The Modern Gay Way to Lose Out in Love: Review of ‘Significant Other’ on Broadway
5 / 10
The reviews had been so positive for the off-Broadway production of Joshua Harmon's Significant Other, that its laureled coronation on Broadway should have been all but assured. But there are so many jarring, derailing elements to this Roundabout Theatre production-about a gay man in his late twenties, confronting loneliness, but not really confronting loneliness convincingly, and therein lies the problem-that the evening merely becomes an extended sequence of his irritating whining. The play's peppy (occasionally extremely funny) comedy ill-balances its very dark heart, which-as the final curtain reveals-is really about one man's terrible isolation. It's Ibsen meets Will and Grace, but-as that show's Jack might screech-'in a bad way.'

