Late to the discussion, but saw the play last week and it was fabulous. So much so that I am going again next week, and again next month.
Blair was outstanding and not just because he is handsome.
4
This is the best production the Roundabout has produced in years, in my opinion. Thrilling theatre. See it.
2
Are you kidding? I just saw this play tonight and I'm reeling. It was a beautiful production, and the scene transitions--the choreography and music--worked beautifully. All the acting was stellar, including Grier. NYT needs a bigger stable of critics.
5
Spot on review for Grier, harsh assessment for Underwood. Totally wrong in regards to both the music and movement as both elements were brilliant and additive to the story telling. On balance this is a well spent afternoon or evening of theatre.
4
Loved the production and all the performances, especially Grier and Underwood. The audience was whooping and hollering at the curtain call. Standing ovations have become so routine I sometimes stay seated but this time I was on my feet, cheering. Congrats and thank to all on a gripping evening.
8
I saw ' A Soldiers Play' at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 1982-83.
What a powerful insight into the dilemma of our black African American ' twoness' poised by W.E.B. DuBois. Black and American fighting in an American military uniform during Jim Crow for others to have rights that you didn't share with your fellow white European Americans.
My father and several uncles served in Europe and the Pacific during the war. And he and they returned angry and embittered by their continuing exposure to discrimination and terrorism.
I saw the movie too. A masterpiece tour de force in the wake of the black exploitation era.
This snarky intemperate review comes from a space and place that is outside of my black lived life.
9
Hmmm - Do some of these recent review comment sections the past few days feel like just-in-case-it-doesn't-work practice runs for commenting on Encores! :)
Tune of “Tap Your Troubles Away” (from Mack and Mabel)
Type - our troubles away.
Don’t like their review?
Destroy their vocation.
Type - our troubles away
Do what we must do.
Ruin their reputation.
If they don’t cheer, we must make them quiver.
Pound their credentials into chopped liver.
I guess - our rewrite’s a mess
So they can’t say “Yes!
Book Broadway today!”
Get your mob out to sneer
At their choice of career.
Start a smear job
And type -
Type your troubles away!.
2
Mnuchin is making it way too easy for people to do their tax returns without a CPA, and I;m stuck at the computer in case work comes in - so I did what anybody would do with the time, I put the above on YouTube
Encores parody -"Jack and MABEL"
(Encores marketing raves: "The Times critic will love it - or else!")
Parody preview - Type Our Troubles Away!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VpQwnvK7G4
2
The review describes Blair Underwood’s performance as “unexceptionable” which means “not open to objection.”
I would trust that the critic meant to say that Underwood’s performance was “unexceptional” - Which makes more sense! Although I have not yet seen the production, I appreciated the thoughtful review.
Although the criticisms were somewhat stinging, this play deserves to be seen.
1
@Mary Alice Ketchum
Giving Mr. Green credit for a full vocabulary, I inferred that he meant the flash of skin WAS objectionable (exceptionable) and the only aspect of the actor's otherwise good performance to which one might object. That's hardly a rave, but more complimentary than "unexceptional."
3
@Mary Alice Ketchum
"Unexceptionable" is damning with faint praise - implying that there's nothing outstanding about it...The reference is nasty - surely the director has responsibility for that flash of skin?
2
See the play if you can -- but seeing the film is a must!
If only for the brilliant performance of the late Adolph Caesar and an outstanding supporting cast that includes a young Denzel Washington.
7
Wow. Well, I guess those who like the review and agree with it don't bother to comment, but please add me to the many that have seen this play and thought it amazing. I saw it in previews last week and considered it nearly flawless. I saw 7 shows last week, including Porgy and Bess at the Met, Slave Play, Hadestown and Jagged Little Pill. As I've said to everyone who asked, "the best play I saw, hands down, was "A Soldier's Play." I was moved to tears throughout the last 20 minutes of the show and wish I had the time and money to see it again before it closes. The actors were all wonderful, I loved the music and marching cadences, and I thought Leon's vision was spot on.
Go See This Play! Do not be persuaded by this review.
13
@mbhebert - regarding "Well, I guess those who like the review and agree with it don't bother to comment"
With prices the way they are now, and previews pretty much never offering decent seats at a discount, it feels like not that many people take a chance on a show unless something about the advance word tells us we're going to like it. I think the only shows in 2019 that I was so excited to see that I didn't wait for reviews were "Superhero" and "Tootsie," because everything about the word (from the O'Neill and from Chicago, respectively) told me no way do I want to miss seeing this from good seats.
Also, as much as I love commenting, if I've read a review or story in the print edition first, with so much to do and read, it just happens that I don't find myself even clicking online, and I winder of that's how others are. (But if I read it online first, like the night before, I also look at the print version because the print shows the placement of the article in the paper in terms of what the editors felt were relatively important stories. Stories that look like full-scale articles online may just be in "Arts, Briefly" online for example.)
2
@mbhebert I think you mean "dissuaded"
1
A Soldier's Play is a gripping drama and this production is riveting from start to finish. The entire cast is outstanding and performs at a superior level. A great theater experience like this does not come along very often. I cannot recommend this show strongly enough.
10
This review missed the boat. I can’t even respond to specifics because I disagreed with every point discussed. This was an evening of theater that reminded me of why I go to the theater. Spent 20 plus years in the military and was proud to see and witness this fantastic treatment of a difficult topic.
10
I'm always confused by this reviewer. He always writes like he is trying to prove something. I wish it was to prove he's a good theatre critic.
10
I feel sorry for anyone reviewing this play who did not see Howard Rollins in a ferocious, career-making performance in the role Underwood now assays when the play was produced off-Broadway in 1981. I was lucky enough to be there as my father, Chaim F. Shatan, MD, a psychiatrist who helped develop the PTSD diagnosis, had consulted with Fuller on some of the details of the play. To this day one of the most memorable experiences I've had in the theater.
7
@Jeremy Shatan
Howard Rollins was in the movie. Charles Brown, also a playwright,was Davenport in the original production. Adolph Caesar, who played Waters, was in both play and film.
3
@david
I saw both and was blown away by both but there is nothing like live theater and at the time it was groundbreaking and jawdropping.
Amazing how I felt the reviewer missed the mark from the perspective of the lens he was reviewing. I don't know the reviewer nor have I seen the play, but from Greer to Underwood to Leon, these are names synonymous with stellar work in the past. I would be dubious to trust the reviewer unable hide the scent of his partiality enough to even appear that he was trying to review with "fresh eyes."
5
I completely disagree with this review, as did the audience the day I saw it. The audience was rapturous. The performances were very strong, and the plot, which at times was a bit predictable, was compelling. When we left, my theater-going friend and I both agreed that we hoped Brantley would review the play and not Jesse Green. So should Blair Underwood have gained 20 pounds or applied a prosthetic nose so he did not have “pandering sex appeal?” This is ridiculous and Underwood was terrific.
17
"So should Blair Underwood have gained 20 pounds or applied a prosthetic nose so he did not have “pandering sex appeal?”
Thanks for suggesting that. It would sure make me feel better.
And if you can get Hugh Jackman to have a bad haircut or maybe even have a cold for the Nov. 17th performance, or just anything - except sweating, somehow that just made him more perfect when he was preparing that fish in "The River." Or maybe even just not take his shirt off, though that would be logical for "Shipoopi." This was my tribute to what we paid for that. "I Raid My Keogh" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7UReYZx2wI
Actually, whatever they were able to do to Jake Gyllenhaal in "Sea Wall-A Life" could work - He actually seemed like a regular person, like we were watching the character and forgot we were watching a star. Of course, the mob at the stage door reminded us he was Jake Gyllenhaal, but how did he disappear?
1
This review is a prime example of the need for more people of color in the field of criticism as both writers and editors. The very fact of Blair Underwood's utterly commanding performance of a black lead in a Broadway debut of a Pulitzer Prize winning drama some 40 years after its inception makes it, by definition, the opposite of "unexceptional." But that aside, suggesting the music was "erratic" or the dancing "florid" misses the powerful cultural references to prison work songs and step shows that were clearly not lost on audiences both nights I attended. This is a riveting and polished production with an ensemble that's not to be missed. I had the fascinating experience of seeing Mockingbird the night after seeing this, and the stark racial divide in our treatment of race was unmistakable. Soldier is full of emotional urgency around race, while Mockingbird unintentionally reminds us how most of America - including some critics - are too distant to feel it.
14
Add another reader who disagrees with this review. I saw the performance in late previews (and had seen the film twice), and found this performance at least as good as the film, if not better (theater vs. cinema).
As for the comment about Grier's performance ("Grier is unable to achieve that grandeur here. Though he appeared in smaller roles in the original production and in the movie, and clearly understands the character, he is naturally too likable . . ."), would the reviewer have preferred a one-dimensional performance from Grier? What makes the character more human and more believable is that he is human; both good traits and bad traits. No real person is completely evil or completely good--that would have made him a comic book character. Grier's performance is all the more frightening because it is so human.
18
Grier vividly conveys the character's pain, even from his first appearance which encapsulates the whole experience of the play. I found this a stirring event which does make the case for the continued relevance of the play. I found nothing "distracted" about the production.
8
This review reminds me why I stopped reading reviews in the Times until after I've seen the show. This basically gives the entire plot away.
It's a fabulous production, by the way. Go see it.
11
@Frank - I've liked that the modern style has been to give enough information that if the reviewer didn't care for the show, they still give enough information for us to figure out if we'd like aspects they didn't like.
But anyway, this play seems unique - If anyone had asked me a week or so ago, I'd have thought that given the awards and Oscar nominations for the film, and how highly regarded both the play and film are, that this was a plot that was as well-known as plays like "Harvey" or "The Crucible" and "Virginia Woolf," and really dissecting plot element were not spoilers whatever the style. It's so interesting to read in chat places that for lots of people seeing the play, it was their first time with it, not even the movie.
But then, perspective can be surprising. I'm continually surprised by how many regular theatergoers in the early 1990s say they had never even heard of "Das Barbecu," which is now back in NYC as a very minor classic of sorts. (i'd loved the material so much and therefore invested in it, and over the years, never imagining ti could be a quick flop. Now, seeing it getting its due regard all over the world, I think what a shame it hadn't run long enough so we investors could have shared in the fun of its life after the Minetta Lane.)
1
I saw the show in previews. Thought it was terrific. Excellent performances all around. I can't disagree more with this review.
13
I saw it during previews about two weeks ago. Totally disagree with this review. This play still works and the performances were outstanding. Grier, has an inherent congenial physiognomy, which added to the complexity of the character's malevolence...the only part I do agree with is that Underwood's brief display of his physique is indeed gratuitous, but don't think the audience minded.
13
@billy pullen - "that Underwood's brief display of his physique is indeed gratuitous, but don't think the audience minded." LOL! It's about character, that he can be 55 and it speaks volumes that he can still play 35 to 105.
In the 1980s, he played a minority lawyer whose minority was not going to hold him back, I was a minority lawyer trying not to allow being in a minority (or two) hold me back - he seemed liken the guy on "L.A. Law" that stood for starting lawyers of our generation. And as Gloria Steinem almost said, that was what being a professional in our 20s looked like. (A gym membership had started to become a given, even often replacing what two-martini lunch hours once had been.)
But as surely will also be staring many 50-somethings down when "Music Man" puts its street-long ad up, he and Hugh Jackman are now what we're reminded 50s can look like - but for most of us, our DNA did not get that memo!
(I'm betting the cast of "Take Me Out" is already stepping up their workout schedules as we speak!)
1
I haven't seen this production yet, but I saw the original 1981 production-- along with the 2005 revival at the Second Stage.
This is a solidly crafted play with an interesting gallery of characters. Today's audience might be surprised to learn that in the original 1981 production--which played at the Theatre Four on West 55th Street (where "The Boys in the Band" originally played in 1968)-- the original cast contained two unknown actors by the names of Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
5
@Robert - Samuel L. Jackson had been on the security guard staff at Manhattan Plaza back in the day.
There was an interesting overheard moment during the curtain call at the particular performance when I saw the play on 55th Street, when the Caucasian actors took their bows, I heard another audience member a row or two back saying very enthusiastically, about the actors, "They were good, too." (There was a similar feel when I first saw "Raisin in the Sun" and the actor playing the John Fiedler role took his bow.)
3
I saw this early in previews and as with most shows, it needed a bit of tightening up. Even so, I was riveted. I thought the cast was stellar across the board and Grier knocked it out of the park. He was excellent. Not sure what you didn't get in his performance. Maybe seeing his performance, and the whole show, from a black perspective may have changed your thoughts. No disrespect but I often wish that with a show like this, we could have a person of color review it. There is a lot that black people understood and I am sure a lot that non-black people learned. I could tell by the conversations everyone was having afterwards and at the ranking board in the lobby. I found it very refreshing that people were actually discussing it upon leaving and not walking out with their heads in their phones. Just my opinion
22
@GR For what it is worth, I'm a sixty year old white woman and agree that it was riveting. I cried throughout the last twenty minutes or so. Maybe a black reviewer would have a different take, but I want you to know that it does not take an African American to see the beauty in this story or this performance.
2
I don't agree. I hadn't seen the play before, nor the film. I found it riveting. Excellent ensemble acting.
12