Evening at the Talk House NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (162)
See it if You enjoy good performances by quality actors in a confusing show. Many in the audience weren't sure at the end what happened.
Don't see it if You don't like extraordinarily talky dramas. Matthew Broderick gives an opening monolog that lasts for many minutes and "sets the stage".
See it if If you area fan of any of the highly talented cast & must see them perform on stage regardless of material.
Don't see it if Are easily bored or are expecting an exciting play.
See it if Shawn's latest is a muddled mash-up of a venal dystopian society & theatrical gossip fest Good acting from ensemble fails to illuminate
Don't see it if Talky & banal without Shawn's usual piercing wit or intelligence. Should strike at target points much harder to have desired effect
See it if You are open to a bizarre post-theatre, dystopian world; enjoy an ensemble piece on an intimate setting
Don't see it if You want a clear story or to fully understand the themes; a well crafted production or an escape from the horrors in the world Read more
See it if you want to see an ensemble piece that appears to be theatre motivated but turns highly political.
Don't see it if you want a clear plot or some kind of message with no pretense. There's a lot of wasted talent on that stage/area.
See it if Dystopian, yes, but distasteful as well. Lots of "inside" references, none of which make much sense. The plot wherein a person's life is ...
Don't see it if ..valued by his standing in television success is revealed in the first 25 minutes and then you wait for the inevitable. A puff piece.
See it if if you love Wallace Shawn's intellectual talkiness and some lovely performances from a stellar cast riffing on the importance of the arts
Don't see it if you are NOT into talky verbose plays where nothing happens and arguments are diffuse in an overlong intermissionless takfest
See it if to mingle with a star-studded cast on the set before the show; catty dialogue about the entertainment industry in dystopian world
Don't see it if the play more important than mingling; Broderick & Shawn good, others underutilized, one really miscast; the wordiness is tiring Read more
Critic Reviews (46)
"Hadn’t quite come together when I saw Scott Elliott’s eclectically cast New York premiere...We are casually folded into a world where the theater is dead, blackouts are common, authoritarians rule the world and conversation centers on who’s in and who’s out of inane entertainment...The finale is suitably macabre, but a bit anticlimactic. Missing is the way the best Shawn works tighten the knot that connects our comfortable life to our complicity with cruelty. That thrilling awfulness is lost."
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"Insidiously brilliant, humorous, sardonic play...The production, finely tuned and directed by Elliott, has a stellar ensemble whose spot-on performances bring a number of chilling messages to us in the 'here and now'...An excellent Matthew Broderick as Robert unfolds the complexity of his character, an ironic, insightful, equivocal, caddish, diffuse, emotionally disaffected playwright...This is a terrific must-see production that makes for thrilling, terrifying entertainment."
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"In spite of occasional slow spots, Shawn is masterly at writing literate, even poetic, dialogue...If at times his points are familiar, the leisurely world he puts on stage is both relaxed and deeply unsettling...Ultimately, though, what makes 'Evening at the Talk House' so memorable is less the shock of ordinary people blithely engaging in murder, but the prospect of an entire civilization facing its demise."
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"Becomes increasingly meandering over the course of an interval-less hour and 40 minutes...Broderick offers a characteristically engaging blend of charm and diffidence early on but soon begins to seem lost. The same goes for the rest of the ensemble whose interactions generally feel robotic. It’s as if Shawn and Elliott have tried to replicate the estranged, heavily stylised approach of Pinter’s later political drama, but the results are too stagy to convey any real sense of menace."
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"Shawn has no compunctions about letting his characters talk on and on and on…A lot of the chatter is amusing, quite innocuous at first, but as might be expected with Shawn, it evolves into something rather ominous…Scott Elliott has put together a stellar company that gives validity and vibrancy to Shawn’s tricky writing…The talk at the ‘Talk House’ threatens to become toxic, with an intelligence and perspicacity that, while sometimes unwieldy, demand our attention."
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"It’s a stunning piece of theatre, one that resonates long after you leave it behind...It ends tragically, but I found the journey through it absorbing and provocative; words that suggest a beautifully written and performed very dark comedy that informs us, entertains us, and succeeds in making us more keenly aware of how united we must be in order to resuscitate what we once thought of as the best of all possible worlds."
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"It feels as if Mr. Shawn has not fully fleshed out his ideas; there is something ultimately unfulfilling about this dystopia. Of course, I have no problem with vagueness, so long as the author has a firm hold on his material. But the gaps in 'Evening at the Talk House' feel unintentional, as if even Mr. Shawn does not know what is going on outside of these walls."
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"The most insidious societal changes don’t occur through quick or violent means. Rather they are so quiet and unobtrusive one never notices them until it is too late. This chilling point is brought home in 'Evening at the Talk House'...The cast is excellent...Scott Elliot’s direction is nicely restrained, allowing the power of the text to take hold and turn a simple premise into something sinister."
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