Review Roundup: THE AMATEURS Opens at the Vineyard

Vineyard Theatre's world premiere production of The Amateurs by Jordan Harrison (2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist for MARJORIE PRIME) directed by Oliver Butler (THE OPEN HOUSE, Obie Award for Direction), opened last night.

THE AMATEURS features Kyle Beltran (Vineyard's GLORIA, HEAD OF PASSES), Quincy Tyler Bernstine (RUINED, Manchester by the Sea), Michael Cyril Creighton (STAGE KISS, Spotlight), Greg Keller (Vineyard's SOMEWHERE FUN, OUR MOTHER'S BRIEF AFFAIR), Jennifer Kim (Vineyard's GLORIA, "Mozart in the Jungle"), and Thomas Jay Ryan (THE CRUCIBLE, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

In The Amateurs, an intrepid troupe of pageant players races across medieval Europe, struggling to outrun the Black Death. The arrival of a mysterious outsider sends Hollis, the leading lady, in search of answers that can only be found off-script... and soon the 14th century plague begins to look like another, more recent one. This wildly inventive and funny new work examines the evolution of human creativity in a dark age: when does a crisis destroy us, and when does it open new frontiers?

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

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Jesse Green, The New York Times: Still, I kept thinking that a fully cooked play shouldn't need so much exegesis and counterpoint. It didn't seem likely that Mr. Harrison's self-parodying seminar, however amusing, could deepen the play's action when it returned to medieval Italy. Eventually, though, I understood that deepening wasn't the point; distancing was. "The Amateurs" wants to be seen with a form of double vision in which the past and the present are both present. We are meant to be vigilant about the "luxury of fiction," with its false sense of endings.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Oliver Butler's direction makes the most of Creighton and Bernstine's big moments. It's downright exhilarating to watch them set aside the play they've been performing. Perhaps Butler could have made the opening scenes of "The Amateurs" a little less obscure, but the payoff is enormous. Among the players, Greg Keller exudes real intelligence as The Acting Company's closet Jew, and troupe leader Thomas Jay Ryan is especially grandiose in the awfulness of his acting and his direction of that play within the play.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: How many times have theatergoers, halfway through a boring or inexplicable play, fantasized that the author walked onstage and explained what exactly the hell he or she was thinking? Jordan Harrison fulfills that wish in his new drama about an itinerant band of performers wandering through Europe in the 14th century during the Black Plague. Unfortunately, this intervention in The Amateurs, receiving its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre, raises more questions than it answers.

Adam Feldman, TimeOut NY: its interest is mainly formal; the emotional content doesn't bleed into the rest of the production when the focus returns to the traveling players. For all its skill, the play rarely seems either more or less than self-conscious.

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg

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