Good Time Charlie Off-Broadway Reviews

Caution is inevitable when presenting work about your own family. (The real Charlie is very much alive and saw the play in previews.) But Haddad and Sharron can verge toward the too gentle, adding caveats to painful moments with eddying bits of self-...

Caution is inevitable when presenting work about your own family. (The real Charlie is very much alive and saw the play in previews.) But Haddad and Sharron can verge toward the too gentle, adding caveats to painful moments with eddying bits of self-awareness, in which characters interrupt Haddad, insisting they don’t want to relive their own trauma, have rewrites. That’s a playwright’s wrestling match that, as my colleague Sara Holdren noted recently, doesn’t need an audience. Either give us that unflattering scene or don’t. You have to be willing to light the fuse of your Buddenbrooks or Long Day’s Journey Into Night, walk away, and live with the ensuing Thanksgiving-table explosions.

Danny Sharon, the director, neatly stages the ebb, flow, and full stops of Haddad’s ultra-theatrical presentation at the 200-seat Martinson Hall. The Public Theater apparently has opened its storage units and checkbook to provide a smartly designed...

Danny Sharon, the director, neatly stages the ebb, flow, and full stops of Haddad’s ultra-theatrical presentation at the 200-seat Martinson Hall. The Public Theater apparently has opened its storage units and checkbook to provide a smartly designed event. Led by Haddad’s sunshiny persona as Ryan, the confident ensemble of good actors is especially distinguished by Michael Cristofer’s touching performance as a cultivated gent facing the abyss, and also includes Beth Malone, underemployed in a role as a clear-eyed friend. Everybody capably rolls along with the meta-theatrics of the play and its production.

Haddad’s play is intimate and engaging, even as it inevitably covers material about the gay experience that’s been very well-traced. At times, the show sinks into overstatement. Sheldon’s final speech about the arts and chosen family is too on-...

Haddad’s play is intimate and engaging, even as it inevitably covers material about the gay experience that’s been very well-traced. At times, the show sinks into overstatement. Sheldon’s final speech about the arts and chosen family is too on-the-nose and tilts toward gaysplaining.