To Be or Not to Be

Tickets from $56  Buy Tickets

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Photo: Joan Marcus

Cititour.com Review
What a clever idea. Let’s stage a play based upon a motion picture comedy about a Polish theatre company tricking the Nazis. The original 1942 Ernst Lubitsch film, “To Be or Not to Be,” with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny is a very funny spoof on the third reich. The 1983 remake helmed by Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft also provides laughs. But the Manhattan Theatre Club’s effort proves that the third time is not necessarily the charm, and charm isn’t the only element that Nick Whitby’s stage adaptation is missing.

After the Nazis invade Poland, members of a theatre company, thrown out of their apartments and living in their dressing rooms, decide to take advantage of an opportunity to impersonate a spy, thereby thwarting a plan to expose the names resistance fighters to the Gestapo.

Casey Nicholaw’s (“The Drowsy Chaperone”) sluggish direction fails to reveal the Marx Brothers-like quality that such a farce needs to succeed. That’s not to say that the show doesn’t provide laughs, but it sputters with moments of frivolity, rather than chugging along like the comedic speeding train it needs to be in order to balance those rare moments when realism pokes in its ugly head.

The cast is in fine form including Jan Maxwell as the leading femme fatale, whose liaison with a pilot is the reason the troupe gets involved with all of the intrigue. David Rasche as her jealous, but devoted, husband is aptly narcissistic, and Michael McCarty as the German officer brings to mind a lot less Colonel Klink and a lot more of Sergeant Schultz.

Anna Louizos’ set looks as if it was refurbished from a couple of summer stock shows, which only adds to the humor. But even a funny set can’t set right the missing pieces in this production. Historical film footage introduces sequences, and these scenes are all too brief, making the stage show suffer for the artificial cinematic feel that both elements provide. “To Be or Not to Be” is better off viewed in a movie revival house.
By Lesley Alexander


Visit the Site
http://manhattantheatreclub.com/tbontb.asp

Cast
Peter Benson, Robert Dorfman, Steve Kazee, Jan Maxwell, Michael McCarty, Brian Murray, Kristine Nielsen, Brandon Perler, David Rasche, Rocco Sisto, Jimmy Smagula, Marina Squerciati

Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/11/2008
Closing 11/16/2008

Box Office
(212) 239-6200

Theatre Info
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Map



Comments

^Top