A Wilder Christmas NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (10)
See it if u want to see an expert prod. of TW's 'mundane to the cosmic' style of playwriting. It's thrilling, extraordinary and suddenly emotional.YES
Don't see it if Wilder looks sentimentality, bathos and the mawkish right in the eye, sand in my shoos cross the line. Makes your blood boil? Skip it.
See it if Classic American plays
Don't see it if Dislike the above
See it if You like shows that take place around Christmas & were written by Thornton Wilder (Our Town, Skin of Our Teeth).
Don't see it if You don't want to see two short plays in a night instead of one longer play. You don't enjoy quieter shows & prefer a lot of action.
See it if You'll enjoy Wilder's cosmic/classical narratives where the profound is expressed through the mundane. Brilliant theater earnestly delivered
Don't see it if Grand, sawing the air, performances will keep you from absorbing the early work of one of America's greatest dramatists.
See it if you are a fan of Wilder and his style of writing - these are not among his best pieces and there's a reason these are rarely performed
Don't see it if you expect beautiful story telling and uplifting holiday stories; you don't like audience participation (I hate that in the theater)
See it if You enjoy Wilder and one acts
Don't see it if You are expecting a typical 2 act play, rather it is two one acts in extremely different time periods
See it if You want to see Wilder experimenting with early modernist techniques to explore the theme of the importance of common, everyday events.
Don't see it if You don't like 1) non-realistic situations & confusing story lines, or 2) a director's addition of audience participation (I didn't like)
See it if Like Christmas
Don't see it if Don't like Christmas
Critic Reviews (12)
"It is that balance—between emotional forthrightness and plain good old-fashioned invention—that makes Thornton Wilder’s beautiful short plays 'The Long Christmas Dinner' and 'Pullman Car Hiawatha' enduring works...There’s something free in Wilder’s depiction of how memory informs and misinforms the individual, how it binds and separates family in particular, and society in general."
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"A flawlessly staged double bill of rarely seen one-act plays by Wilder...Despite their comparative obscurity, 'The Long Christmas Dinner' and 'Pullman Car Hiawatha' are miniature masterpieces, at once poetic and profound, and I doubt you’ll ever see either one done better."
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"It is enjoyably erudite, its tone of classic melancholy is most appealing...under Dan Wackerman's direction, a fine cast, led by Michael Sean McGuinness' Stage Manager, brings Wilder's vision, an odd amalgam of sadness and joy, to life."
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"Both plays are profound, breathtaking and bound to occupy your mind for days after you see them...While both plays are gorgeous and philosophically mesmerizing, they will not fill you with the warm and fuzzy holiday cheer that you get from watching 'It’s a Wonderful Life'...Maybe what we all need this Christmas is something a little more somber and introspective. You’ll find it in 'A Wilder Christmas.'"
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"In walking into a night of Christmas one-acts, one might expect a familiar, uplifting experience. Seasonal stories about redemption, hope and triumph of spirit. But if the Peccadillo Theater Company’s presentation of 'A Wilder Christmas,' is uplifting, it’s only in an intangible, spiritual sense...there is a stillness to the production that creates an eerie voyeurism."
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"First-rate production, with a uniformly spot-on cast...Despite the packaging, these are not Christmas plays in any traditional sense, and shouldn’t scare away those with a phobia towards that genre...Characters enter through the portal of life stage right and exit through the portal of death stage left, but, rather than gimmicky, this seems natural, albeit speeded up."
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"The acting in 'Pullman Car Hiawatha' is smoothly effective...but it’s the way the gears mesh rather than any specific performance that keeps this train on track. Despite the evening’s title being wreathed in the holiday spirit, these plays are more contemplative than joyful, but they do offer as much rich food for thought as whatever you’ll be eating at Christmas dinner will for your stomach."
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"Two - surely two of the most accomplished and enduring - are 'The Long Christmas Dinner' and 'Pullman Car Hiawatha,' which luckily for theatergoers are now the objects of fine revivals...Both plays are beauties and are acted accordingly by Wackerman's troupe. The pieces may not be performed as rarely as the Peccadillo info suggests, but they're the sorts of superior entries that never grow stale in the viewing."
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