Fish in the Dark NYC Reviews and Tickets

"The fish that figures in ads for the new play and can be seen on the drop curtain at the Cort Theater is pretty great, a charming and maddening creature destined to capture your heart. O.K., if you insist: It is pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty great. The show for which this fish stands? Not so much...I have been known to dissolve into incontinent giggles while watching episodes of “Curb” or of “Seinfeld.” During “Fish,” I laughed fully exactly once."
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"Anna D. Shapiro stages the hybrid sitcom-farce for maximum shine, and the mix of seasoned actors with David’s breezy script (about three TV episodes’ worth of plot windup) results in a night of huge, rolling laughs."
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"It’s well built, occasionally thoughtful, and consistently very funny if not transcendently so. In short: You’ll laugh, you’ll cry — well, you’ll cry when the Visa bill comes...For a playwriting debut, if not a Broadway acting debut, Fish in the Dark is amazingly confident and delivers what it promises. But it’s got neither cerebral gloss nor solid emotional underpinnings. It’s going for something else, and almost gets there. Which is a complement, truly. We criticize because we care."
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"The director, Anna D. Shapiro, moves bodies around the stage with little visible evidence that she’s concerned about their inner lives, and rarely steps outside the Broadway machinery to reënvision the dreck she’s stuck with. And still I can’t help wondering how she was able to reconcile herself to this script, with its cynical manipulation of sentimentality and humor."
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" A thimbleweight comedy about two bickering brothers brought together by the death of their father, it consists of several thousand jokes, most of which involve somebody saying something inappropriate. Imagine a Neil Simon play without a plot—or three bottom-drawer episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” hastily knocked together into a two-hour script—and you’ll get the idea."
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"Very funny. Occasionally very, very funny. Four-stars funny. If that’s all you need to know about Larry David’s Fish In The Dark, his debut as a Broadway twofer—playwright and actor—then read no more...A half-hour seems just the right amount of time you want to spend with these folks on any given evening. Of course, this is the age of binge-watching, so two hours of shtick can be satisfying. Or give you heartburn."
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"Chronically amusing, if creakily old-school...David wrote and stars in the funny full-length sketch that aims for, but just misses, the lofty territory of great 1960s Broadway comedies. He has a huge following from “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — and when you add in everyone’s deep craving for light entertainment, the show is a bona fide must-see...You don’t need to be a fan of David’s hit TV series to appreciate zingers."
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"The people have spoken. This outlandish comedy penned by Larry David opened with a stratospheric advance of $13.5 million. Which renders moot whatever the critics might have to say about the show...Instead of sticking to a conventionally constructed plot, this “Fish” swims from one comic situation to another — which may not make it much of a play. But there are plenty of laughs in the play’s minor comic questions."
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