I reviewed two plays in today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, one on Broadway (Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming) and one off (George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, performed by the Irish Repertory Theatre). Here’s a preview.
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“What the hell was that all about?” said the friend who went with me to “The Homecoming” as we left the theater. The last scene of Harold Pinter’s best-known play hasn’t lost its power to reduce audiences to head-scratching confusion 40 years after it was first seen on Broadway. But even if you’re not sure what all of “The Homecoming” is all about, you’ll still get the message of the viciously comic revival now playing on Broadway–and you’ll revel in the work of six actors who definitely know what’s what….
Daniel Sullivan is one of New York’s most uneven directors, but when he’s hot, he’s hot, and his staging of “The Homecoming” cuts like a hacksaw. Ian McShane, Eve Best (who is a very great actress in the making) and Raúl Esparza have the showiest parts and make the strongest impressions, though no apologies need be made for their colleagues, or for Eugene Lee’s seedy set, which looks as though someone had worked it over with a wrecking ball….
Like so many of Shaw’s plays, “The Devil’s Disciple” is a sneaky piece of theatrical prestidigitation in which the shell of an old-fashioned Victorian melodrama is stuffed with decidedly un-Victorian notions about morality (“He has been too well brought up by a pious mother to have any sense or manhood left in him”). Director Tony Walton, who also designed the production, takes care to keep the pace brisk–not even the preacher is preachy–and the cast responds to his lightness of touch with acting to match. John Windsor-Cunningham comes close to stealing the show as the urbane General Burgoyne, but Lorenzo Pisoni and Curzon Dobell steal it right back from him, and Cristin Milioti catches the eye and ear in the supporting role of Essie, the bastard waif who loves Dick in her own desperate way….
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To read the whole thing, go here.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
