"Can actors sue their playwright for non-support? Legal minds might say no, but Fairycakes would make an excellent test case. Douglas Carter Beane, the playwright and director of this distinctly odd enterprise, has assembled an A-team comprising some of New York's best clowns only to leave them stranded in a labyrinthine plot that yields little in the way of amusement."
Read more

"It’s a shame, then, that their hard-working efforts, and I mean hard-working, fail to make Fairycakes anything more than an unfortunate misfire. Although there will be some who find this mash-up of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and various fairy tales a delight, I suspect there will be many more who will feel like a trapped animal contemplating gnawing off his own foot to get free."
Read more

"Enchantment is scarce and magical moments fleeting in Fairycakes, Douglas Carter Beane’s overstuffed yet undercooked Shakespeare-meets-Disney mish-mash at the Greenwich House Theater."
Read more

"Unfortunately, it is not very funny and the many storylines weigh the play down...This mashup proves to be both too convoluted and too long at two hours and 20 minutes. Beane has, however, given the play a top flight send off with a starry cast of some of the most distinctive and unique actors on the New York stage."
Read more

"...what makes it worth sitting there for over two hours is the incredible cast."
Read more

The recipe for Fairycakes: Start with a cast of beloved New York stage actors known for their comic flair .... stick rhyming couplets in their mouths and dress them in the most colorful costumes of the season, then dump them in a pan of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Pour in a heavy mash up of fairy and folk tales .. .mix, until unrecognizable. Then serve the resulting concoction both half-baked and overdone.
Read more

"I found little laughter in the actors’ high-energy, vocally high-pitched hijinks, requiring them…to speak in verse so badly rhymed that they sometimes slyly let us know they agree, as if it’s all part of the fun…Beane’s homilies about true love are well-intended, but if the playwright really loved us he’d have lopped at least an hour off this mid-autumn night’s scream."
Read more