Oslo (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Sound dry? Hardly. Rogers packs enough suspense, duplicity, and paranoia to recall the very best work of Alan J. Pakula...Rogers and director Bartlett Sher are good at telling a complicated story, creating suspense, and keeping over 20 characters from merging into one another. But to achieve these not inconsiderable ends, 'Oslo' sometimes stoops to the level of boulevard theater despite its mighty political themes. Too many of the characters are emerge only as broad types."
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"The most engrossing new drama on Broadway. Director Bartlett Sher and his excellent cast have ramped up the tension, resulting in an altogether riveting evening. Let us add, a riveting three-hour evening which breathlessly speeds by...It is near miraculous that playwright Rogers has turned what might have been dryly dusty history into spellbinding, edge-of-your-seat drama...'Oslo' is quite an achievement, and quite a play, and quite an evening of high-stakes theatricality."
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"Even if you have little or fleeting interest in the Middle East peace process or diplomatic intrigue, you will find J.T. Rogers’s carefully researched play supremely riveting. Every aspect of it—the writing, the direction by Bartlett Sher, the fine performances—is pretty near immaculate...Sher’s direction is as smooth and clever as Rogers’s writing...'Oslo' is, most surprisingly, a bracing examination of human fortitude and effort against improbable odds."
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“Mays is outstanding as Larsen, balancing fear and excitement…Ehle excels as his equal partner…Despite its nearly three-hour length, the play flies by, with Sher keeping things moving at a smooth police-procedural-like pace. Rogers’s script melds the comic and the surreal, the serious and the wacky in translating this most unlikely of scenarios into an utterly gripping yet tenderly intimate tale.”
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"Watching it today, when diplomacy seems frighteningly absent in our current political atmosphere, this behind-the-scenes exploration is especially thrilling...The well-drawn book is skillfully paced by director Bartlett Sher...The play poses thrilling arguments, builds with suspense, yet hums with optimism and is punched up with humor...While talky at three hours, 'Oslo' is a thought-provoking work."
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"I learned a lot by seeing it, but as a theatre work I found it cumbersome and interesting only as a history lesson...Speeches that would effectively end with passionate outbursts, now begin with them and remain at fever pitch throughout often making them unintelligible...Mr. Mays and Ms. Ehle lead with authority and even charm. They bring to the Norwegian couple maturity and an attractive sense of balance which seems to be currently lacking in almost everyone else on stage."
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"This is docudrama of the first caliber, in which a large cast and even larger issues are expertly condensed into almost three hours of thrilling drama."
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“A sprawling 3 hours, the play is talky but full of history, observation, and entertainment…Tony winners Ehle and Mays are terrific as the Norwegian couple, and in the showiest role—Israeli diplomat Uri Savir—Michael Aronov is sexy, angry and full of sass. Bartlett Sher’s direction is lively…An imposing door looms symbolically, and projections and films are flashed onto the wall, but for once, this sort of thing seems inventive and apt, not purposely scaled down.”
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