Oslo (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"This rich drama of quixotic politics fills to the bursting point its capacious new home...'Oslo' has now become the colossus it was always meant to be, while giving an even sharper focus to the urgent behind-the-scenes intimacy at its fast-beating heart...A marvel of both expository efficiency and exciting showmanship...'Oslo' features a vast cast of characters...Yet somehow, by the end, this production’s vital ensemble makes you feel you have come to know every single one of them."
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"A testament to the potential value of diplomacy, cooperation, mutual recognition of opponents’ humanity and—contra the now-trending WikiLeaks ethos—backroom secrecy...Distinguished ensemble cast...Nearly three hours long, the play demands attentiveness and works hard to achieve it. In its bittersweet final swell of hopefulness and humanity, it rewards one of our most endangered virtues, in theater as well as in politics: patience."
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"'Oslo' turns the negotiations that led to the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord of 1993 into gripping human drama. To the extent that it does so by making diplomacy not just interesting but moving, it’s a wonder of savvy stagecraft and wily performance. It’s also, quite possibly, a lie...A large cast in which nearly everyone is a knockout...The history books will have to decide whether 'Oslo' is great drama or just—just!—a great evening of theater."
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"Bracing and absorbing...The production seems in constant, almost frantic, motion...Bits of dialogue teeter into speechifying here and there, but you’ll barely notice; the balance of passion, discipline, and suspense is organically, thrillingly theatrical...High stakes and hard choices tend to produce uncomfortable moments, but as this muscular, moving production reminds us, progress isn’t easy—even when it’s incomplete."
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“Unequivocally fascinating...Rogers’clever dialogue really is that witty. You get the facts, but you get them delivered with intelligence and humor by this dream of a cast. It’s the petty stuff—the pseudonyms, the clandestine phone calls, the drinking competitions, and all the other trappings of macho bravado—that makes these intimidating characters so human. And so funny...This is what we call drama, and it’s what we live for.”
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"The play is generally so smartly written...and the direction of Sher so taut that you are drawn in...If 'Oslo' means for us to recognize how important negotiations and close human contact are, I found myself agreeing but noting that they can also seduce and distort and that the arrogance of believing that you can venture out on your own and gamble with the lives of others is something not particularly deserving of praise. Aside from that though, the play fascinates."
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"The extraordinary 'Oslo,' Rogers’ riveting dramatization of a complex political tarantella...It’s even better the second time around...This all sounds talk-talky, and it is—which is what makes Sher’s accomplishment with the text so compelling...Rogers and Sher take the players in this comedy of terrors at face value, refusing to douse it in cynicism or the certainty of hindsight...For an all too brief moment, we can look back to that handshake and recall how thrilling hope can be."
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"Hands down the best new play of the season. Creating riveting drama out of the intransigence of implacable enemies is no modest trick, but darned if playwright J.T. Rogers doesn’t pull it off, and grandly. This story of a three-dimensional geopolitical chess match, told as if each player were a complete human being capable of passion, error, humor and honor, reveals the keen eye and ear of a writer working in veritable mind-melding harmony with a superb director, Bartlett Sher."
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"Smart, touching and spiked with spy-novel tension and wry humor...Everything clicks in director Bartlett Sher’s elegant and evocative production...This show flows in near-cinematic fashion and pulls you in so tight that time recedes. That’s no small feat, since the play runs nearly three hours...It helps to have an impeccable cast...Peacemaking is complex. So is 'Oslo.' Broadway is all the richer for it."
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"The play is long and talky and jam-packed with names, dates and historical exposition, but also well-crafted and nuanced, with interesting characters and even humor every now and then. The subject matter is also increasingly vital at this time of heightened instability throughout the Middle East. Under the direction of Bartlett Sher, it is presented with as much clarity and personality as possible."
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"Rogers's densely packed, fact-based drama gives us a fascinating fly-on-the-wall view of those painstakingly delicate talks...Under Bartlett Sher's taut direction, the wise and witty three-hour drama unfolds like a political thriller. Complex yes, but Sher's superlative production immerses us in the suspenseful twists and turns that yielded the unimaginable: mortal enemies becoming friends...Besides turning a historic event into high-brow entertainment, 'Oslo' is impressively even-handed."
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"Gripping and insightful theater that is bound to make even the most die-hard partisans in the seemingly never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine reevaluate everything they think they know...Director Bartlett Sher brings an austere touch to this production that keeps the show flying along at a cinematic clip...While the negotiation scenes are nail-biting, Rogers, Sher, and the cast create a genuine sense of camaraderie."
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"Extremely touching and realistically funny...Helping to make the play so entertaining and clever, without undercutting the seriousness of the subject, is that the premise of the fact-based piece begins as a somewhat naïve attempt at a social experiment...Despite numerous locales and characters, the three-hour-long, three-act play never sags. The play is abundantly talky, but it's the kind of crisp, clever talk that continually stimulates."
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"If it's not easy to fall for 'Oslo' wholeheartedly, if it won't change your life or perspective on pretty much anything, Rogers is skillful enough to ensure that you have plenty to enjoy along the way...Mays and Ehle give bold, funny performances...Too bad Rogers hasn't solved the problem of, well, not solving the problem; a work that thinks as big as this one does and exhibits so much ambition needs to more emphatically own what it can do and what it can't."
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"The production’s move upstairs...gives the size and scope of the concepts ample room to manifest...Rogers’ smart, pithy writing makes both people and politics consistently relatable...At my core, I feel unsettled about a certain skilled sentimental myth-making lurking in 'Oslo'...Is a Hallmark-infused message of hope, even in intellectual wrapping, actually expansive, or ultimately reductive—no matter how much we enjoy opening the gift of a splendid outing to the theater?"
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“The clarity of this new play by J.T. Rogers does not only rely on the smart yet surefire way it's written, but also on the masterful staging by Bartlett Sher, who, after recent productions of both ‘South Pacific’ and ‘The King and I,’ is no stranger to directing gargantuan shows at Lincoln Center. Given its subject--the Oslo Accord or peace treaty between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) in 1993--’Oslo’ is ultimately an enormous play, but it is told in intimate terms.”
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“J. T. Rogers’ riveting historical drama feels right where it belongs–on a world stage. Risk taking is what this thrilling story is all about…The mesmerizing plot involves 21 characters, multiple locales, and a complex political context–packed into three intense hours of stage time…Now, in the majestic Beaumont, the play has expanded in breadth, scope, and impact–gaining the stature that the story justly deserves.”
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"A deserving and likely candidate for the Best Play Tony award...All the actors in the cast are once again in top form and the production is gripping as ever...A fact-based but highly original drama that's as entertaining and suspenseful as it is informative and thought-provoking. Sure it's talky and long, but as written by Mr. Rogers, staged with dynamic simplicity by Bartlett Sher and with 14 top-drawer actors to bring 21 historic characters to vivid life, the three hours simply fly by."
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"Rogers gives us a frame for the play: Can gradualism succeed where traditional negotiations have demonstrably failed? As in Frayn’s 'Copenhagen,' the pursuit of the big idea, however worthy, can get tiresome, if not relieved by credible characters, witty exchanges, deft direction, and fine performances. 'Oslo' offers all of that...Mays manages to give Terje a credible enthusiasm for the task at hand as well as a humanizing vulnerability."
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"A magnificent new play...The information flies at us rapidly but, as written by the astonishing J. T. Rogers, we follow every detail and every introduction. Meticulously constructed...What an amazing act of tightrope walking we are witness to as directed with the utmost skill and intelligence by Bartlett Sher...I didn’t know peace accords could be so thrilling, so much so that I found myself tearing up at moments when the future of the accord looked dark and foreboding."
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"A fascinating if talky play…The three-hour running time went by relatively swiftly for me. The creative team invests the principal characters with personalities…It helps that the adversaries are played so credibly…'Oslo' gives us not only a lucid refresher course on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and provides us entertainment that is both surprisingly funny and suspenseful. It also leaves us with a sense that maybe even the world’s most unsettling situations can someday be settled."
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“'Oslo,' J.T. Rogers' stimulating envisioning of the secret talks that led to the Oslo Peace Accords…A vigorous, if not particularly subtle, performance…Jefferson Mays and Jennifer Ehle carry their roles with marvelous dignity and aplomb…We not only get some funny jokes that were probably never told but hear countless ‘F-word’ missiles being launched…Enough angry steam is blown off to crumble the walls of Jericho; there's so much SHOUTING it's a wonder anything gets done at all.”
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"Under the sterling direction of Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher, this production sets the bar for 2017...Undeniably thrilling...As much as we know the outcome of these talks before the play begins, Rogers makes us feel like the game onstage could be over any second...The move to the larger Beaumont proves to be both a blessing and a curse...The set is given more room to breathe...However, some of the play’s intimacy disappears in its new home."
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"For close to three hours, we watch as Israel and the PLO struggle to form some kind of truce that will lead to less bloodshed. In the end as the main character offers hope, the audience is left feeling that peace will come when pigs fly...'Oslo' is well directed by Bartlett Sher, who engages the space. 15 actors tell the story of the historic turning point in Arab-Israeli relations…Ehle gives a wonderfully underrated performance while Mays allows us to see the flaws in men’s characters."
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"The most engrossing new drama on Broadway. Director Bartlett Sher and his excellent cast have ramped up the tension, resulting in an altogether riveting evening. Let us add, a riveting three-hour evening which breathlessly speeds by...It is near miraculous that playwright Rogers has turned what might have been dryly dusty history into spellbinding, edge-of-your-seat drama...'Oslo' is quite an achievement, and quite a play, and quite an evening of high-stakes theatricality."
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"Sound dry? Hardly. Rogers packs enough suspense, duplicity, and paranoia to recall the very best work of Alan J. Pakula...Rogers and director Bartlett Sher are good at telling a complicated story, creating suspense, and keeping over 20 characters from merging into one another. But to achieve these not inconsiderable ends, 'Oslo' sometimes stoops to the level of boulevard theater despite its mighty political themes. Too many of the characters are emerge only as broad types."
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"Even if you have little or fleeting interest in the Middle East peace process or diplomatic intrigue, you will find J.T. Rogers’s carefully researched play supremely riveting. Every aspect of it—the writing, the direction by Bartlett Sher, the fine performances—is pretty near immaculate...Sher’s direction is as smooth and clever as Rogers’s writing...'Oslo' is, most surprisingly, a bracing examination of human fortitude and effort against improbable odds."
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"Watching it today, when diplomacy seems frighteningly absent in our current political atmosphere, this behind-the-scenes exploration is especially thrilling...The well-drawn book is skillfully paced by director Bartlett Sher...The play poses thrilling arguments, builds with suspense, yet hums with optimism and is punched up with humor...While talky at three hours, 'Oslo' is a thought-provoking work."
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“Mays is outstanding as Larsen, balancing fear and excitement…Ehle excels as his equal partner…Despite its nearly three-hour length, the play flies by, with Sher keeping things moving at a smooth police-procedural-like pace. Rogers’s script melds the comic and the surreal, the serious and the wacky in translating this most unlikely of scenarios into an utterly gripping yet tenderly intimate tale.”
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"I learned a lot by seeing it, but as a theatre work I found it cumbersome and interesting only as a history lesson...Speeches that would effectively end with passionate outbursts, now begin with them and remain at fever pitch throughout often making them unintelligible...Mr. Mays and Ms. Ehle lead with authority and even charm. They bring to the Norwegian couple maturity and an attractive sense of balance which seems to be currently lacking in almost everyone else on stage."
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"This is docudrama of the first caliber, in which a large cast and even larger issues are expertly condensed into almost three hours of thrilling drama."
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“A sprawling 3 hours, the play is talky but full of history, observation, and entertainment…Tony winners Ehle and Mays are terrific as the Norwegian couple, and in the showiest role—Israeli diplomat Uri Savir—Michael Aronov is sexy, angry and full of sass. Bartlett Sher’s direction is lively…An imposing door looms symbolically, and projections and films are flashed onto the wall, but for once, this sort of thing seems inventive and apt, not purposely scaled down.”
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"J. T. Rogers has masterminded an epic journey of the events that took place and keeps us riveted throughout. Director Bartlett Sher and projectionists 59 Productions take us through this fraught journey of foreign lands and intrigue as if it were an espionage movie. The story line unfolds both mysteriously and vividly...The cast works magnificently as an ensemble...'Oslo' valiantly shows the lengths people are willing to go through for Middle East peace."
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"A bold, crackling, and humorous new play about the back-channel peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis in the early 1990's told with humor, charm, heart, and brutal honesty...At times tense, at others humorous, the play effortlessly glides between the two states often and sometimes unexpectedly...A hit that will inform, entertain, and remind us all just how far we've come and how much work is yet ahead."
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"Powerful and haunting...At its most fraught moments, 'Oslo' can seem like a shouting quartet...But under the vociferation, something meaningful is being built...Rogers has tidily stitched the history that preceded the negotiations into the text; the Middle East tensions that surround them come to life in vivid projections on the back wall of Michael Yeargan's largely bare setting. Sher achieves a gallery of first-rate performances."
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"Who would ever have thought that history presented on stage could be so compelling?...Brilliant...A taut three hours that hold us breathless and leave us both thinking and weeping...The entire cast is uniformly captivating, particularly Aronov as a rock-star flashy Israeli diplomat, and Oreskes and Jenkins as a duo of can’t-believe-we’re-here academics from Haifa...'Oslo' is not educational, it’s enlightening. And it’s crackling damn good theater too.
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"The reviews regarding the efficacy of the Oslo Accords are mixed; the play's coda, though hopeful, admits as much. There is still work to be done. Which is what makes this both so intriguing and cringe-inducing...As far as the production is concerned, I appreciated that Rogers took care to let us get to know these characters, and he's aided by Bartlett Sher's direction...Sher incorporates a lot of movement, serving as momentum to keep the talks (and the play) going."
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“It is long, it is talky, yet it is never boring…Mays is quietly brilliant as the quietly brilliant Rød-Larsen. Ehle plays it cooler still, so those moments when Juul puts her foot down have all the more impact…The negotiators are intelligently portrayed, especially by Azizi, Kashani, and the hilarious Michael Aronov…Sher’s direction is every bit as smooth and invisible as the Norwegian facilitators. Unexpectedly engaging, surprisingly entertaining, and highly recommended."
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"It is an insightful play that is neither as meticulous nor efficient as it could be, but nonetheless does impressive work to underscore the personal at the heart of the political...Has a tendency to drag in the middle...The play's strength is Rogers's ability to create knowable people out of characters who might only stand in for political positions...Sher and Rogers probe with real curiosity and insight the conversations people conduct as a means towards global progress."
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“The pacing is ferocious. J.T. Rogers's script has a lot of ground to cover and fast. Bartlett Sher's direction ensures that this happens…You couldn't ask for a better cast here. They are a formidable force. Each of them carries the weight of the situation their characters are living through, and yet also are able to find the humor in the piece. There is rich a vein of dark comedy running through 'Oslo' that the cast plumbs with great regularity…‘Oslo’ is a triumph, and everyone should see it.”
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"Knowing the satisfactory, even thrilling ending makes all the more interesting the ins and outs and progress and setbacks of the negotiations...'Oslo' is occasionally engaging emotionally, but it’s always interesting as the ideas and interplay, underlined by the life and death importance of a good solution, keep our minds engaged. You have the sense throughout of learning something you really want to know and of being glad the author has made that a stimulating event."
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"The whole cast was fantastic. Most of the actors, except for a handful of the leads, played multiple roles and were wonderfully adept at doing so. The physical production is also terrific...You would think that a play dealing with such fraught politics would be heavy and serious all the time, but 'Oslo' is also surprisingly funny throughout...I'm so impressed by a play that takes a real subject, on which you know the outcome, and still creates suspense and tension. That takes real craft."
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"Under the wizard-like direction of Bartlett Sher, 'Oslo' is a gripping, thrilling, and quite emotional theatrical experience...Whether you know little or a lot about tensions in the Middle East, 'Oslo' provides you with enough historical information for everything to make sense...'Oslo' is a terrific new play about the human spirit. Make time to see it. It will teach you a great deal about history but, also, about great acting and terrific theatre."
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“‘Oslo’ lays bare in exquisite detail and often unexpected humor the gut-wrenching details of the endless negotiating, dining, copious drinking, and eventual camaraderie that predated and thus created the historic signing…Sher's most deft direction takes what could be a confusing morass of facts, figures, and characters and lays them bare at our feet where they entertain and enlighten…‘Oslo’ is a work peppered with humor and constant gobsmacking acting.”
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“‘Oslo’ is polished and authoritative. But does it solve the dilemma posed by the topic itself? Not really…Something’s missing. It could be the writing, which is functional but unspectacular...But that’s not the whole of the deficiency here…Without the Unseen, magic, mystery, call it what you want, the play and its characters lapse into prosaism…‘Oslo’ never convinces us that this kind-of-maybe-not successful negotiation was as rare and powerful as the playwright thinks it is.”
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“Who knew a nearly three-hour history lesson about Middle East politics from the 1990s could be so riveting?...Terrific performances are well-crafted and keep the story together and flowing with heart, genuineness and humor…The story is complicated but under the brilliant direction of Bartlett Sher it flows quickly and informatively like a great political thriller...In the masterful hands of Mr. Sher and team it is tightly presented and never stops grabbing your attention."
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“The play masterfully reveals the process by which representatives from Israel and the PLO were able to see past their differences…J.T. Rogers' script keeps you riveted as to how the characters are going to achieve their goal…Director Bartlett Sher molds this masterwork by building tension and suspense, then turning it into playful banter that explodes into serious discourse and eventual agreement…Seeing 'Oslo' is a must!...The cast is superb. The production is stupendous.”
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"A vivid, thoughtful and astonishingly lucid account of a byzantine chapter in international politics...'Oslo' affectingly elicits the all-too-human factor in the weary machinations of state policy...As embodied by Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays, they are complicated beings...Their understanding and re-creation of the signature styles of allies and enemies make for unexpected moments of personal catharsis and illumination. They also happen to be the stuff of crackling theater."
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“Although the play is nearly three hours long, Bartlett Sher’s seamless cast of 14 keeps it from seeming dry, even when Rogers’s writing - fictionalized but often drawing very closely from published sources - slips into overt exposition...As America and the world hurtle toward greater polarization, the play provides a small measure of hope.”
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"It’s not often I think a three-hour play could profitably be longer, but J. T. Rogers’s gripping, big-boned 'Oslo' needs all the meat and muscle it can pack on its frame...Whether these characters are truly drawn is another matter...What we do know is what has happened in the years since, much of it betraying the joyful climax of the play’s events. That not-so-secret history is what makes Rogers’s play feel excruciatingly necessary and timely more than two decades later."
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“One remarkable aspect of this very fine production, directed with unerringly precise attention to detail by Bartlett Sher, is that while its mechanics as a theatrical presentation are emphasized from the start, they enhance rather than impede our involvement in a fascinating true story. This is a play alive with tension, intrigue, humor, bristling intelligence and emotional peaks that are subdued yet intensely moving, which concludes unexpectedly on a poignant note of hope.”
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“Rogers has a bit of a gift for transforming contentious, complex historical subjects into digestible, but not dumbed-down, entertainment...Though ‘Oslo’ clocks in at about three hours, it’s by no means a slog...But perhaps what’s most impressive about ‘Oslo’ is its evenhandedness - and its optimism. You might wonder with whom Rogers sides, the Israelis or the Palestinians. Frankly, neither. Or both. What’s clear is this: He’s for peace.”
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“J.T. Rogers dramatizes the tense negotiations that led to the Oslo Accord in his long-winded but smart, occasionally humorous and objectively-observed ensemble drama...The performances are excellent...The play may be dense and choppy, but a more narrow and delicate treatment probably could not have captured the scale and intensity of the political process.”
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“While Sher's production and Rogers' language draw us into the world of international diplomacy, it is the performances that hold us rapt…‘Oslo’ is extraordinary in its ability to chart the temperature of the negotiations, but its laser-like focus misses how external political factors influenced the jockeying inside the room...Rogers has crafted an invaluable and incredibly watchable drama about a hugely important event that far too many Americans fail to fully understand.”
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"In Bartlett Sher's cogent, swiftly paced production, a vivid gallery of characters is brought to life by a superb cast...'Oslo' represents a remarkable feat of research distilled into a gripping dramatic format and gifted with a three-dimensional viewpoint that allows every character to have his or her say...It's possible that this new season may offer plays as engrossing as 'Oslo,' but it is unlikely in the extreme that we will get one with such an impressive breadth of vision."
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“Rogers mines every occurrence, no matter how minor, for new forms of tension and release, while never shying away from the underlying accomplishments...Sher has provided a staging that is perhaps drier than ideal...But he does always focus you on the matters at hand, and keeps things thoroughly followable and digestible...Rogers has not overcome the material's inherent catastrophic problem: The Oslo Accords did not lead to peace.”
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“J.T. Rogers effectively walks a tightrope between what was fact and what was fiction in his inspired and tightly drawn drama, ‘Oslo.' With wit, finely honed dialogue, the appropriate dollop of levity, and sufficient timeline accuracy, he portrays crucial events leading up to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.”
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"The kind of brilliant production that will leave you a teensy bit worse off than it found you...All because you will have spent three very extraordinary hours listening to a team of excellent actors spin the tale…Rogers’ text and Sher’s direction guide this extraordinary cast through a verbal and incident-packed obstacle course that, although we observers are removed by time and distance, is not only comprehensible, it is urgent and arresting. We not only understand, we feel."
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"I thoroughly enjoyed this play. 'Oslo' tells the rather amazing backstory of the accords signed in 1993 by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin...'Oslo' is pretty much what it sounds like: a lot of heady conversation and human fireworks. But there is also a good deal of humor. And, of course, history...Rogers has written excellent and timely dialogue...Some of the narration along the way could probably be excised, but it is handled with speed and precision."
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"History brought to life with vivid clarity. Real people imbued with personality and complexity. Staging so fluid it’s breathtaking. Death and change constantly in the air. Three hours flying by in what seems like minutes...I’m talking about 'Oslo,' J.T. Rogers’ dazzling drama...'Oslo' may not change the face of theater in the way 'Hamilton' has, but it’s easily the best play I’ve seen in 2016."
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"Using not only imagined dialogue but incorporating what is already well-known about the accords, Rogers’ drama certainly has a pungent air of verisimilitude...Everything that transpires in 'Oslo' is dramatic, but talky: don’t let anyone argue that strict attention needn’t be paid to every sentence uttered...In a work where performances are meant to be subservient to a broader purposes, the ensemble is flawless. Rogers’ chief achievement is a beautifully balanced play."
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"The first act is intricately structured while the second act is more straightforward. The final act loses some steam...The cast is consistently strong, the simple but attractive set is enhanced by unobtrusive projections, the costumes are excellent and the direction is smooth. Be prepared to concentrate on a complex narrative for three hours. I found the end result more admirable than enjoyable. I kept thinking that it would make a fine miniseries."
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“Gripping, provocative, wrenching, funny and altogether riveting. Head up to Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat...Matters and ideas move so swiftly that the play flies by far quicker than some eighty-minute one-acts we can name...The cast is remarkable on just about all sides; with so much doubling, it’s difficult to play favorites.”
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"Rogers and director Sher are good at telling a complicated story, creating suspense, and keeping over 20 characters from merging into one another...Too many of the characters emerge only as broad types…Rogers captures the mechanics of the negotiations and Sher’s direction keeps them moving at hyper speed. What we aren’t given during the course of this three-hour play is a character study. Who are Juul and Rod-Larsen?...In 'Oslo' they emerge more as devices than characters."
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"In the course of three acts, we’re made to feel like voyeurs, flies on the wall of a volatile narrative...The story illuminates a roster of galvanizing players...Every man is objectively depicted, his work and private selves played with specificity...Ensemble work is superb...Director Barlett Sher creates memorable stage images – allowing all three sections of audience sightline, enhances character with physicality, and paces the mercurial stop/start piece masterfully."
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“An ambitious three-hour, fact-based fiction that director Bartlett Sher and his creative team have lovingly, painstakingly staged...The political making of sausage is legendarily not a pretty sight. It is also pretty talky. Still, Rogers, Sher and their generous, marvelous cast do much to lighten the agonizing back-and-forth...The meticulous work behind the short-lived accord leaves us even more hopeless about the world but a bit more upbeat about the storytelling possibilities of the theater.”
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"All the characters in 'Oslo,' even supporting figures, are given distinctive qualities. That helps make the well-acted play, which runs an overlong three hours, surprisingly lively and involving, even with the dramatic problems that confronted Rogers and director Bartlett Sher…In showcasing the characters, Rogers injects crowd-pleasing humor and sentimentality, but in reasonable doses. The vital importance of the secret talks, coming after many decades of conflict, is dominant."
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"J.T. Rogers’ engaging new play...For more than two and a half hours, the rival delegations go at each other hammer and tongs while gradually moving towards a deal...The play itself succeeds in drawing us into the minutiae of now dimly remembered diplomatic brawling. It’s a dramatically conventional and occasionally heavy-handed work lacking intellectual zing. But the many frustrations and occasional triumphs of the year-long negotiations are scrupulously conveyed."
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“Playwright J.T. Rogers grasps the cynicism that crept back over the Middle East in the wake of multinational efforts to tamp down the decades-long conflict, and has crafted a play arguing that the storied agreement set events on a better course, even if it didn’t generate the desired outcome...I never felt as if ‘Oslo’ had a pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian political stance; that fact alone lends the story heft.”
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“'Oslo' manages a seemingly impossible feat: It transforms three hours of talk about the Oslo Accords into gripping and urgent entertainment...Never once does any of this feel confusing or bloated. Instead Rogers shows us how historical change is, in effect, the accumulation of tiny details...This is how the sausage gets made, and ‘Oslo’ makes that process thrilling to witness. Funny, too. Rogers has great fun with the absurdities of the scenario.”
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“Far more than simply political discourse, with preaching kept to a minimum, the play shows itself to be a human drama leavened with humor. And the characters come across as fully formed…The play is tightly directed by Bartlett Sher, who wisely allows the story to take center stage. Running almost three hours, each of Rogers’s scenes and situations feels essential.”
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"'Oslo' is, at heart, a friendship saga, detailing the slow, unpredictable ways in which sworn enemies can warm to each other...In each of Rogers's three acts, the tension slowly mounts...Theatrically, 'Oslo' falls somewhat flat. Anxious to clarify the diplomatic intricacies, Rogers supplements his dialogue with repetitive direct-address narration...Still, 'Oslo' contains a form of thoughtful hope."
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“A riveting political thriller with a personal approach...Such is the skill of the production that we feel caught up in real negotiations of the so-called Oslo Accord, although the top-notch ensemble is deftly portraying both real people and invented characters...The talents of cast and crew in ‘Oslo’ make a complex historical event feel understandable, intimate and profoundly affecting.”
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"Overall, the show was riveting; it was wonderfully impossible to relax from curtain to close...Director Bartlett Sher is to thank for the multitude of seamless transitions. To have multiple powerful people in a room at one time is extremely difficult...Sher and Rogers have achieved the high plateau of theatrical collaboration...'Oslo' is a must-see, a truly important and beautifully poignant political drama that stirs a deep inner justice our country can feel in its roots right now."
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