This Day Forward NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (139)
See it if you are a Vineyard member. It won't kill you, but it won't thrill you. Great sets. Nice costumes. Lousy script. No insights, few laughs. Ugh
Don't see it if you want theater that entertains and/or enlightens. This just fills two hours. Frustrating waste of cast. Highly artificial.
See it if you like smart (if somewhat quirky) storyline that is equal parts funny and a punch in the gut.
Don't see it if you don't care about parent/child dysfunctional relationships or looking at possibilities of how/why they turn out the way they do.
See it if you want to see what an awful show looks like.
Don't see it if the worst show all year.
See it if you're a Nicky Silver completist. [But be prepared for disappointment. If you're a fan, like me, you might be better off skipping this one.]
Don't see it if you expect a sharp, funny play from Silver, who adds all his usual elements (overbearing mom, gay son, neurotic family) w/o any of the wit.
See it if Minor league Silver; has unpolished feel to it, Good acting by ensemble & Brokaw (Silver's go-to) directs with brittle gusto - nothing works
Don't see it if Silver fans (me!) will be very disappointed. Also the "monster mother" theme has grown a bit tiresome
See it if for inventive comic situation involving loveless marriage, solid comic acting particularly Holley Fain as dewy and slightly daft bride
Don't see it if first act farce, second act more a psychological exploration of dysfunctional family, simply don't work together
See it if you cannot miss a Nicky Silver play or a Vineyard production/
Don't see it if expect it to be one of Silver's best. Something is missing compared to his past works. (Yes, It is a tough goal to reach)
See it if You're a fan of Nicky Silver's work or enjoy "comedies" that are more dark and depressing than funny.
Don't see it if You think you're going to see a romantic farce of a comedy, as the marketing would lead you to believe. This is borderline upsetting.
Critic Reviews (28)
"Fans of Mr. Silver’s angry wit and whimsy may feel he is missing in action in this portrait of a misbegotten marriage...The production has been directed with as much smoothness as the script allows by his frequent and fruitful collaborator, Mark Brokaw...'This Day Forward' feels unfulfilled, like a skeleton in search of animating flesh...The cast members are all perfectly fine. But an implicit and wistful question hangs over them: Is that all there is?"
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"There will be a horrid, selfish mother; her children will grow into unhappy adults; their dad is dead or dying. Those criteria are dutifully met in the acid-penned playwright’s new black comedy...Such a bad beginning will never lead to a happy family, an obvious conclusion that Silver doesn’t do much to deepen or challenge after intermission. Mom never loved Dad, and 46 years later, everyone’s sad. That’s the short version of 'Forward,' which ranks at the bottom half of Silver’s output."
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"This dry hump of a comedy, with affectations of tragedy stapled in, got me to laugh, or rather snort, only once...Its people are just ordinarily crazy, not fantastically so. And ordinarily crazy people are no fun. Nor can they be very tragic, if you hate them — as I defy you not to do. Despite the laborious efforts of the cast, working under the direction of Silver’s longtime collaborator Mark Brokaw, they are unable to enlist the audience in any kind of sympathy."
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"The play does start off surprisingly, with a first act that resembles the sort of strained farcical comedies that populated Broadway in the 1950s...But little about the proceedings feels fresh, and...the brittle dialogue and thin characterizations aren't very funny or interesting. Everything in the sluggishly paced play feels attenuated and drawn with overly broad strokes...The performers try mightily but are largely unable to overcome the schematic nature of their characters."
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"Playwright Nicky Silver can milk a story of a monster mother like nobody’s business. He and director Mark Brokaw did exactly that to near-perfection a couple years back in 'The Lyons.' They’re not at the top of their game in this latest far more uneven and less successful effort that’s bipolar in tone...Not much here that moves the conversation or the comedy forward."
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"'This Day Forward' has many of the great hallmarks of Silver's canon...Yet the play never stops feeling like a second-to-last draft, one with a few great surprising scenes and a handful of predictable ones that are still a bit rough around the edges...Director Mark Brokaw does what he can to guide the company into performances that are more cohesive than the text, but no one pushes the comedy or the drama far enough to stand out."
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"The team of playwright Nicky Silver and director Mark Brokaw display an impressive talent for packaging complex family drama as hip, off-beat comedy before getting to the guts of the long-term effects of dysfunctionality...‘While This Day Forward’ can certainly use a bit of punching up dramatically, and at its present state seems to require a bit of padding to fill out its two acts, the solid work of Brokow's ensemble keeps interest from sagging."
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"The problem with this kind of comedy is the falseness of the premise…As the starting point for a family saga spanning five decades, it's dead in the water…That Brokaw's direction never finds its comic footing may not be his fault, given the insubstantial material he has to work with. Still, the cast does its best…There's little comedy, because the characters don't behave like recognizable human beings. And there's not much tragedy, because there isn't anything for them to lose."
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