Review Roundup: Steve Martin's METEOR SHOWER at The Old Globe

The Old Globe presents the world premiere run of Steve Martin's new play Meteor Shower, running now through September 18, 2016, with opening night on August 7. Meteor Shower, an adult comedy, marks Martin's return to the Globe following the great success of Bright Star. It is directed by Gordon Edelstein in a co-production with Long Wharf Theatre.

Meteor Shower features Jenna Fischer (Emmy Award nominee as Pam Beesly on "The Office," Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story with John C. Reilly, Reasons to Be Happy Off Broadway) as Corky, Greg Germann (SAG Award winner for "Ally McBeal," "Once Upon a Time," Broadway's Boeing-Boeing, original production of Assassins) as Norm, Alexandra Henrikson (Fish in the Dark and The Snow Geese on Broadway, Helen Hayes Award nominee forIronbound, "Funny Or Die") as Laura, and Josh Stamberg (series regular on "The Affair," "Parenthood," and "Drop Dead Diva," Off Broadway's Distracted) as Gerald.

Get ready for the unexpected when Norm and his wife Corky invite another couple to their Ojai backyard to watch a Meteor Shower in the night sky. As the stars come out and the conversation gets rolling, cocktails flow, tempers flare, and sparks fly-literally. Steve Martin's surprising new comedy takes an offbeat and absurdist look at the comic anxiety lurking just beneath the surface of modern marriage.

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

Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times: "Meteor Shower," the world premiere of a comedy Martin started ages ago...has an air of juvenilia. The quizzical feeling I had leaving the theater...was similar to the reaction I often have after reading one of Martin's strained humor pieces in the New Yorker - why isn't this precious space going to a writer less known but more talented?..."Meteor Shower" plunges into the absurd without establishing a philosophical grounding for the mania. It's sitcom Ionesco crossed with a "Saturday Night Live" parody of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"..."Meteor Shower" lacks the aesthetic texture and structural discipline needed to pull off its larky vision.

Pam Kragen, The San Diego Union-Tribune: For 150 years, spirit-seekers have been drawn to Ojai, the artsy colony near Santa Barbara said to be the magnetic center of the earth. So it's the perfect setting for Steve Martin's new play "Meteor Shower," a wacky exploration of love, life, death, inner selves, order, chaos and astronomical wonders....While "Meteor Shower" loses its ways a bit in the second act, it's a wild and laugh-filled rocket ride for most of its 1 hour, 45 minutes. Directed by Gordon Edelstein with a cracker-jack cast, it's a frequently hilarious look at the psychology of marriage in the 1990s heydey of self-help books and relationship retreats.

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Photo Credit: Jim Cox