Fool for Love Broadway Reviews

Love as a battlefield on which nobody wins has seldom been mapped as thrillingly as it is in Daniel Aukin's definitive revival of this bruising drama from 1983. That's in large part because as the inexorably coupled May and Eddie, Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell exude the sort of chemistry from which nuclear meltdowns are made. But every ingredient that's gone into this Manhattan Theater Club and Williamstown Theater Festival offering has been measured, sifted and distilled to create the most potent combination conceivable...Ms. Arianda and Mr. Rockwell, wild-card stars who here fulfill every promise of their earlier careers, provide plenty of injury-courting action as they bounce off the walls of Dane Laffrey's last-chance motel room set...But this production also makes it clear that 'Fool for Love' has a lot more going for it than its adrenaline quotient.

And for 75 minutes, director Daniel Aukin and his flawless cast, led by a riveting Nina Arianda and a fiercely unsettling Sam Rockwell, deliver, never allowing themselves or the audience an uncharged moment...The arrival of a gentleman caller named Martin -- an awkward but patient fellow, imbued with a strange grace by a wonderful Tom Pelphrey -- spurs the possessive Eddie to reveal that he and May share DNA...By this point, Arianda, who takes a short while to completely settle into her role -- her twangy accent seems to come and go -- has dug in with full force, and the results are devastating. The actress...has never had trouble holding a stage, or dominating one. Here, she reveals the desperation and shame of a woman who wants to exert her independence but cannot, and her final resignation is harrowing. Rockwell deftly mines the vulnerability and humor behind the menace Eddie shows us initially.

Rockwell, the reliable movie actor celebrated as much for his supporting roles as his leading ones, is part action, part talk -- and far more skilled with a lasso than we'd have any right to expect...Rockwell comes on as a wiseacre at first, something like Brad Pitt in 'Thelma & Louise,' trying to assure Arianda's May he just wants her to be happy. He gets cockier as he goes, and it's a very nifty, physical performance...Arianda, the Tony winner of 'Venus in Fur,' is hot-tempered and emotional, yet her performance all fits well within the bounds of Shepard's economical prose. The idea is to portray her -- purposefully -- as the stock, blousy working-class woman who's been in abusive relationship and has finally decided she can't take it anymore...'Fool for Love' is classic Shepard: Family dysfunction, a Western setting and some dark and twisted stuff leading up to a big reveal (or two). It's all handled with an enormous amount of skill and affection -- the 75 minutes fly by, and we feel as if we know these folks intimately.

Is Sam Rockwell the most versatile actor of his generation? That was the thought that kept occurring to me as I watched his swaggering, magnetic performance in Sam Shepard's 'Fool for Love'...Rockwell can play comedy, tragedy, tenderness, menace, or (as in 'Fool for Love') all of the above...this one-act play can easily come off as overwrought melodrama. Here, though, Rockwell and Arianda gleefully tear into one another, generating palpable sexual tension and nailing the grimly comic underbelly of Shepard's dialogue. The director, Daniel Aukin, strikes just the right notes of urgency and uncertainty; even if you've seen 'Fool for Love' before, you feel as if you have no idea what's coming next. The play builds, thrillingly, to an off-stage fire that bathes the set in a warm red glow -- and, indeed, if ever a production deserved the adjective 'combustible,' it's this one.

The tormented lovers in 'Fool for Love' are a broken-down cowboy named Eddie (Rockwell, wonderfully at ease in the role) and his beaten-down girlfriend May (Tony Award winner Arianda, exhausted from battle)...These ritualized couplings (carefully choreographed by David S. Leong) consist mainly of one lover throwing the other against the wall or across the bed -- although Eddie adds his signature touch of twirling a lasso...His legs bowed and his posture a perpetual slouch, Rockwell is so genuinely invested in this cowboy role that anyone would take him for the real thing...'Fool for Love' is far more physical than other plays by Shepard, and physicality is Arianda's strong suit. The actress has a remarkably supple back, which she uses in expressive ways -- curled in on itself like a beaten puppy, or hunched in a corner like a rabid dog.

The production, already excellent when presented at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2014, has only improved. Physically, it is just about perfect, especially the lighting design by Justin Townsend, which creates its poetic effects (as the play does) from the most concrete situations. Arianda's alternately spitfire and limpetlike fierceness has rarely been channeled as effectively, and Rockwell, a string bean in a cowboy hat, with a mean lasso and a mortifying chicken dance, brings tremendous vulnerability to a role often played as a brick.

...it's a welcome shock to see the actor stripped of all that allure in the opening tableau of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, in which Arianda plays bucking bronco to Sam Rockwell's dusty cowpoke. Slumped on a motel bed in unflattering, baggy clothes, head slung low, this is Arianda as a broken doll, as trashed as the grubby room around her. She may spring to life with a furious attack and eventually pour herself into a little red number, but Arianda's May is not the glamor fest one expects. Just as surprising is Rockwell's Eddie...here he seems to dig deep into painful places for Eddie, a tight-lipped fellow whose leathery exterior hides a frightened boy...Daniel Aukin's painterly diorama production benefits from key support from a fine Tom Pelphrey as May's bemused beau and Gordon Joseph Weiss as a spectral old-timer who may have fathered both fractious lovers (there's a whisper of Greek tragedy amidst the tumbleweeds). But it's Rockwell and Arianda who most strike the sparks, blow on the embers and get the fire raging.

Ms. Arianda has returned to Broadway in a revival of Sam Shepard's 'Fool for Love' that originated at Massachusetts' Williamstown Theatre Festival. Directed by Daniel Aukin, it is fully worthy of her gifts, and the results are -- almost literally -- explosive. This show will make you sweat...Dane Laffrey, the set designer, has situated the action of the play in a shallow, low-ceilinged wooden box that forces Ms. Arianda and Mr. Rockwell to spend much of their time standing in profile to the audience. They look like a lanky pair of parentheses and act like two rabid dogs in heat. It's no knock on Mr. Rockwell, who delivers his big monologue with unemphatic but absorbing force, to point out that whenever Ms. Arianda is onstage, she's the one you look at and listen to. I wish she'd worked harder on her accent, but that doesn't matter too much: Every other part of her performance is scaldingly, unimpeachably real.

Everything is in place for what really ought to have been a deeply scary, even deliriously entertaining visit back to midcareer Shepard-land. We have Tony winner Nina Arianda as an impossibly slinky, outrageously bold May and Sam Rockwell as a dirt-kicking Eddie who makes the most out of cleaning his rifle and can lasso a cheap dinette chair until you almost feel sorry for it. In fact, Rockwell doesn't just rope the furniture in director Daniel Aukin's hardworking physical production. The actor, who has clearly been practicing, also lassos Arianda...Although Arianda and Rockwell have the looks, the presence and the guts, there isn't the down-and-dirty chemistry that makes the fate of the lovers' long and conflicted relationship feel inevitable and dangerous...Suffice it to say that the violence feels phony and it's hard to get overheated about the fate of the characters.

The two leads have sex appeal to spare - but this Sam Shepard play only really sets sparks flying in its final 15 minutes.

The thin 70-minute drama, which won acclaim three decades ago and was made into a film with Kim Basinger, is essentially an unsettling character study with a sense of mystery behind it. Daniel Aukin's focused, highly physical revival is built around the intense interplay between Arianda, who evokes both a hurt young girl and a torrent of violent emotion, and Rockwell, who coolly struts around and cockily plays with his lasso as if he were the Marlboro Man.

Imagine the cartoon character Olive Oyl as a baritone in a red tube dress and you've got Arianda's May. Arianda may be the first actor to feature both arms and legs akimbo, and when she's not working those long limbs, she's running around on the set's motel-room bed like a 3-year-old without her Ritalin. Since May doesn't get to speak every line of dialogue, Arianda spends the rest of her time on stage messing with her hair, braiding her hair, or pinning up her hair -- anything to keep our attention...With Arianda offstage, it's possible to notice Rockwell and Pelphrey, and to see that they're embodying their respective characters with understated grace.

Daniel Aukin's production...is also sensationally acted...Arianda vividly embodies the conflict between May's sensuality and shame as she bounces from the bed to the bathroom to the front door of the shabby motel room...(The way she wields her long blond hair, which covers her face when she's disgusted and furiously flies in all directions when her violent temper has been stoked, is something to see.) But the revelation for me was Rockwell, who sheds new light on Eddie...Eddie is often portrayed as a Marlboro Man, a last holdout of the iconic West. Rockwell shows that he can lasso furniture as adroitly as any carnival cowboy, but there's a charming clumsiness to his characterization. He's fleshy and clownish -- qualities that intensify the violent threat.

...while there's no denying their combustible chemistry, I couldn't get past the impression that only Rockwell seems a natural inhabitant of Shepard country...The actor's loose physicality, his slyly ingratiating quality, his off-kilter swagger and insouciant humor all add flavor to a guy who has proved a fatal attraction for May since high school. He knows she's bad for him and vice versa, but he can't keep away...As May...[Arianda] works her blonde mane and long legs to bewitching effect, proving no less physical a performer than Rockwell. But the volatile characterization seems more studied than lived-in. May clings like a vine to Eddie one minute and then breaks their passionate kiss with a knee to the groin the next, but the desperation behind her push-pull instability in this production is unpersuasive.

It may be that the lure for actors of such pungent roles explains the frequent Fool for Love sightings. Indeed, it may be that Shepard's demanding work-out is more entertaining for the performers who get to take on Eddie and May than it is for anyone who gets to watch them.

Sam Rockwell has earned a reputation for bringing a whiff of weirdness and explosive emotion to his roles. He delivers the goods -- and so does costar Nina Arianda -- in Broadway's combustible revival of 'Fool for Love'...Daniel Aukin directs a well-paced production and guides the cast to juicy performances. Arianda, ever fascinating, turns on a dime from light to dark. Her May is sad, sexy and desperate. Rockwell's Eddie is seductive, scary and impressive with a lasso...In short order, she slips free of the rope. Catch and release is the story of their lives -- forever. They'd be fools to believe otherwise.

Anyone who's ever slammed a door in anger will immediately recognize the hollow, stage-echo falseness of the two doors on the Fool for Love set-two doors that get slammed about once for each of the 75 minutes in Sam Shepard's 1983 play (playing now through Dec. 6 at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre). The slamming, which produces a stereo boom you can feel in your organs, eventually becomes rote and numbing. As does much else in this staunch, uninvolving production, which features tempestuous performers in Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell, but offers them not much more than glum platitudes on bad romance.