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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"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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"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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"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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"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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"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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"An involving, splendidly acted drama...'Jonah and Otto,' despite a few bumps, is a cogent, analytical tale, ably helmed by actress and first-time director Geraldine Hughes. Gormley is solid and caring as the stiff-upper-lipped Otto, who is at a crossroads in his life, while Simonian is engaging as the odd Jonah...Holman’s dialogue is constantly surprising and wonderfully layered, with funny insults and clever insight."
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"Colorful and often vulgar verbal darts are thrown but much of the banter is metaphorical and sounds more like repartee than cohesive conversation...I found the play a well-intentioned ode to loneliness and disappointment, with a message that is far too cryptic. The performances were arresting, the direction of Hughes and the seedy garden set of Beyersdorfer added atmosphere and pace, but in the end the verbal sallies, unfortunately, did not engage or teach me."
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"The immediacy of how these men open up to each other will attract audiences to 'Jonah and Otto's' emotional honesty...Director Geraldine Hughes did an excellent job of ensuring that the audience always feel the darkness or dimming light of both these men and their surroundings...With lesser actors, the depth and intensity of their conversations could come off forced, but Gormley and Simonian do well to show that effortlessness stems from their hardships with others."
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"Playwright Holman’s jarring counterpoints of two ill met Englishmen gains odd colors from their quirks and foibles...Director Geraldine Hughes taps deeply into her acting resources to bring Sean Gormley into his best performance to date and to ensure a warm welcome for Rupert Simonian’s American debut. It’s heartening to want to see more of them."
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"Director Hughes does well to focus on the physical, ensuring that both men risk something of themselves and reminding us that it will be consequential...The writing of this play leaves absolutely nothing to chance. Every sentence is carefully considered and carefully freighted with meaning. It’s a tribute to the actors' skill and the director’s nimble interventions that it feels organic, coming from a deeply felt place, with real-life consequences for its two hard-bitten protagonists."
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"There isn’t much of a plot to the play other than the fact that the characters overcome an initial suspicion and antagonism of each other and arrive at a conciliation after gradually expressing their inner thoughts...Both Gormley and Simonian are in complete mastery of their roles. A certain tentativeness that Gormley appropriately displays as Otto is nicely balanced with the more aggressive, tough and streetwise energy of Simonian as Jonah."
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