The Parisian Woman
4 / 10
One potentially salutary effect of the 2016 presidential election, people on the left have been nervously saying, is that it might encourage a rebirth of oppositional political art. Beau Willimon's The Parisian Woman picks up that challenge and fumbles it. Loosely adapted from a 19th-century French play by Henry Becque, the play has been rewritten since its 2013 California premiere to specifically target the current administration, though Trump's name is not mentioned aloud until the last five minutes. Yet Willimon-who mapped the political sphere succesfully in Farragut North and Netflix's House of Cards-seems stymied by his project. A political thriller stuffed into a sex comedy's dress, the play bulges in all the wrong places.
