Meteor Shower NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (291)
See it if You enjoy talented comedians.
Don't see it if You don't like thinking about the big ideas while watching a comedy.
See it if You want a good laugh
Don't see it if You need a linear plot
See it if you like to laugh; I haven't laughed so hard for this long in years
Don't see it if a theater full of people laughing their heads off for 90 minutes isn't your kind of thing--or if you write for the Times Read more
See it if You want to see a excellent ensemble cast. Benanti & Shamos are FABULOUS. Great timing. Didn't know anything about it & I enjoyed the ride.
Don't see it if You are looking for a realistic traditional comedy. It's an absurdist comedy. Although it's got a lot of laughs, it's bumpy - intentionally. Read more
See it if Crazy , somewhat silly comedy performed by very talented comic actors, esp. Amy Schumer
Don't see it if You want a serious drama or even a serious comedy!
See it if You enjoy terrific acting and a story that is clever and different.
Don't see it if You like a straightforward plot and story.
See it if You want some good laughs.
Don't see it if You do not like Steve Martin humor.
See it if Humor very much in the style of Steve Martin's film LA STORY, constructed with all the playwrighting and comedic recall for maximum impact
Don't see it if Groundhog Day repetition will confuse some and ultimately renders it less a play than multiple drafts of a play with audience as laugh track
Critic Reviews (47)
“An attenuated, forgettable vignette...A draggy, shaggy eighty minutes in which four excellent actors try to wring laughs from a space rock...The story is just an excuse for Martin the author to noodle about...To call this theater of the absurd would be an insult to the genre...If the characters or situations were truly inspired or demented, you could overlook the lack of depth or narrative logic and simply enjoy the anarchy.”
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"As substantial as a soap bubble. At 75 minutes, it feels skimpy for a high-priced Broadway attraction, but that one hour and 15 minutes is packed with hilarity...'Meteor' takes a slight idea and stretches it as far as possible without snapping it. Jerry Zaks’ zippy direction mines extra yuks from Martin’s brief but gut-busting script...Don’t waste any brain cells trying to search for hidden meaning, messages on marriage, or satire on the Theater of the Absurd, just sit back and guffaw."
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"Thanks to razor-sharp direction from Zaks, and the comedic mastery of its four stars, the leap is worth a ton of laughs. But the play’s crash landing is more head-scratching than illuminating...Martin delivers a new comedy that’s comfortably old-fashioned. Even his pat twist on the form feels distinctly nostalgic...Whether Martin successfully achieves anything new-fangled here hardly seems the point. When a cast like this assembles on stage, the jokes write themselves."
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“An experimental comedy that sometimes feels like an extended sketch show in which the same scenes are replayed again and again with different outcomes...The result is an occasionally brittle but seldom biting comedy, a not exactly subtle piece of writing about domestic relationships and the games people play with each other, given a cosmic edge by a spectacular meteor shower...The show feels paper-thin, but director Zaks keeps things bright and fast.”
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“The structure of the play, confusingly and unnecessarily, shifts between unspecified time zones and perspectives...The play's problem is that every character is not that likable...The deeper potential emotional beats of the play are diluted because everything is a jape...'Meteor Shower' quickly becomes a breezy charade, or game of laugh chess...If you love absurdity and farce as ends in themselves, then ‘Meteor Shower’ will merrily entertain you.”
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“One of the funniest disappointing plays I’ve ever seen. The eighty-minute trifle is like an insane, extremely sexual Carol Burnett sketch told multiple times from different points of view, growing more and more absurdist and ridiculous with each iteration. Yet even as the setups get more and more annoying and unbelievable, I couldn’t stop laughing...Feels only half-brewed...The story goes all over the place...Ends up being all punch line, no setup, fizzling out as a Broadway production.”
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“With a bit more slapstick and plot, ‘Meteor Shower’ could have been a half-decent farcical romp. Instead, Martin and director Zaks display Pinterish pretensions as repeated variations on the same two scenes are performed with increasingly strenuous doses of camp...Somehow the show, which is only 75 minutes long, staggers on until Norm and Corky are left clasping each other like two characters who’ve given up looking for an author...One good sketch does not a play make.”
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“A charming example of the eighty-minute soufflés now offered up as ‘full length plays’...Martin’s method is to avoid any semblance of the linear in structuring his play, and there are breaks in the timeline which expose various ways in which some key scenes are played out...I enjoyed much of ‘Meteor’; but it’s a clever trifle and easily dismissible...A shrunken version of ‘Virginia Woolf’...More an extended sketch than a full-length play...I’d call ‘Meteor Shower’ an appealing almost.”
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