Jonah and Otto NYC Reviews and Tickets

"It amounts to a random collection of heartbreak, spiced up by some of the most overwrought dialogue to be heard in months...Whatever can be done with lines like these, the young actor Rupert Simonian does it; he also is technically gifted, pulling off each of his character's seizures with alarming verisimilitude...Nevertheless, under Hughes' direction, both actors struggle to find a rationale for the things their characters are given to do and say."
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"With 'Jonah and Otto,' we are left with little by way of form or context. Despite compelling acting by the two performers, under Geraldine Hughes's direction, the audience is kept at arm's length from being able to find the key to the code that will allow us to unearth any but surface meaning from what is essentially a staged version of an abstract and poetic short story. In the end, we are left as walled in as the garden where it all takes place."
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"While the play is at times Pinteresque, it is talky in a way Pinter never is, explaining everything over and over, covering the same ground again and again. Nothing much happens other than the men become more confiding and reveal more of their personal pasts. The play implies that Jonah is menacing, but under Hughes' direction, he never seems much of a threat. The pace is slow and methodical, too slow for its own good. The acting style is too refined, too genteel to make much impression."
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"Snappy writing gives this sentimental story a real lift. So does the excellent acting of London-born Rupert Simonian and Irish Rep. member Sean Gormley, under the fine direction of Geraldine Hughes...Holman's characters may seem adrift in their mutual loneliness. But the reward of the play is that we watch them increasingly reflected through each other's sorrows and joys."
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"Over the course of 90 minutes, Otto and Jonah engage in thinly plotted talk, sometimes colorfully realistic and even vulgar, sometimes tediously elliptical and metaphorical...Both Gormley and Simonian give reasonably believable performances but Hughes’ direction is dully mundane. Holman appears to be casting an allegorical cloak over his everyday characters, whose interactions, for all their ordinariness, often have about them a mystical, unrealistic hue that is absent here."
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"An extraordinary play...A fascinating piece of writing wherein a simple premise gives rise to refreshing catharsis...Verbally dazzling, alternately prickly and unruffled, the writing builds subtly on rhythmic increments through a gamut of emotions, at times exploding with unforeseen revelation...Director Geraldine Hughes has masterfully fine-tuned the work of this pair of enormously talented actors to a razor-sharp attention to detail from the music of the text to the arc of the narrative."
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"Trying to make precise sense of what’s transpiring moment to moment may not be worth a ticket buyer’s time. The script doesn’t bear the weight of too much analysis...This piece may be a small lapse in playwright Holman’s career...The pressing reason to see 'Jonah and Otto' is to watch what Simonian and Gormley do with their meaty roles, as directed by Hughes...Although Holman’s play adds up to less than the sum of its parts, the acting amounts to a good deal more."
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"This show is a master class in acting handled by two exquisite actors Sean Gormley and Rupert Simonian...This is a show about regrets and living in the present. It is the human condition at its most frail...Geraldine Hughes' direction keeps us wanting to know more...Holman’s writing is interesting...I love the nuances of his words and the underlying things that are left unsaid...This is a do not miss, especially if you love acting. This is one of the best shows I’ve seen all season."
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