The Portuguese Kid NYC Reviews and Tickets

“The jokes are ancient. I’m not sure you can credit as jokes the mechanical dings that the play spews every 15 seconds. They are, at best, the husks of jokes...Did I mention there’s a plot? Well there is, sort of, but it doesn’t make sense...A strong countervailing force might have encouraged Shanley to look beyond the sitcom laugh track...Certainly, a better director would have done more than let the play coast on the sorely tried inventiveness of its stars."
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“The script is literally written in comic sans...Shanley’s strained, hoary sex comedy...It’s like Bergman’s 'Smiles of a Summer Night,' if the smiles were forced wacky grins...Amid the stale trashiness are salvageable morsels: a few decent jokes in the first scene, a neat revolving set by Beatty, a choice performance by Testa...The play's ideas about passion and gender are shot through with retrograde banality...It’s 2017. Whom does a play like this think it's kidding?”
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"Unconscionable...'The Portuguese Kid' has about as much objective as an episode of 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' and an arc that’s equal parts lazy predictability and seriously unfunny topicality...Predictability, though, is comparatively low on the list of ‘The Portuguese Kid’s’ sins. Far more disturbing are the gender dynamics of Shanley’s play, and the self-congratulatory, deeply uncute ways in which the production dabbles in current politics."
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"An underdeveloped doodle that tosses around allusions to Greek mythology as weightlessly as it takes inorganic jabs at Trump, the play squanders the talents of a gifted cast...Under Shanley's pedestrian direction, the ensemble is required to labor so hard breathing life into the material that it could almost be classified as employee abuse...Shanley is too skilled a writer not to muster at least mild amusement, but the comedy mostly is an awkward collision of shrill and flat."
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“Most of Shanley’s jokes are deliciously funny in his actors’ hands...Not every joke lands...Even the titular joke pales in comparison to far wittier one-liners... When it tries to tackle more existential questions about life, love, and purpose, it falls short. Still, 'The Portuguese Kid' makes for a wildly entertaining couple of hours of whip-smart banter — as long as you don’t expect much substance beyond that."
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“A strong cast and some high-end design work but all of it is wasted on material that can’t begin to measure up to the playwright’s best work...Whatever you do, don’t think plot, of which there is none...The play is all talk, none of it amusing or interesting...The best Shanley can come up with is the occasional one-liner...Instead of adding some substance to the lightweight characters, all these references to the heroes and heroines of Greek myth only remind us of what we’re missing.”
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"The funniest new comedy I’ve reviewed since…well, maybe ever...I don’t know when I last saw another stage comedy that was funny right from the top, or one whose last scene was so unmanipulatively touching. The entire cast is dead-solid perfect, and Mr. Shanley, one of the few playwrights of note who can be trusted to direct his own work, does so to ideal effect...To laugh this hard for that long is downright therapeutic."
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“What can I say about a terrible play that made me laugh? That it’s a waste of talent and hardly worthy of Jason Alexander’s return to the stage?...That it deserves a pass because it’s by John Patrick Shanley?...Did I mention it made me laugh, and that I wouldn’t necessarily admit it except there were witnesses?...The MTC A-team has delivered a great-looking show...Don’t look for deep meaning below the surface. The play is piffle, but you will laugh in spite of yourself.”
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