Emmy Award nominee Jim Belushi ("According to Jim," "The Defenders"), Tony Award winner Robert Sean Leonard, and Outer Critics Circle nominee Nina Arianda ("A breakout performance—one of the highlights of the year" Charles Isherwood, The New York Times for Venus in Fur) head the cast in Born Yesterday, Garson Kanin’s award-winning comedy about sex and politics. Tony Award winner Doug Hughes (Doubt) directs this timeless and timely story of a not-so-honest businessman and a not-so-dumb blonde out to "capitalize" on everything Washington has to offer.
The play, which opened Sunday at the Cort Theatre and is directed with calm elegance by Doug Hughes, is riven with '40s sayings - 'Make it snappy,' 'Don't get excited,' 'So long, kid' - and yet has a very relevant, if somewhat, ham-fisted indictment of politics awash in corrupting money. It has a message campaign finance reformers would find swell.
Director Doug Hughes (Doubt) doesn't try to goose the 1946 comedy with contemporary perspective. (Anyone who sat through the egregious 1993 screen remake with Melanie Griffith knows that updating this plot doesn't work.) Instead, he lets the play stand on its own idealistic, mid-century terms in its certainty that honesty and Constitutional integrity will always win out over big-money muscle and corporate and political self-interest. Even if many in the audience are likely to roll their eyes and think, 'Yeah, good luck with that,' it's pleasurable to escape into the fantasy of less cynical times.
1946 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1989 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2011 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2011 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Nina Arianda |
2011 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | 0 |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Nina Arianda |
2011 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | 0 |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Play | Catherine Zuber |
2011 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Nina Arianda |
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