"The Mint Theater, which specializes in excavating forgotten gems, has found a solid one in 'The Mountains Look Different,' a 1948 drama by Micheál Mac Liammóir that the director Aidan Redmond has polished to a becoming shimmer at Theater Row...It is not, truth be told, a visually splendid production...What’s alluring here is the storytelling, by both Mac Liammóir and the actors, whose across-the-board restraint roots the characters in reality throughout."
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“This unsettling tale of isolation and mystery walks softly and carries a big secret...The biggest problem is that the play peaks too early...For much of Act II Meaney finds herself on a rescue mission to keep the energy going through the end of the play. As she carries the show, Meaney operates on a completely different level from the rest of the cast...She would outclass any but the fiercest of actors...'The Mountains Look Different’ is worthy, at times gripping theater.”
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"If the Mint Theater's American premiere of 'The Mountains Look Different,' 71 years after its initial debut, proves anything, it's that melodrama doesn't always get better with age — and this one is particularly creaky...There's no escaping the judgmental nature of mac Liammóir's text, which seems to suggest that women are in constant need of rescuing, and if they try to operate on their own, bad things will happen. Fortunately, Meaney is terrific and keeps her head up."
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"A golden opportunity to get acquainted with two names you should know: Micheál Mac Liammóir and Brenda Meaney…[Meaney] masterfully lays bare the fear behind Bairbre's determinedly ingratiating manner…[the play] benefits from a golden tongue, a kind of back-country poetry that lingers in the mind."
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"In the Mint Theater Company's current, eminently satisfying production of this obscure but extraordinary work, Brenda Meaney gives a wondrous performance...The play has some flaws of construction...'The Mountains Look Different' is worthy of this stellar revival, for which heartfelt thanks are due to director Aidan Redmond and the invaluable Mint Theater Company."
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"As mac Líammóir unpacks his overreaching but still hard to resist work, he had to have concluded that the kind of future an Anna Christie sister-under-the-skin might have would be no picnic on the West Ireland mountains...Director Aidan Redmond has gathered the right cast to cover the above-mentioned bases—and Andrea Varga has dressed them well for the occasions."
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"It is, at best, a fragile work that demands some fine acting and especially atmospheric staging to strengthen or at least camouflage its dramaturgical weaknesses...Apparently this production marks Redmond’s first time as a director and, boy, does it ever look that way...Unfortunately, the patchy acting is mostly indifferent to the point of appearing under-rehearsed. The hasty physical staging is awkward."
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"A mash-up of Eugene O'Neill's 'Anna Christie' (set in Manhattan and off the coasts of Provincetown and Boston) and 'Desire under the Elms' (with a rural New England setting), the play is set on a farm in the West of Ireland. With its fallen woman theme, this play could have been written any time since 1880. First time director Aidan Redmond has staged the play by the numbers and has given his actors little help. Some of the character interpretations undercut the play."
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