"Dilorio’s lightweight tale is an affectionate tribute...Based on a piece of trivia, the play feels pretty trivial. It’s a skit that outgrows itself. The characters incline more toward caricature and Mr. Sikula and Mr. Averett, cheerful performers both, don’t look or sound like the real men they’re playing, which diminishes the fun...What’s most charming about the piece is the playwright’s obvious enthusiasm for both men and the men’s fondness for each other."
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"A pretty frail premise for a play, and indeed 'Sam and Dede' works overtime trying to spin some kind of dramatic action out of it. Basically, the big idea is that Beckett was an intellectual giant and André was, well, a giant...Not so much a play as a compare-and-contrast essay...An eighty-minute back-and-forth that produces almost nothing in the way of insight or wit...You can learn more about either man by staying home and checking out their Wikipedia pages."
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"Cleverly written, wonderfully acted, and staged with creative simplicity...Playwright Gino DiIorio has taken this factual incident and ingeniously woven it in to a very entertaining 85-minute, two-character biographical play...The bald, hulking and charming Brendan Averett delivers a commanding performance as Andre...Sikula’s performance is a marvelous channeling...A beautiful edition to the theatrical genre of historical personages dramatized in fanciful situations."
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"An adoring memento to the two giants—one literal, the other literary—it portrays...It's littered with references to works by both men, references that both celebrate and satirize...Director Leah S. Abrams really succeeds in bringing the playful banter to life...Dave Sikula and Brendan Averett have great chemistry...There's a lot of humor and love in it, and little else. It's both warm and weird, and it paints an attractive picture of what their relationship may have been like."
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"Both Sikula and Averett provide engaging, often funny, performances that allow us to accept them as two charmingly lost souls, men dominated by their exceptionalism and consequent inability to fit in. Leah S. Abrams's staging—using Eric Ladue's abstract set of movable, different-sized blocks, efficiently lit by Maxx Kurzunski—keeps things moving but wastes too much time on tiresome, actor-performed scene shifts."
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“The very idea that these two people from such wildly disparate worlds might have been friends is certainly intriguing—and in the writing and playing of the piece—wonderfully insightful…The clash of Beckett’s constant uncertainty versus Andre’s clear-headed, blunt way of managing his over-sized life, make for great theater…While the show’s dialogue is occasionally stilted, Averett’s sensational performance keeps the show continually engaging and ultimately revelatory.”
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"None of it digs too deep or anything, but it’s really all the more charming for its relaxed airiness. As it’s a fun little piece, it works as a nice reminder of both how intensely human Beckett was under his abstractions, but also...of how funny Beckett was and is...There’s a pleasant touch of poignancy in all this which is all the more welcome in that the play doesn’t really strive for sentimentality—it’s just kind of there...Well-acted, well-written, well-directed."
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"A series of conversations, an extended encounter contrasting two misfits’ attempts to come to terms with life. Averett is impressively, fully convincing as Dede...Is this the Beckett who needed open, alien air around him even to be able to think his own thoughts?...The shadow and intensity of that lifelong intellectual struggle is evident in any photo of Beckett, but in this portrayal, not so much...Beckett’s wit might have been a little more evident too if he were more clearly Irish."
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