33 Variations

[NativeChelsea]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 3:25pm

I saw 33 Variations this week in previews and loved it! Jane Fonda delivers a wonderful performance, and the rest of the cast was fantastic. Moises Kaufman's story is interesting and moving, and music lovers in particular are sure to enjoy the play. I'm really curious to see how the play continues to take shape (I read on Jane Fonda's blog that they are making changes daily). Such a joy to see fresh, new, compelling theatre!

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 3:42pm

I loved the show too, but the difference between the two of us is that you're a shill and I'm not...

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 3:49pm

Shills, can we see some EFFORT next time?

[being.jeremiah]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 4:22pm

Maybe the biggest fan of Jane Fonda, the fitness guru?

Can't wait to see the show on Wednesday, though.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 6:31pm

I'll be at the matinee on Wednesday. Very excited to hear the positive reviews!

[chickfila]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 6:33pm

Loved the show, loved Jane, but she needs to learn to PROJECT her voice.

[iamdangoodman]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 6:47pm

I'm such a rube. What makes the first post a shill, rather than just someone who really liked the show? I've written far more pushy praise for my 'crush' show.

I never read this board before I saw the N2N at Arena and started following threads all over the net. Just glad nobody jumped me for chiming in!

[April Saul]

Posted: 2/15/09 at 11:53pm

I've never cried shill on this board myself, but a dead giveaway is often the fact that the person hasn't EVER posted until they were compelled to praise a particular show and the way in which they pile on that praise! That said, I thought 33 Variations was good, not amazing, and seriously needs trimming. I walked away feeling like there was probably the makings of a wonderful play inside what I had seen Saturday night, but that it was too long and my theater companion commented that she felt at times like Fonda was lecturing her on classical music a bit too much. Good ideas and some lovely transcendent moments...and I thought Jane was just fine. Is every Broadway show now contractually obligated to use projections?? Three out of the last four productions I've seen are, now Variations, and I am so tired of this trend...and of the way it seriously limits viewing a show fully from so many seats in a theater!

[Roscoe]

Posted: 2/19/09 at 12:21pm

Saw 33 VARIATIONS last night and was very disappointed and surprised. Such a lame and almost completely uninteresting play. It comes off like a Lifetime movie of the week about a mother and daughter bonding through the mother's illness, but with some Beethoven stuff thrown in so we can all feel like we're seeing something cultural.

Just no energy or life on that stage at all. The characters are all flimsy cardboard, even Beethoven. Ms. Fonda does nothing to animate her character with any real personality: the woman comes off as completely joyless, devoid of a sense of humor or anything that might make me give a damn about the disease of the week trajectory the play so relentlessly follows.

Weren't there better plays she could have found to return to Broadway in?

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/19/09 at 12:37pm

Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com reviews the show:

Jane Fonda must be feeling like $10 million bucks these days. Make it $100 million. 33 Variations, the Broadway play I saw her perform in this afternoon, is a bracingly well-written, inventively staged, and deeply moving piece about fighting the demons of finality while living to the fullest, and it's given Fonda's comeback effort (which began about five years ago, give or take) the lustre and respectability that Hollywood failed to provide with Monster-in-Law ('05) and Georgia Rules ('07).

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/02/off_the_ground.php

[boombaboy]

Posted: 2/19/09 at 12:57pm

I've seen "33 Variations" twice in previews already and look forward to seeing it again. I agree, Fonda needs to project more, but otherwise her acting is wonderful; she is a smart and brave woman and would not have chosen something less than challenging and meaningful as a vehicle for her return to Broadway. The entire cast and the whole production are terrific, this is a moving and profound piece about the human condition and artistic, familial, romantic, business and academic relationships. The author/director Moises Kaufman has hit all the right notes (pun intended) and included live piano performance of Beethoven in the play to illuminate both the creative and academic processes that occur onstage. I thought it was brilliant.

[TulitaPepsi]

Posted: 2/19/09 at 1:43pm

Amen, Roscoe. It's thin gruel indeed, seemingly created with stencils traced from WIT, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY and AMEDEUS. A pity Jane Fonda couldn't return to Broadway in something more substantial than this checklist of clichés masquerading as a play.

She plays a terminally ill Beethoven scholar who has a burning urge to discover the reason for a long gap in the creation of the 33 Variations. Of course, being a bookish scholar, she’s a cold, distant mother and has a prickly relationship with her sullen, rudderless daughter. The scholar has a goofy male nurse who hooks up with the daughter sledgehammer cute, and have an even more heavy-handed Nora Ephron moment a few scenes later.
The archivist who assists the Beethoven scholar is a stern, humorless starchy bureaucrat (of course, she’s German!) who meets the scholar later in the most contrived circumstance. Of course, the archivist later warms to the scholar who is physically falling apart and hasn't got much time left!!!

Beethoven and his much harried assistant-servant pop in and out of the proceedings. You can tell Beethoven is a great composer as he shuffles around the stage doing the whole 'mad-irascible--passionate-bellowing-wild-eyed-genius’ shtick and of course he's obsessed and has to write more and more variations because he’s physically falling apart and hasn’t got much time left!

It's recycled pap for theater snobs.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 2/19/09 at 6:16pm

I saw this on Wednesdays matinee...I simply loved it. The more and more I thought about it, the more I was entranced. I just got back, so I will return in the next 24 hours with details.

[mormonophobic]

Posted: 2/20/09 at 5:05am

I saw this tonight and absolutely loved it. This is such a touching and completely original play. The way the two stories (three at some points) intertwine is just done so well. For me, some of the best moments were when they all (mother, daughter, legend) say/feel the same thing. Really enjoyed seeing Jane Fonda and Colin Hanks onstage, as I've liked them both for some time (the latter moreso if you will forgive my youth and slight obsession with Roswell). The real cherry on top for me, however, was having a man I respect and have studied for some time appear onstage at the beginning of the play.

Before anything started, Moisés Kaufman came to the stage and thanked us all for being there. He said that it is quite brave of us all to take a chance on a preview and that he appreciated it greatly. He made a point that the play we saw tonight would never be seen again, as it is still changing while in previews. What I loved (besides just getting to see this man) was that he went on to say that any and all things we liked about the play were to be entirely attributed to the wonderful cast. And the blame for anything that did not work, he said, should rest on his shoulders alone.

All in all a class act, and superb play, from Kaufman.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 2/20/09 at 6:51am

Aw.....he made no appearance at Wednesdays matinee.

I was certainly expecting rough spots because I knew they were still rehearsing solidly. I was impressed with how tight the show actually was.

I was curious how the "younger" set would relate to this play since I find both the language and much of the subect matter to be pretty intense, so I was so happy to hear how much you liked this Mormon!

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 2/20/09 at 7:54am

Saw the show last night, and it was great to see Moises before the show started. The play itself needs a lot of work. Whenever the actors spoke to the audience, they were compelling, but for some strange reason, whenever they spoke to each other the whole thing felt tentative. And I never felt any sort of connection between Jane and Samantha. Intentional? Maybe. But it needs to look like it's the direction and not the lack thereof. I will say it was a delight to see Colin Hanks onstage however - he easily felt the most comfortable and confident on the stage and the audience really loved him.

[marknyc]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 1:08am

Saw it tonight and really enjoyed it. Moises writes such wonderful stuff - I always leave his shows enlightened and energized.

And no mics! I'm trying to recall if any of the straight plays I've seen recently did this - certainly "August" had mics. Which have not used them?

Had no problem hearing Jane of any of the cast.

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 1:12am

What's the consensus with regard to 'Best Play' nomination and potential win for 33 VARIATIONS?

[scott68]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 1:33am

Based on what's opened (and my opinion of what I've seen), I would say a nomination is quite likely, but a win would be much less so.

[hpeabody930]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 2:30am

And no mics! I'm trying to recall if any of the straight plays I've seen recently did this - certainly "August" had mics. Which have not used them?

August has no mics. Unless for very specific technical reasons pretty much across the board don't use mics, it's unnecessary.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 2:55am

33 Variations is miked. The actors aren't body-miked but there are mikes onstage. It's very rare indeed for a play to be completely unmiked on Broadway.

August was similarly miked at the Imperial. Not sure if it's miked at the Music Box, but I'd be surprised if it's not.
Updated On: 2/21/09 at 02:55 AM

[marknyc]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 3:36pm

If there were mics used, they were not audible. I was in the mezz and all the sound came directly from the actors' mouths. At some points (few), it was hard to hear.

I'm an audio/video tech, and this was clearly different from August, during which the voices came from the loudspeakers. I'm trying to remember straight plays during which I didn't hear amplified sound, and I can't recall any. The sound I heard last night was not amplified.

[Kevn520]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 8:11pm

I think, at the very least, all plays should be stage-miked. It doesn't have to be used for amplification into the house. I often pick up a listening device for plays because I have a hard time following dialogue, especially if it's not projected properly by the actors.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 10:22pm

Well, marknyc, I have a friend who's working on 33 Variations, and the last I heard from him, it was going to be amplified. This was before performances had started so perhaps they changed their mind, but I'd be surprised. It may be that they have a very good sound designer or that they decided to only slightly amplify the actors. I've seen a number of plays that I knew were amplified but that really sounded natural to my ears, though admittedly I'm not an audio/video techie. I haven't spoken to my friend recently as he's very busy with the show.

The last play on Broadway that I know was not amplified at all was Souvenir. That doesn't mean there haven't been others since, but that's the last one that I know wasn't.

On a related note, I was reading somewhere the other day (can't remember where) that one area in which Americans (and probably not just Americans) have gone backwards medically is hearing. For obvious reasons, more and more people are having hearing loss problems and at younger ages.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/21/09 at 10:54pm

Great profile on Jane:

What was hard about the part, Ms. Fonda said, was that it sometimes felt like a blow to her vanity. “I remember joking with Moisés,” she recalled. “I said: ‘You’ve taken away all the emotion, you don’t want me to have a sense of humor. You’ve taken away my sense of style.’ ”

He wouldn’t let her turn up her collar, she complained, or wear a brooch that had originally been part of her costume. “Would I like to get a few laughs?” she went on. “Of course. But that’s not my role. It was hard in the beginning, and I doubted myself a lot, but what I’m doing now is I’m viewing it as a Zen challenge: to lose the ego and view myself as the carrier of the message.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/theater/22mcgr.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=theater