In this triumphant return to Broadway, Tony and Emmy Award winner John Lithgow dazzlingly conjures an entire cast of indelible characters - and The New York Times says the result is "superb, illuminating and uplifting." With honesty, humor and heart, he combines family memories and timeless tales into a one-of-a-kind event that New York magazine calls "pure entertainment." Don't miss John Lithgow as he elevates the magic of storytelling to masterful new heights. "Rarely have I spent so entertaining and touching a night at the theater." (The Wall Street Journal).
Daniel Sullivan directed this long-developing show, and it's fleet. But Lithgow isn't well served by the design. Kenneth Posner's lighting is harsh and unforgiving, and John Lee Beatty's set is clean but oddly monumentalist, overpowering a necessarily intimate exchange between performer and audience. As someone who loves the short story form, I know one reader's Wodehouse is another's I.L. Peretz, one reader's Cheever is another's Pynchon. Lithgow is deeply impressive in sharing two wildly different examples. I wasn't sold on the first, but he had me at Pongo.
Lithgow's show is framed in family history, but no skeletons are exposed, unless you count the love of theater he carries in his bones. Ring Lardner's 'Haircut,' in which a country barber tells a customer about a scandal in his small town, takes up most of the first act; Lithgow livens it with deft tonsorial pantomime and a sense of dawning realization on the part of the garrulous narrator. The centerpiece of Act Two is P.G. Wodehouse's zany 'Uncle Fred Flits By,' a veddy British comic tale of embarrassment and family tension. It is a quaint and slender tale-more jam than scone-but Lithgow's love of sharing it is infectious. Likable though the stories themselves may be, the heart of this show is in their telling.
2008 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2012 | US Tour |
US Tour |
2018 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2018 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | John Lithgow |
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