Review Roundup: DOG DAY AFTERNOON, Starring Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Dog Day Afternoon has officially arrived on Broadway at the August Wilson Theatre. Starring Emmy Award Winners Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the new play is written by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis and directed by two-time Olivier Award winner Rupert Goold.

Step back into the sweltering summer of 1972, New York City—a time when the Vietnam War looms large, Watergate headlines flood the news, and one man's desperate act captivates the nation.  A Brooklyn bank hold up quickly goes wrong, and with each gut-wrenching twist that unfolds, chaos ensues that ignites the city as they follow the actions of a man on the edge.  DOG DAY AFTERNOON is a raw, gritty reminder of what happens when passion and desperation collide. 

Check out what the critics are saying about the new play...

Jason Zinoman, New York Times: While the dialogue keeps reminding you of the grit and grime of 1970s Brooklyn, this play is firmly a product of the family-friendly Broadway of today. Even the inevitably doomed conclusion to the robbery is given a new addition that allows audiences some easy uplift. There’s nothing wrong with comic escapism, and this show has verve and momentum that is easy to enjoy. It helps if you have never seen the movie.

Matt Windman, amNY: Under the direction of Rupert Goold, the production leans into broadness. Scenes that should crackle instead drift into exaggerated, sometimes sitcom-like exchanges, leaving the show caught awkwardly between hostage thriller and ensemble comedy. Even the impressive revolving set, which fluidly shifts between the bank interior and the surrounding street, begins to feel overworked, with repeated transitions that stall rather than build momentum.

Adam Feldman, TimeOut New York: To fill the holes left by suspense and realism, Guirgis offers broad jokes about drug use, office politics and the romantic lives of the ladies who work at the bank (who, thanks to overmiking, scream their gossip from the outset). There is also endless blathering by Ortiz’s Detective Fucco, who has been named Fucco just so that his name can be insulting mispronounced by a snide FBI agent, Sheldon (Spencer Garrett), whose every on-the-hard-nose line sounds like a South Park parody of his character. (“If this was my case to command, I could make dinner reservations for 7:30 this evening, assure the missus I wouldn’t be late, and be at the bar with a tall gin ricky by 7:15. But hey, this is your thing. And when you screw it up royally—I’ll be here to clean up your mess.”) Not all the well-chosen Brenda Abbandandolo costumes and David Bowie songs in the world can disguise this production’s flaws. Guirgis has written plays that capture the spirit of New York City in vibrant and original ways. But this one? This one’s a dog.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Despite providing some meaty roles to talented actors, Dog Day Afternoon feels like a really expensive workshop of a play that could have used a few more rounds of revisions to better balance and update the material and its tricky swirl of elements. The unanswered question here is: Why? Why turn this classic movie into a stage play? It’s as if Warner Bros. Theatricals barged into a theater, guns in hand but without a fully fleshed-out plan, and then had to cobble together an escape on the fly where nobody loses too much face (or their lives).

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: Compared to the movie, the playwright has given many of the other characters more lines, backstories and heightened personalities. The head teller Colleen (the always reliable Jessica Hecht) is even more forward and fearless, arguing with her captors, even outright reprimanding them like a dean of discipline (“Is she always like this? With the stick up her ass?” Sonny asks her co-worker plaintively.) Ortiz as the detective is a talkative mensch, the FBI agent Sheldon (Spence Garrett) harshly condescending to him. In general, the production plays up the comedy in the first act — The bank robbers are now far more clownishly inept — which at times feels overdone, as if the creative team is straining to distinguish itself from the movie. Certain scenes also have been altered, mostly to reflect the difference in what’s do-able live on stage versus on film, although David Korins set, which revolves to show the inside and the outside of the bank, largely keeps the action flowing, and the sound design by Cody Spencer fills in for the montage of street scene in the movie.

Patrick Ryan, USA Today: It may seem unfair to judge “Dog Day” so closely to its venerated source material, and Giurgis and Goold admirably don't settle for a carbon copy of the film. But what is ultimately to be gained by making this a hammy, Neil Simon-esque romp? When you deprive the audience of any real tension or emotional stakes, what is there left to grasp?

Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post: The weird show that opened Monday night at the August Wilson Theatre has contorted it into something altogether unfamiliar: a stress-free series of drama-deflating punch lines that add up to little more than a barstool yarn.

Dalton Ross, Entertainment Weekly: In the end, the new Dog Day Afternoon is a mostly satisfying experience that offers impressive big production values. It has the right star. It has the right set. And with a few tweaks, this Dog could truly have its day.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: Director Rupert Goold (Tammy Faye, Patriots, Ink) strains to infuse the proceedings with theatricality via such devices as having policeman stride down the theater’s aisles aiming guns at the stage. The high point, as you might expect, is the iconic scene in which Sonny exits the bank and screams “Attica! Attica!” at the crowd. In this case, the audience serves as the onlookers, even shouting back at Bernthal as if they were at a Mamma Mia! Sing-along.

Roma Torre, New York Stage Review: Bernthal tackles the role with gusto. His shouting and bluster are covers for a guy with a good heart. At one point he says “Admittedly we’re off to a rough start…this is my first robbery.” And it’s fun to watch him relish his newfound platform as a folk hero who sees himself as a defender of the city’s disenfranchised. Sonny’s ultimate motive involves a gay component which, in 1975, must have been rather shocking. Even today, it elicited some startled gasps from the audience. The introduction of Sonny’s “wife”, Leon (Esteban Andres Cruz), allows Bernthal to display a tender side. And the brutal honesty in their scene together is touchingly poignant.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: My ultimate feeling about “Dog Day Afternoon” as a play comes down to something so obvious it feels almost unfair to say it out loud, but I will anyway: The movie was so much better. As a director, Sidney Lumet was a volatile master of urban space and atmosphere, and Pacino’s Sonny is, quite simply, one of the indelible characters in movie history. Bernthal does a solid job portraying this angry, tormented, messed-up Brooklyn fireplug, and in some ways he gets closer to who the real Sonny was. But he doesn’t haunt us with the grandeur of his delusions the way Pacino did. It never tears us apart to see this dog have his day.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Theatre Guide: Bernthal ably anchors the production. With just a slight trace of Pacino’s cadence and voice, he’s alternately intense and likable. Moss-Bachrach is convincing as a depressed loose cannon. Jessica Hecht, per usual, lends fine support as head teller Colleen, who, in a twist to an iconic scene from the movie, instructs Sonny to scream “Attica!”

Richard Lawson, Hollywood Reporter: Director Rupert Goold is ill-suited to mitigate that sneering impulse. Goold has done good things on stage (King Charles III, among others) and decent things on film (Judy, for which Renée Zellweger won her second Oscar), but this particular milieu favors none of his fortes. The action sequences, if we can call him that, are clunky, shouty jumbles. There is nary an ounce of tension to be found during the entirety of this supposedly heated stand-off. Goold doesn’t do much with David Korins’ impressively realistic set but rotate it back and forth depending on whether we’re inside the bank or outside of it.

Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal: At times the strain of keeping up the brisk timing of the movie to fill two hours of stage time on essentially a single set results in comic vamping. A passage in which an argument erupts over which nearby shop sells the best donuts, for instance, descends into absurdity when Mr. Eddy suddenly rises from his state of near-unconsciousness to offer his opinion. (Again with the shtick!) “Dog Day Afternoon” makes for a largely diverting evening, but like many if not most stage versions of beloved films it never entirely succeeds at laying to rest the ghosts of its cinematic past.

Juan A. Ramirez, Theatrely: Oddly, it is during that act one closer, when Sonny rallies the audience into chanting the film’s famous “Attica!” cry, that the production feels most itself. It’s essentially Disney for Dads, a curious blend of head-patting nostalgia and earnest artistry, delivered with a refreshing lack of cynicism. For all its flaws, and unlike its protagonists, Dog Day Afternoon is not trying to put one over anyone.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: On stage, “Dog Day” also can’t duplicate the crowd scenes outside the bank that distinguish the movie version, where Sonny becomes an instant folk hero to the bystanders. In a masterstroke of writing and direction, Guirgus and Goold turn the theater audience into those very willing enablers.

Average Rating: 51.3%