China Doll NYC Reviews and Tickets

"There is drama tucked away inside the script of 'China Doll,' but both playwright and director have applied the brakes, slowing the action to a crawl, and their low-energy star is unable to act as a galvanizing agent. Some of Mamet's plays are thrilling and some are irritating, even infuriating. I would never describe one as sleepy. Until now."
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"All the proper elements appear to be on hand, but the few tiny misalignments are just killers. With the proper additional time, the pieces could come together into what there's every reason to believe the play can be: a gripping, incisive look at what happens when a free-wheeling rich man is transformed into an animal locked in a cage of his own making. But that's unlikely to happen as long as Pacino, and not the magnificent monster he's portraying, is the one who seems lost and trapped."
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"If 'China Doll' only consisted of its relatively lively 40-minute second act that could have sufficed as minor starry entertainment. Unfortunately, it's painfully preceded by a leaden first act of a nearly interminable hour. Together this makes for a negligible play and a sad display of the latest efforts of two great theatrical talents."
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"All the charisma, verbal and physical quirks Pacino brings to Mickey Ross can't save this horse from being lame-footed…All this one-sided talk doesn't exactly have on the edge of your seat, despite having a usually smart director like Pam MacKinnon at the helm...But while this has none of the snap, crackle, pop of Mamet gems like 'Glen Garry Glen Ross' or 'Speed-the-Plow'... Mr. Mamet is still enough of a pro to treat us to a few Mametian zingers."
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"An audience can care about ANYTHING when there is passion behind the story. Needlework, cleaning horse stalls, and even watching paint dry. Just light the match of passion and we are hooked. Which is why we are so disconnected from the goings on in this production. First of all, David Mamet’s script is nearly lifeless...At the center of this tale is a temper tantrum on very, very slow burn. "
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"The play’s excessive use of one-sided phone conversations renders inert a play which otherwise might have had promise...Pacino settled in nicely and ripped through Mamet’s crackling dialogue...There’s still some fleeting magic in Mamet’s pen — including a few firecracker lines that really land…Perhaps the most deliciously terrible ending ever seen on Broadway, not necessarily dramatically implausible but written and directed with giggle-inducing ineptitude."
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“'China Doll' struggles mightily to make sense of byzantine, virtually incomprehensible two-hour monologue; Pam MacKinnon struggles to have Pacino speak like a fast-talking Mamet character, rather than slipping into his idiosyncratic verbal rhythms, and the audience struggles to pay attention --or even stay awake...To Mamet’s credit, there’s a germ of an interesting play here."
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"What’s most unclear is why Mamet wants to keep so much unclear...But as the play progresses, there is, if not complete clarity, a growing force and focus…Mamet gives Pacino the gift of snappy dialogue…In return, Pacino gives Mickey a specificity of intonation and of gesture that somehow compensates for the vagueness of the script. That specificity, of course, is Pacino’s, his familiar repertoire, semaphores of his stardom – the Pacino shout; the Pacino point."
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