THE THANKSGIVING PLAY Previews- Page 2

[KJisgroovy]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 11:33am

I haven't encountered this play yet (it won't be done in Chicago until next year) but given how frequently it's been performed around the country I assumed it was pretty great. And that cast seems pretty perfect for a comedy. On paper this seemed like a slam dunk. Interested to hear more about what folks didn't like. Is it the production or the material? 

 

[kwoc91]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 3:38pm

This one was a big miss for me as well, sadly.

The cast tries their best to bring the extremely one-note characters to life but the material was just not good. The best moments for me were when the play actually pushes into the uncomfortable and "goes there" with the subject matter, but unfortunately the show all too frequently RUSHES to bring us back to the "white people trying too hard to be politically correct" equilibrium.

I knew we were in for a long afternoon when (spoiler, maybe? below). It was a loooong 100 minutes.

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

the "12 days of Thanksgiving" intro video went all the way to the 8th day before the play actually started

 

[veronicamae]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 4:28pm

Just got home from today's matinee; I laughed - and cringed - the whole time. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Had a great time.

I see others here didn't care for it - long live the subjectivity of theatre! (With an -RE.)

[akhoya87]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 9:35pm

To me, this felt like a combination of POTUS and the Minutes.  I found the absurd end enjoyable, but the middle dragged on for a while.  (To the point where I was more interested in watching D'arcy Carden peel the skin off a single grape than whatever dialogue was happening in the scene.) 

I thought D'Arcy Carden was the funniest of the bunch.  Scott Foley broke a couple of times, although I couldn't tell if he broke genuinely, or if it was a planted break.  

Overall, I found the show to be ... fine.  Some of the videos were cringeworthily funny, while others were just cringe and dragged the show on.  

[tomwsjr]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 9:43pm

Absolutely terrible.  If there was an intermission I would have left.  A one note play, even the terrific actors couldn’t save this mess.  

[VernonGersch]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 7:10am

Surprised by the lack of chatter on this.

Going in I knew the show had been produced regionally to varying degrees of acclaim. I also had heard the show was putting a mirror up to current zeitgeist culture with satire . I have to say while entertaining and fast paced the show wasn't the great satire or cultural commentary I thought it was going to be.  Seemed a bit soft - and not as skewering as I had expected.

  The cast, this ensemble, are doing some excellent work. D'Arcy Carden in particular - and hell I will always love Scott Foley and not mad at seeing him without a shirt on - but overall thought the show was just fine...Entertaining certainly but don't think it stings as deeply or makes the social statement it wants - a bit half baked.   We definitely laughed but wanted a bit more - and given its PH history and regional love - thought there would be more to it.

Excellent production design

And trying to wrap my head around The Shining references which I don't get.  

[quizking101]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 11:05am

I saw this on Saturday and I agree with the sentiment that even an all-star cast can’t save this very amateurish treatise on white guilt and privilege in the arts. It takes a whole 100 minutes to say very little, up until the surreal ending that seems to have borrowed from “The Minutes” (a far superior work).

As someone who has had these very academic discussions about race/privilege before, this play cannot decide if it’s intentionally skewering performative wokeness or not and their inability to decide that makes the overuse of academic language less like a comical premise and more like a pedantic lecture.

Carden is fantastic, Sullivan is outstanding (and my MVP for the night), Foley is okay, and Finneran is given terrible material - she’s a great actress made to be downright insufferable here and that’s a shame.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 12:12pm

VernonGersch said: "And trying to wrap my head around The Shining references which I don't get."

To me, the moment that seemed the most The Shining like was when they were all covered in blood. Aside from the visual, that scene also showed their transformation into people so inside their own heads they were going crazy. That's what happens to Jack Torrance in The Shining (at least in the movie, I didn't read the book).   

That same scene also crystalized why The Thanksgiving Play wasn't working for me. There's no way Scott Foley's character, given how sensitive he wants to be to Native Americans would enthusiastically hold up decapitated heads. 

I found both the Scott Foley character and the Katie Finneran character totally unbelievable and overly broad caricatures. Well meaning liberals who have no context for what they're talking about is a reasonable satirical target.

However, because from the start of the play, everything they said or did seemed completely unhinged, there's no way to escalate that. It's hard to show characters have a blind spot around representation when all their behavior is strange. They can't eat cheese without it turning into a fight, they appear to have problems holding on to jobs, their sex life is apparently super weird...  

Also without completely revealing the ending, at the beginning of the play, that super "woke" couple insists there's no way to do their play without collaborating with at least one Native American. Their solution at the end is completely consistent with that point. They don't really evolve as characters. 

[jagman1062]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 4:35pm

 I saw the show on Sunday evening and I left with a big shrug. I have no background in theater other than having attended as an audience member for many years, so I may represent the general theater-going public, albeit the bridge and tunnel population. I think the show was big on ambition and short on delivery. I could never really understand the actual message of the play. I got the gist of it, but found no clear point. Was it supposed to be absurd? 

I thought Sullivan was the best of the four performers and was disappointed that Finneran, who is a talented comedic actor, seemed like she was trying too hard here. I couldn't decide if the actors were supposed to be caricatures or were portraying poorly developed characters, so they were overcompensating. To me, the show seemed more like another regional production than one being presented on Broadway. The ideas for a good show are there, but somehow the elements just didn't quite come together for me.

Updated On: 4/13/23 at 04:35 PM

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 4:44pm

I'll just say I much preferred the off-broadway production. There, the actors didn't seem to be parodying anyone, they just acted naturally. D'arcy is obviously a very funny and talented person but she seemed to be playing a version of a human where Margot Siebert just was a character who behaved that way with no comment in the performance. There's nothing wrong with the "bigger" approach taken here by everyone but it does make everyone seem like a joke so therefore there are no moments of clarity.

I also STRONGLY missed the actors doing the songs between scenes. Those videos seemed to just drag on and on.

[Fan123]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 5:36pm

Just on the diversity/representation side of things, it was interesting to me to read about how playwright Larissa FastHorse's previous plays all feature Native American characters, and those plays have rarely  been produced because producers see them as 'uncastable'. So writing this play with all white characters was a way around that. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/theater/thanksgiving-play-larissa-fasthorse-broadway.html)

[Synecdoche2]

Posted: 4/13/23 at 5:47pm

nasty_khakis said: "I'll just say I much preferred the off-broadway production. There, the actors didn't seem to be parodying anyone, they just acted naturally. D'arcy is obviously a very funny and talented person but she seemed to be playing a version of a human where Margot Siebert just was a character who behaved that way with no comment in the performance. There's nothing wrong with the "bigger" approach taken here by everyone but it does make everyone seem like a joke so therefore there are no moments of clarity.

I also STRONGLY missed the actors doing the songs between scenes. Those videos seemed to just drag on and on."

 

100% agree. This was so good at Playwrights and is just a big dud on Broadway. Chavkin is to blame, unfortunately.

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 4/20/23 at 3:13pm

Hey, EDSOSLO! Didn't know if you wanted to start a new thread for tonight's reviews or just change the name of this one in your original post!

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 4/20/23 at 3:17pm

jacobsnchz14 said: "Hey, EDSOSLO! Didn't know if you wanted to start a new thread for tonight's reviews or just change the name of this one in your original post! "

Reviews thread just launched!