Divamensch

Richard and I saw this play on Broadway on 5/7.  It's been nominated for two Tonys: Best Play and Best Actor, for Frank Langella.  We were excited to see Langella, he's such an exciting actor, but he was out sick for our performance.  His role was played by his understudy, Anthony Newfield.

 

It's a French play, by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton.  It's about an elderly man dealing with dementia.  It's unsettling and disturbing because it presents things onstage that only happen in his mind.  Like he has a scene with a man and you learn in the next scene that the man was never there.

 

Newfield did a stand-out job in the central role, though it took ten or fifteen minutes to get past seeing Langella playing the role, and wondering how he would do it.  I enjoyed his performance very much once I got over that.

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The other notable person in the cast was Kathryn Erbe as the daughter.  I know her from *Law and Order: Criminal Intent*, and like her a lot on that show.  She was very good, she held the stage and delivered all the nuances of her character.

 

They play was good, an enjoyable afternoon in the theatre and of course we appreciated that it was 90 minutes long...  But I think it must have been much better with Langella.  This raises the question: does that take away from its strength as a play?