Review Roundup: FOOL FOR LOVE with Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell

Williamstown Theatre Festival is currently featuring Tony Award-winner Nina Arianda and stage and screen star Sam Rockwell in Fool for Love, playing the Nikos Stage through August 2, 2014.

Holed up in a seedy motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert, two former lovers unpack the deep secrets and dark desires of their tangled relationship, passionately tearing each other apart. Beaten down by ill-fated love and a ruthless struggle for identity, can they ultimately live with, or without, each other? Led by director Daniel Aukin, the riveting cast of Fool for Love brings a raw sexy energy to Sam Shepard's landmark myth of the new Wild West.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Larry Murray, BroadwayWorld: Rockwell invested Eddie with a grittiness and surly braggadocio that rings true while Arianda's May is both visceral and feisty. The two totally committed performances are of the kind that will remain in the memory for years to come. At a press briefing during rehearsals Arianda and Rockwell said they really enjoyed working together and with Aukin on this production., The resultant synergy gives this FOOL FOR LOVE real gusto. The Williamstown Theatre Festival has delivered another masterpiece of great theatre in the bucolic Berkshires of Massacusetts where summer theatre is as special as the beauty of its hills.

Ben Brantley, New York Times: Ever since she dazzled New York with her breakout performance as a gamut-running actress in David Ives's "Venus in Fur" a few years ago, Ms. Arianda has been seeking a part that would similarly tap her emotional expansiveness. She's found it in May, again combining a specific, idiosyncratic presence with the aura of the enigmatic Everywoman.Similarly, Mr. Rockwell, an offbeat leading man in movies like "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," slides seamlessly into the role of a Marlboro Man manqué. It's a self-defining adolescent myth that he's both trapped in and half-realizes is bogus. In Mr. Shepard's world, people never really know themselves, much less anybody else.

Don Aucoin, Boston Globe: When it comes to the tangled intersections of their personal histories, May, Eddie, and the Old Man all get to have their say. Indeed, they all aggressively insist on it. In the fierce contest of wills waged on the blasted landscape of "Fool for Love,' control of the story may be the only prize left.

Photo Credit: T. Charles Erickson

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