"Sprawling and confused adaptation of a sprawling and confused play...This production feels moribund from the beginning. Frantic attempts at resuscitation by Ms. Blanchett and her valiant leading man, a tireless Richard Roxburgh as a hapless homme fatale, only occasionally succeed in eliciting a pulse...These people want to blow up their world, and in a way they do, most entertainingly. That leaves us with another full hour of tediously sorting through the ashes."
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"This crass, seriocomic script lumbers along for three palpable hours, alternately tedious and odious, expecting us to care about its petty, miserable, bed-hopping Russian characters without giving them witty or touching things to say. 'I’m so bored. Bored and disappointed,' moans Anna during her boozy, interminable birthday party. She speaks for all of us...Unless you cut 'Platonov' savagely to the bone or find a novel approach, it’s going to come across as callow, sub-Chekhov stuff."
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"If the politics of this Platonov revamp are apt enough, the drama still founders on the play’s inability to link them convincingly to the nearly farcical social comedy of individuals at loose ends. Partly this is because the production, directed somewhat bumpily by John Crowley, keeps the politics at bay for too long...We do not really understand the stakes until it’s too late, which may be accurate for the characters but undermines the audience."
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"Though it is a problematic play—a rewritten, time-shifted transmutation of a young Chekhov’s untitled, posthumously discovered and monstrously overstuffed drama, ‘The Present’ is also a terrific vehicle for its two stars, Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh...By the second half, you are likely to tire of both—and the characterless stage design by Alice Babidge is no help—but the two actors keep the play aloft for long enough so you don’t fully mind its thorough deflation."
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"It’s haltingly staged, one foot on the gas pedal, the other on the brake, by John Crowley. That attack may seem at cross purposes, but it’s effective in a diffuse work whose chief attribute is the way it presages the obsessions a barely-20-year-old writer will later refine…The very long set-up climaxes in a party scene that finds Blanchett dirty dancing through the drunken revels…That leaves a lot of messy stuff to tie up in the post-intermission acts, and they’re not as much fun."
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"Cate Blanchett’s captivating presence makes 'The Present' a worthwhile three-hour sit. The same goes for her equally commanding co-star Richard Roxburgh in this play inspired by an unwieldy early Anton Chekhov work. That said, without the two mighty bright stars, it’d be a slow-starting, fitfully amusing and longwinded evening...Blanchett is fiery and funny and in her element on stage...More than once Anna wails that she’s bored. When Blanchett’s around, you won’t be."
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"A sparkling production...The spirit of Chekhovian farce shines bright, and the ensemble work of this Aussie company is just grand...Blanchett turns out to be a consummate comic actress, and Roxburgh her perfect foil, allowing the scene to swing from passion to painfully funny pathos...Crowley handles the directing chores with an impressively light touch, keeping this army of characters circling one another like moths obsessively courting their flames without letting them get burned."
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"A tart tragedy, infused with corrosive humor...What's most surprising about John Crowley's expertly calibrated production is how funny it is, while remaining true to themes of disillusionment, class breakdown and unfulfilled love...Weaving together these characters and their hollow lives in a context that connects them both to Chekhov's Russia and to our own world, Upton, Crowley and this accomplished company have elevated a problematic play into something unexpectedly satisfying."
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