The Metromaniacs NYC Reviews and Tickets

"A play that squeezes contemporary English into pentameter couplets — and a story that doesn’t matter...Since all the characters speak in essentially the same form, there is no variation or, indeed, verbal distinctiveness. That leaves the cast, which is uniformly good, to build characters on top of the verse, instead of within it where characterization belongs. The result is rickety...Only in the second act...do the couplets begin to give birth to satisfying story."
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"Ives has wound up with a middling piece that can’t trigger his gift for well-machined mayhem...Ives’s cleverness is indisputable, and he excels at a rare sort of verbal glitter. Michael Kahn’s production is physically exquisite...For farce to work, we need to sense the abyss underneath the hero’s pin-wheeling feet...Without desperation, there’s no exhilaration. And so here, on the fourth pour, Ives’s particular brand of champagne finally goes flat."
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"Undoubtedly, many audience members will thrill at Ives's virtuosic wordplay...I chuckled too, but unmoored from real stakes, I found my mind floating out to sea. This is despite a zippy production by director Michael Kahn and delightfully physical performances from the cast. Everyone delivers the verse with crisp precision, so all the jokes land...It's all perfectly digestible, but tiresome on the taste buds...Ives wanted to create a fluffy gossamer entertainment, and he did."
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"Thanks to Kahn's tight direction and a cast that knows how to keep the ball in the air, a steady procession of laughs is guaranteed...I have one reservation about 'The Metromaniacs,' and it's a fairly significant one: The sheer number of gags, absent the tiniest hint of emotional involvement, ultimately becomes a bit wearing...Then again, the current scene doesn't offer so many great comedies that we can afford to overlook 'The Metromaniacs,' and the cast is a thoroughgoing pleasure."
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"'The Metromaniacs' is screwball at its best, with the entire ensemble working their butts off to deliver Ives' complex, delicious rhymes, and playing off of each other's energy...But the show, in its own way, is also quite insightful about the nature of addiction, as it humorously shows the lengths these characters will go to, in order to satiate their need for verse. It never gets dark, no, but it's been haunting me for days after seeing it."
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"A head-spinning plot...This is French farce featuring a satirical target not necessarily in synch with today’s prosaic concerns...Those buckshot couplets that had me tired out by the end of the short first act...Given the baroque material, there may be no other way to go about acting in the dashed thing. And they’re all braced for the challenge. One wily Piron turn of events occurs at the very end...Ticket buyers can and do leave laughing."
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"What gives this extremely silly business its babbling charm is Ives’ inventive wordplay...Kahn's staging here could be more lightly handled. The actors deliver broad performances that look forced. Between the propulsive couplets, the mostly unvaried rhythm of the brisk pacing, and the superficial acting, the show eventually becomes relentless...A comedy as quick, lively, and verbal as 'The Metromaniacs' needs extra room to breathe."
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"Ives doesn't fully overcome Piron's dramaturgical shortcomings until the fourth wall breaking opening of the second act...The actors wrest every possible laugh from their roles...The real star here is David Ives. It's his wordsmithing that makes Piron's play worth retrieving...Even though 'The Metromaniacs' doesn't hit the bulls eye for all its hour and forty five minutes (including an intermission), Mr. Ives makes the best case for seeing the play with his program note conclusion."
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