The Big Knife Broadway Reviews

..ultimately this Roundabout Theater Company production, which marks the first Broadway revival of 'The Big Knife,' doesn't argue persuasively for its enduring merits. Even Mr. Cannavale cannot make Charlie's overblown speechifying sound like anything other than what it is: Odets in soapbox mode, chewing away with gusto on the Hollywood hand that had been feeding him for some time.

Being true to oneself is a key issue in Clifford Odets' dark play, 'The Big Knife,' written in 1948 during the flush of postwar success, when America's focus turned toward capitalism. A strong, noirish production starring Bobby Cannavale opened Tuesday night on Broadway, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company. Doug Hughes stages repeated dynamic moments during the period drama, smartly retaining much of Odets' stilted yet colorful dialogue. The more seasoned cast members relish their opportunities to melodramatically sneer, flounce and bluster as required.

In Knife, Tinseltown and its studio system at that time are presented as particularly egregious representatives of the dark forces of commerce to which such strivers can fall prey. Now in revival (* * 1/2 out of four) at the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre, where it opened Tuesday, the play explores the dilemma of Charlie Castle, a promising stage actor-turned dissatisfied movie star married to a woman, Marion, who still loves him but hates what their life has become.

The play moves along at a reasonably fast clip, and Odets paints a fascinating portrait of Hollywood as a machine that destroys people, marriages and ideals. Too bad the production only gives us a partial view, a CinemaScope movie seen on a computer screen.

For 2 1/2 hours, the play goes through melodramatic motions and leads to an out-of-character conclusion. The show's best asset is Charlie's droolworthy home - an airy California castle designed by John Lee Beatty. For cheaper real-estate porn, read a shelter magazine.

As a bookend with the superior early 'Golden Boy,' this seriously flawed but perversely enjoyable artifact is Odets' own cautionary tale.

The Big Knife's first Broadway revival is muscular, moody and stylish, with a mostly solid cast under Doug Hughes's shrewd direction. Cannavale has an air of whiskey-soaked Bogart about him and his line readings capture the snap and brassy bawl of Odetsian banter. (What a year it's been for the sinewy lug-first Ricky Roma, now this.) As Castle's estranged wife, Marion, Marin Ireland seems overly recessive and wan, but she has fiery moments. Fleshly and venomous Richard Kind devours his grandiloquent speeches as a thuggish, sanctimonious movie mogul...In general, the production strikes the right fevered, grisly tone.

If great looks were all it took to be a success, then helmer Doug Hughes' production would rack up major points...Cannavale not only carries off the studly movie star persona, he's not unmanned by Charlie's displays of emotion to his wife, Marion (Marin Ireland), who shows similar strength of character and also looks great in white. (Costumer Catherine Zuber did some terrific job on this show.) But neither of these fine thesps seems willing or able to attack the deeper flaws of their difficult characters...there's the nagging thought that, in a less glittery and more searching production, there might be something more to be found in a character whose creation was such a source of pain for his creator.

In 2013, the old Hollywood studio system is dead. In the age of spin and image control at the speed of Internet, the gossip-columnist power nexus is dead, too, with its ability to 'kill' a career dead in its tracks. The reason to watch The Big Knife now may be to appreciate the personal meaning it held for its author (Odets died in 1963); or to take a nostalgia-infused whiff of the sweet smell of success (Odets worked on the screenplay for that 1957 movie beaut of the same name, too) with its acrid undertones of the era; or to think big thoughts about how to square a purity of artistic impulse with the seductiveness of luxury and celebrity. Or, never mind that, to see Richard Kind steal the picture. B+

Last performed on Broadway more than sixty years ago, somebody at Roundabout Theatre Company must have thought it was a good idea to revive this moldy-oldy, assemble an impressive cast, give it a glamorized production under Doug Hughes' direction, and see what happened. The result: nothing...The production's star, Bobby Cannavale, dressed in tennis whites or a tuxedo, is not only miscast, but his current hot-stuff career gives the lie to the play's point: it's no longer an us-vs-them game.

Cursed with the moral fire of Arthur Miller but not Miller's poetry, Odets's morality tales are pretty lumpish and heavy-handed. Keen ears will hear in the 1949 'Big Knife' the voices and themes that will find sharper and even more acrid form in 'Sweet Smell of Success,' his ferocious indictment of Hollywood that would set the bar for an industry's self- contempt. Director Doug Hughes and his fine cast haven't been able to unstack the cards Odets sets against Charlie. They include Charlie's involvement in a violent death for which one of the toadies took the rap; the threat of retribution from Richard Kind's brutal, vulgar studio chief; infidelity and abortion...None of this realism seems, well, real.

Director Doug Hughes and his designers provide an extremely glossy production that undoubtedly is meant to frame Odets' trashy story and its dubious protagonist in the most flattering light possible...Some viewers may well fall for the great charm that Bobby Cannavale sympathetically lends Charlie...But Richard Kind is slyly humorous as a folksy meltdown of Sam Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer...With the exception of Marin Ireland, who simply seems uncomfortable in the ambivalent character of Charlie's semi-estranged wife, the remainder of the capable company handles their roles very well...Roundabout subscribers already booked for 'The Big Knife' should be in the mood to swallow a big helping of stale cheese that is being served with the utmost skill.