Review Roundup: SABBATH'S THEATER Opens at The New Group

The New Group is presenting Sabbath’s Theater, adapted from the novel by Philip Roth by Ariel Levy and John Turturro.  Directed by Jo Bonney, Sabbath’s Theater features Jason Kravits, Elizabeth Marvel and John Turturro.  Originally slated through December 3, this world premiere limited engagement must end Sunday, December 17.  Performances began October 10 in advance of Official Opening Night on Thursday, November 2 at The Pershing Square Signature Center (The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street).  Sabbath’s Theater, produced by The New Group with Karen Brooks Hopkins, launches The New Group’s 2023-2024 season. 

Philip Roth’s fearlessly filthy, funny and moving novel takes the stage in this new play from Ariel Levy and John Turturro.  When his secret life of debauchery comes to a heartbreaking end, disgraced puppet maker Mickey Sabbath plunges into increasingly mad and maddening encounters with people from his wild and wicked past.  Part ghost story, part love story, Sabbath’s Theater unleashes Roth’s power to shock and amaze in this profound meditation on mortality and juicy celebration of life. 

The complete cast features John Turturro (Severance, The Night Of) as Mickey Sabbath, Elizabeth Marvel (Homeland, House of Cards) as Drenka and others, and Jason Kravits (The Drowsy Chaperone, original Broadway cast) as Matijia and others.  Jo Bonney (Cost of Living) directs. 

The production includes Choreography by Kelly Devine, Scenic and Costume Design by Arnulfo Maldonado, Lighting Design by Jeff Croiter, Sound Design by Mikaal Sulaiman, Projection Design by Alex Basco Koch, Shadow Puppet Design by Erik Sanko and Wig and Makeup Design by J. Jared Janas.  The Dialect Coach is Kate Wilson.  The Casting Director is Judy Henderson, CSA. Production Stage Manager is Valerie A. Peterson. Assistant Stage Manager is Stephen Michael Varnado. 

Published in 1995, Sabbath's Theater won that year’s National Book Award and was a finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. 

See what the critics are saying...

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Roth devotees — and maybe readers, mostly women, who believed him more misogynistic than misanthropic — might wonder how such an immaculately stylish prose writer with a boundless gift for humor translates to the stage. Well they might. Turturro, evidently a close Roth friend, and Levy have trimmed the 451-page novel into something exploding over the footlights for around 100 minutes. The result passes muster along the lines of professionally accomplished CliffsNotes. As could be expected, the playwrights include sections of all, or most, of the important sequences, although they don’t always catch the hilarity that comes so easily to Roth. Nevertheless, they do impressively convey the mounting frustrations eventually causing Mickey to contemplate ending it all.

Raven Snook, TimeOut New York: Ariel Levy and John Turturro's stage adaptation of Sabbath's Theater begins with a bang: Over-the-hill lecher Mickey Sabbath (Turturro) and his insatiable Croatian mistress, Drenka (Elizabeth Marvel), schtup with abandon in the opening scene. But the play goes flaccid fast. Despite the transgressiveness of the source material—the late Philip Roth's scabrous novel, considered a masterpiece by some and purely masturbatory by others—the play is an impotent affair, with three excellent actors working awfully hard to screw inert vignettes into a whole.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: One great benefit of seeing “Sabbath’s Theater” brought to the theater is that I had never realized how Shakespearean the novel is. It’s not just the graveyard scenes, but the overall outrageousness of Mickey’s language and behavior. Turturro plays Mickey, and while he has never had the lightest touch as an actor, he brings a benign levity to the tale that sometimes runs counter to the spirit of Roth’s novel. Roth dares us to find anything admirable in his hero. Turturro, on the other hand, seduces us into liking the guy.

Jackson McHenry, Vulture: A play starring actors like John Turturro and Elizabeth Marvel, based on an acclaimed — and, more importantly, filthy — novel, should not make only a small impression. But the mystery of the New Group’s adaptation of Sabbath’s Theater is that it struggles to shock you or even to stick in your memory. The production is a faithful-to-a-fault adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel, by Turturro and the author Ariel Levy, that gets stuck in translation. It’s the story of a chronically, self-destructively passionate man, but its writers can’t figure out how to render that fire onstage. The raw materials are there, but the spark is lacking.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: This juxtaposition – intermingling – of sex and death, of obscenity and grief, is central to the play, and arguably at the core of much of Roth’s oeuvre, although a writer who produced “Portney’s Complaint” and “American Pastoral” and“The Plot Against America” can’t be summed up so simply. But the balance is skewed in this adaptation. I found the explicit scenes more often off-putting than amusing or alluring. There are some poignant moments, especially when Marvel is portraying Drenka, and Kravits is playing Sabbath’s100-year-old cousin Fish. But there are fewer than intended.