawrence Wright's look at the Gaza Strip in The Human Scale open at the Public and 3LD, respectively.

StageGrade's raffles and ticket giveaways continue apace, available both through the site's contest page and to attentive followers on Twitter and Facebook. Current giveaways include tickets to Siti Company's Radio Macbeth, Fuerza Bruta: Look Up, Lombardi, Rock of Ages, Freud's Last Session and Accomplice.

StageGrade was established in response to The Common lament that a show's success or failure seems inordinately tied to what just a few (or even just one) critic wrote about it. StageGrade effectively democratizes the critical response, ensuring that every reviewer with something worthwhile to say -- from The New York Times to OffOffOnline -- is considered equally, thus providing readers with a uniquely trustworthy sense of the critical consensus on every show.

This simple but potent idea has already garnered key endorsements: A front-page story in The New York Times cited StageGrade as an authoritative source for how critics respond to Broadway shows. Meanwhile, StageGrade was selected for a 2010 Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Summer Fellowship, and was named a 2010 Company To Watch by the Connecticut Technology Council.

For more information, visit www.stagegrade.com.