The Ferryman (NYC) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"A generosity of substance and spirit rarely seen on the stage anymore...Directed with sweeping passion and meticulous care by Sam Mendes...This is theater as charged and cluttered and expansive as life itself. And the three and a quarter hours and 21 parts required to tell its story barely seem long enough to contain all it has to give us...By the end of this magnificent drama, Butterworth has connected the contradictions with a skill that takes the breath away."
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"The whole thrilling production seems alive, as few Broadway shows do, with the clutter and scope of reality...'The Ferryman' never drags, in part because Butterworth continually shifts and expands the play’s focus...At once a romance, a thriller and a multigenrational family drama, 'The Ferryman' is also more than those things...A seismic experience at the theater...You sense the rumbles and you feel the shaking as you wait for this magnificent and harrowing play to crack open."
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"A fascinating mixture of prodigious craftsmanship and brazen cultural and dramatic cliché...Butterworth’s writerly skill is almost enough to dazzle us into submission...I could feel myself responding chemically, even as my brain remained aware of a litany of cultural stereotypes...Mendes is at his best in the moment-to-moment work with these instinctive, powerful performers...It’s a head-trippy presentation of rich, authentic-seeming texture inside a romanticized, larger-than-life box."
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"Because of its length—more than three hours—the play feels epic, but the actual plot is fairly simple. Most of the time is spent in the presence of the family as they go about their business, until, suddenly, the business becomes impossible to do. Part of the art here is in how the everyday turns sinister...Death and politics are always coming for you, Butterworth’s play seems to say."
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"A crackling thriller woven into the vibrant canvas of a character-driven portrait of big-family...A work almost bursting with joy and celebration, with dance and song exploding out of fierce cultural identity, and with rambunctious humor and eccentricity...Mendes and Butterworth inject a chill into seemingly lighthearted moments, steadily ratcheting up the suspense until a closing scene that leaves you shocked and breathless...This is rich, full-throated theater not to be missed."
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"'The Ferryman' grips you, that much is true...You find yourself quickly swept up in the action of a clan of endlessly busy farmers and daughters, of characters drawn remarkably quickly and confidently...It’s a play of physical and emotional tension, a testament to Mendes’ ability to unearth the anxiety in a dance party and Butterworth’s talent for history...This is a kitchen drama that only double-faces into a thriller, and it’s a thumping good one — a well-built, well-executed."
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"Glorious is not too strong a word for director Sam Mendes’s production...Flawless ensemble work by a large and splendid cast adds depth to the characters in this sprawling drama that is at once a domestic calamity and a political tragedy...The domestic dramas in this household are as primal as those in any Greek tragedy, if not as classically restrained...We can only watch in horror and dread as the extraordinary characters that Butterworth has brought to life are snuffed out."
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“A kind of Irish counterpart to ‘August: Osage County’, a...study of a close-knit rural family that is being pulled apart...It builds to an explosively potent surprise ending whose force is diminished by the fact that it takes Butterworth most of the garrulous first act to finally get down to dramatic business...See ‘The Ferryman’ by all means, for most of it is superb. Bear in mind, though, that it would have been significantly more effective had it been an hour shorter.”
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