Review Roundup: THE MONEY SHOT Opens Off-Broadway

MCC Theater presents the world premiere of MCC Playwright-in-Residence Neil LaBute's new play, The Money Shot, directed by Terry Kinney, extended due to popular demand now through October 19, 2014. The Money Shot stars Emmy Award nominee Elizabeth Reaser, Golden Globe nominee Callie Thorne, Frederick Weller and Gia Crovatin. The official opening is set for tonight, September 22, 2014.

In The Money Shot, Karen (Reaser) and Steve (Weller) are glamorous movie stars with one thing in common: desperation. It's been years since either one's had a hit, but the latest movie by a hot shot European director could change that. The night before filming a big scene (that seems destined to assure them a spot back on the pop culture radar), Karen, her partner Bev (Thorne), Steve, and his aspiring actress wife Missy (Crovatin) meet in order to make an important decision: how far will they let themselves go to keep from slipping further down the Hollywood food chain?

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

Michael Dale, BroadwayWorld: LaBute, of course, is known to be a button-pusher who isn't afraid to have his characters demonstrate their more cruel and disgusting qualities, and, true to form, there are some pretty awful things said in this one...But unlike deeper fare like Fat Pig or reasons to be pretty, every racist, sexist or homophobic jab is said with such an absurd grasp of logic and outlandish conviction that the joke is how ignorant people can be of their own ignorance...Director Terry Kinney's cast is pretty damn near perfect. Weller's slow-witted Steve, clueless of his own privilege, convincingly believes himself to be an intellectual and a victim of Hollywood machinations. Thorne counters with a Bev who delights in bringing him down with her dry wit and, finally, her athletic superiority. Reaser drips with manufactured glamour and bleeding heart self-promotion...While Crovatin has a lot of dumb blonde bits to play (and she does them extremely well) she also plays her character's growing realization of her own worth with fine subtlety.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: So let's get started: How many Hollywood actors does it take to screw in a light bulb? Neil LaBute neither poses nor answers that question in "The Money Shot," his raunchy new sitcom of a play...But if he did, I'm sure he'd have a body slam of a punch line. As it is, he and the director, Terry Kinney, manage to stretch what is essentially a single dumb movie star joke into 100 minutes of arduous, repetitive and occasionally hilarious stage time...There's a certain novelty in the high raunch factor here, which goes places that even HBO normally fears to tread. And the cast is good and beyond game, with Mr. Weller bravely and fully committed to his character's shallowness. Ms. Thorne finds an authentic sexiness in Bev's defiant, plain-Jane machismo. But the funniest moments belong to Ms. Reaser and Ms. Crovatin, who every now and then take their characters' absurdity into the comic ether.

Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press: Writer and director Neil LaBute has applied his customary cynicism and bitter-tipped rapier to Hollywood by suggesting a rather drastic way to keep a flagging movie career alive, in his wickedly funny new comedy, "The Money Shot,"...Terence Kinney, who directed LaBute's "reasons to be pretty" on Broadway, lets the awkward tension build onstage amid his accomplished cast...Weller...has shown expertise in portraying LaBute's angry male characters, as he did in "Reasons to be Happy." In the case of Steve, Weller conveys a smug machismo and pompous ignorance that are quite funny. Reaser ("Twilight" films and "Grey's Anatomy") allows Karen to be elegantly vain and insecure, languidly plying her character's vapid narcissism as a graceful foil to Weller's vulgarity.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: While it's thin, formulaic and adds little that's new to the playwright's customarily dyspeptic commentary on sexual politics, this satirical comedy is at the very least LaBute's funniest work in years...Terry Kinney, who directed the premiere of LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty, does a muscular job, keeping the pace snappy and coaxing detailed individual characterizations as well as sharp ensemble interplay from the talented cast...This is far from the playwright's most robust work, or even his most ferocious. But there's undeniable pleasure in watching him strike unapologetically low blows at L.A. insularity...Even when the dramaturgy grows shaky, which becomes increasingly the case as the booze flows and the quarrelsome evening wears on, the jokes are hard to resist.

Scott Foundas, Variety: Four characters dangle precariously from their respective perches on the Hollywood power ladder in Neil LaBute's "The Money Shot," an acid-tongued showbiz satire that makes up in belly laughs and inspired performances what it lacks in nuance or novelty. This is a somewhat kinder, gentler LaBute piece, in which cruelty takes a backseat to a kind of blithe, self-absorbed cluelessness. And while its targets may be obvious -- celebrity egomania, self-congratulatory activism, trashy blockbusters, diet fads -- the barbed accuracy with which "The Money Shot" shoots them down is a minor but consistent pleasure. Whether or not a Broadway transfer lies in the offing for the author's latest, an L.A. staging is certainly called for.

Adam Feldman, Time Out NY: Directed by Terry Kinney, the four gifted actors perform their parts broadly, sometimes to the point of caricature, but what other choice do they have? They can't play for truth, because there's no truth at play, only glib contempt for overfamiliar targets. LaBute has built a career out of snappy misanthropy, and his best work can slice to the bone. In The Money Shot, however, he contents himself with jabbing little pricks on the surface of stardom.

Linda Winer, Newsday: Neil LaBute, who became celebrated, then repetitious by putting shocking twists on dark gender-character studies, has taken one of the more surprising twists in his interesting career. We can't call "The Money Shot" lighthearted, exactly. But the prolific playwright has put a fresh, joyously impolite edge on two overdone genres -- the sex comedy and the Hollywood satire -- simultaneously. The results are a good and mean little farce that, despite the broad sides of his targets, finds lots of tender spots where the humor can reveal least as much as it bruises. He manages this with the help of an expert cast of excellent sports and director Terry Kinney's deftly physical production, which somehow makes things feel more believable as they become increasingly ridiculous.

Dave Quinn, NBC New York: In the past, the poisonous insults so associated with LaBute's work have been met with a sense of unease. It's hard to see people use other people for such despicable and cruel purposes. But as it turns out, the harshness becomes a much easier pill to swallow when the characters themselves are ripe for mocking. Such is the case in "The Money Shot," LaBute's newest biting comedy...Here, LaBute tackles Hollywood, celebrity and the extreme lengths actors will go to stay relevant in an industry where you're only as good as your last project. The results? A hilarious must-see play with some great performances...To my surprise, LaBute has embedded universal themes within "The Money Shot" that resonate beyond his surface-level attack of the Hollywood lifestyle.

Matt Windman, AM New York: Who would have imagined that Neil LaBute, the acidic playwright whose work explore violent, deceptive behavior between the sexes from a dark, seemingly misogynistic point of view (i.e. "The Shape of Things," "Fat Pig"), actually has a sense of humor?...While this is certainly not LaBute's most compelling work (nor is it his worst for that matter), it makes for a refreshing change considering how humorless and uncomfortably violent his other work can be. Terry Kinney, a co-founder of Chicago's famous Steppenwolf Theatre, has apparently urged his cast to play up their roles to the extreme. Were the performances more toned down, the laughs would probably still be intact and the play might feel more coherent.

Jesse Green, Vulture: ...though [LaBute's] latest play, The Money Shot, now being give a deluxe production by MCC Theatre, is labeled a comedy, it's hardly that in any sense but the laughs...As a plot device this real-sex business is an absurd nonstarter, and LaBute seems to know it. He delays revealing the "situation" for almost half the play's 100 minutes and then quickly skitters away from it once it's been mined for a few "swallow or spit" jokes...Making fun of stupidity, especially the Hollywood variety, is not exactly mining a fresh vein. But that's pretty much all The Money Shot has to offer...the director Terry Kinney, not doing his best work, seems to have decided that LaBute's stab at breeziness needed very broad, almost semaphoric playing from the cast. Fred Weller as Steve and Elizabeth Reaser as Karen manage to make this work.

Brendan Lemon, Financial Times: It's tempting to call The Money Shot, Neil LaBute's new play for MCC Theater, a satire, but the story is insufficiently grounded in reality to earn that description. All four characters, who assemble for a party at a house high in the Hollywood Hills, work in showbusiness, yet none of them seems quite believable in their professional function. They are near-caricatures, providing neither the delight of cartoons nor the pain of fleshed-out people. Yet the evening is consistently entertaining. The actors, all impeccably cast, feast on their dialogue...To his credit, LaBute does not aim for the obvious metaphor: in showbiz, everyone gets screwed. He is more concerned with amusing us, and in the hands of the capable cast...he sometimes succeeds.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: Neil LaBute's characters are awful to each other...So it's natural to expect the new "The Money Shot" to be another cruel blast. Yet the dark penny never drops: This time, comedy comes first...Not surprisingly, "The Money Shot" takes aim at the shallowness of Tinseltown...But the show isn't actually a Hollywood satire. Rather, it's about the way our culture has made it OK to be proud of being a moron...it's Reaser and Thorne...who waltz off with the show...Yes, the show is broad, its targets obvious. Don't worry: You'll be too busy laughing to notice.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: In LaBute's spar-com, the fighting between the lesbian Bev (Callie Thorne) and the hetero dude Steve (Fred Weller) begins the moment the curtain goes up and continues for the next 100 minutes. For anyone familiar with this playwright-director's work, it will come as no surprise that a very good-looking, buff guy will be outmatched by the lesbian on stage. Is this pro-gay? Probably not, it's just LaBute once again sticking it to the self-absorbed hunk, because as LaBute keeps telling us: Beautiful people are shallow. Under the direction of Terry Kinney, Thorne and Weller are pitch-perfect in their look and delivery...I never thought I'd write the following sentence. But here's a play that might work better as a two-hander.

David Finkle, The Huffington Post: To be honest, The Money Shot (title appropriated from porn-industry jargon, if you didn't already know) shouldn't be as consistently amusing as it is. LaBute get his laughs -- and he gets a carload of them -- from two embarrassingly easy targets...What's LaBute really aiming at? It could be said he's using these self-impressed dummies to mock our across-the-boards dumbed-down contemporary culture...But what's really transpiring is that LaBute, like many writers before him, has spent time in Hollywood. He's cashed the checks, but to make himself feel better about some of the humiliations witnessed and suffered, he's chosen to mock with loving discontent what he's observed...Many others have done it. Now he does it. Extremely well, too...Maybe throughout The Money Shot LaBute could have been subtler in his writing, but if so, would he have scored so consistently? Probably not. Watching Hollywood get its comeuppance, the audience gets its money's worth.

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Photo Credit: Joan Marcus