The Nap (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"You don’t need to know much of anything about billiards to get hooked into this witty play from prolific playwright Richard Bean...Daniel Sullivan’s direction keeps the play moving briskly, and Schnetzer’s Dylan charms as the straight man at the center as this cart goes off the rails, but Billings is the one gleefully driving the train...In a smart twist, the game they’re playing is a real one, and either character may win or lose. But regardless of who gets the trophy, 'The Nap' is a charming winner."
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"A well-calibrated, verbally-charged comedy...As befits a farce, the craziness escalates in Act Two, using wordplay, surprises, identity reversals, and physical action...The production (staged with an ear for comic timing and an eye for physical bits by Daniel Sullivan) is great fun with thick English accents and foul language. Just a few weeks following the death of Neil Simon, it is nice to see that an old-fashioned, silly-but-smart nonmusical comedy can still find a place on Broadway."
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"It starts rather slow...But once playwright Richard Bean dispenses with the setup and we meet the rest of the cast, an unsavory bunch of characters, 'The Nap' wakes right up...It's heavily plotted with twists and clever word play that's both silly and irresistibly witty, and it ends with a genuinely suspenseful climax...This is an incredibly difficult play to stage. Comic timing is crucial and pacing can't flag. Happily, the cast nails it...A work so refreshingly novel, it defies description."
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"Director Dan Sullivan's production is fine enough, though the pacing can slack at times when the funnier characters are offstage and the budding romance between Dylan and Eleanor takes over. 'The Nap' may play better in Bean's home country, where audiences members are more likely to have a familiarity with the sport, but even on this shore it's a genial diversion with many good laughs."
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"A compendium of stray comic bits in search of a play...Bean's fixation on getting to the next joke, by any means necessary, proves to be deeply undermining...It doesn't help that the action moves with a surprisingly slowly -- a quality only aggravated by Daniel Sullivn's pokey direction...Sullivan has assembled a first-class cast to portray these seedy second-raters, and everyone gives it his or her all -- which, sometimes, is enough."
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"Messy, enjoyable farce...Bean has a filthy-as-Mamet pen, his scenes tend not to end with the snap of a button but to just end, he's peddling intricacies of snooker that may not resonate as resoundingly in the States, and he never met an obvious joke he didn't like. That said, a lot of those obvious jokes are pretty damn funny, and he keeps you guessing...No masterpiece, 'The Nap,' just a traditional, comfortable, fun, funny evening. In times like these, that's no small gift."
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"Mr. Bean possesses a comic sense which is wild, fantastic and at times insane. He doesn’t simply offer a barrage of jokes; he plants them, marinates them, and finally allows them to burst forth at his hapless auditors...No, 'The Nap' is not quite as broad as 'One Man;' it would be unreasonable to expect it to be, wouldn’t it? But it is easily the funniest new play on Broadway. So go get snookered."
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"It is funny, but less funny than you’d like it to be. It entertains, but it is instantly forgotten. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re missing something...Well performed, never ascends to any giddy farcical heights. It remains consistently, stubbornly, mildly amusing. There is nothing laugh-out-loud funny. This is most likely because—and this should come as a surprise to no one—Americans are not primed for snooker humor...What we get is a pleasant, provincial-British diversion."
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