"Although Ms. Buffini’s version has been given a handsome staging directed by Neil Pepe, this bleakly comic portrait of desperate lives in Soviet Russia feels wheezy and labored, ultimately about as much fun as a winter holiday in Siberia."
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"Dying for It may be a one-joke affair, but it’s a great big cosmic joke, and the Atlantic Theater Company’s first-rate cast and crew find ingenious ways to keep you hooked until the final, sobering punch line. Will you die laughing? It’s very possible."
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"There’s something fundamentally unaligned about the humor, which wants to be rollicking but for all its smarts is flippant and sour, built on intellectual paradoxes."
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"There’s something fundamentally unaligned about the humor, which wants to be rollicking but for all its smarts is flippant and sour, built on intellectual paradoxes."
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"The original play was so biting about the can’t-win ridiculousness of Soviet life that it was banned by Stalin. The decades have substantially defanged the satire. And director Neil Pepe’s staging never quite explodes into the “riotous farce” promised in promotional materials."
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"The main character's suicide can't come soon enough"
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"The pace is sluggish, and the cast struggles with the stilted, period-ish dialogue.”
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"But if the original Russian is as good as Moira Buffini's English version, Dying for It, we can safely say that Soviet audiences missed out....It manages to walk the thin line between comedy and tragedy for a full two hours, making us laugh at one moment and feel incredibly guilty about it the next."
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