Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test

The Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test is our personal and highly opinionated Commuter's Guide to New York theater and cultural events, with an emphasis on Broadway and Off-Broadway theatrical productions. The test is simple: is an event worth the always expensive, time consuming, and too often horrendous struggle to commute to New York City from New Jersey, Long Island, Upstate New York or Connecticut? Only truly great or near-great performances and productions may meet this stiff challenge!

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Location: Princeton, New Jersey, United States

James Camner is an antiquarian dealer of autographs, manuscripts and printed music and books of Opera, Classical Music, Theater, Dance, and Film, as well as a published author of more than 10 books on the performing arts including "How to Enjoy Opera" (Simon and Schuster), "The Great Opera Stars in Historic Photographs" (Dover), "Stars of American Musical Theater in Historic Photographs" (Dover - with Stanley Appelbaum); was for over 20 years a reviewer for Fanfare Magazine and has written feature articles and reviews for Opera News.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

La Bete, a play by David Hirson at The Music Box theater, starring Mark Rylance, David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley, directed by Matthew Warchus. Two seasons ago, Mark Rylance and Matthew Warchus revived a failed play, "Boeing, Boeing" and struck gold. Well, here they've done it again, and have found an even richer vein, for "La Bete" which only ran 15 performances the first time around, emerges as a comic masterwork of the highest order. Rylance, whom we've seen in so many plays including Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Henry V, etc, and who has been magnificent in all of them, rises in "La Bete" , or rather sinks, to a level of vulgar hilarity, with an antic yet naturalistic delivery of the verse that keeps the audience in convulsions. By its skillful ease and inhibition, this astonishing performance leaves his audiences grasping for superlatives. His two co-stars, Joanna Lumley and David Hyde Pierce, are superb foils for his manic comedy. Lumley, radiant and regal, is appropriately fierce but at all times very funny. The sets and costumes by Mark Thompson are very striking. .
Why did "La Bete" fail? Looking at the original cast, there was no Mark Rylance to be found for one thing, but perhaps it is its scabrous humor that savages critics among others. Could this be why Frank Rich savaged the play in turn? I wouldn't be surprised, for critics who blithely tear apart the work of a lifetime without even thinking of the consequences are notoriously thin- skinned themselves.
So rich in humor and wisdom disguised in a faux-Moliere-comedy setting,"La Bete," which is entirely in rhyme, is sublime and not to be missed. Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test Grade A+

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