The Big Knife
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Cititour.com Review
Bobby Cannavale has charisma to spare, which proves to be a good thing since he’s on stage practically every minute of Doug Hughes’ lavish yet leaden revival of Clifford Odets’ melodrama The Big Knife, now on view at the Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre. Still, it would have helped had this superb actor been able to burrow as deeply into the skin of conflicted Hollywood megastar Charlie Castle as he has in his superior stage performances in Glengarry Glen Ross and The Motherf**ker with the Hat. There are moments when Cannavale seems to have unlocked the door to all of the contradictions of this ultimately unlikeable yet oddly sympathetic character. And sometimes, he simply seems to be acting.
But not even Olivier back from the dead would totally make this bloated, talk-heavy claptrap really worth watching. As in his superior play Golden Boy, Odets is once again obsessed with how fame corrupts the artist as Charlie, a former theater actor who is now one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, debates leaving Tinseltown for good. But for much of the show’s two-and-half hours you wish everyone, especially Charlie’s wife Marion (a miscast Marin Ireland, who nonetheless looks great in Catherine Zuber’s gorgeous period costumes) would stop yabbering about it.
In fact, with all the ersatz slang and philosophizing that was Odets’ stock-in-trade, you don’t know (or really care) what the hell most of the characters – including studio lackey Smiley Coy (the invaluable Reg Rogers), noble writer Hank Teagle (a fine C.J. Wilson) or sentimental agent Ned Danzinger (the excellent Chip Zien) -- are actually blabbing about half the time.
Moreover, even if Charlie was totally willing to give up all the money, his lavish home (one of John Lee Beatty’s most exquisite sets), and the dalliances with every woman he meets, Odets stacks the deck. The studio, led by the dictatorial Marcus Hoff (Richard Kind, in the production’s most galvanizing performance), has one ace up its sleeve in getting Charlie to sign his new, Faustian contract: They’ve helped cover-up the Christmas eve driving accident in which Charlie killed a young boy, and for which his friend and publicist Buddy (Joey Slotnick) has taken the rap. As if that wasn’t complication enough, the studio seems willing to go to unseemly lengths to permanently shut the trap of aspiring starlet Dixie Evans (Rachel Brosnahan), who was with Charlie that fateful night.
If you know Odets (or seen enough plays of this sort), you probably know how it all ends. And when it does, you wish it had just taken a lot less time to get there.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows-Events/Big-Knife.aspx
Cast
Rachel Brosnahan, Bobby Cannavale, Marin Ireland, Billy Eugene Jones, Richard Kind, Ana Reeder, Reg Rogers, Joey Slotnick, Brenda Wehle, C.J. Wilson, Chip Zien
Open/Close Dates
Opening 3/22/2013
Closing 6/2/2013
Box Office
212-719-1300
Theatre Info
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
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