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+