In this triumphant return to Broadway, Tony and Emmy Award winner John Lithgow dazzlingly conjures an entire cast of indelible characters - and The New York Times says the result is "superb, illuminating and uplifting." With honesty, humor and heart, he combines family memories and timeless tales into a one-of-a-kind event that New York magazine calls "pure entertainment." Don't miss John Lithgow as he elevates the magic of storytelling to masterful new heights. "Rarely have I spent so entertaining and touching a night at the theater." (The Wall Street Journal).
Lithgow's show is framed in family history, but no skeletons are exposed, unless you count the love of theater he carries in his bones. Ring Lardner's 'Haircut,' in which a country barber tells a customer about a scandal in his small town, takes up most of the first act; Lithgow livens it with deft tonsorial pantomime and a sense of dawning realization on the part of the garrulous narrator. The centerpiece of Act Two is P.G. Wodehouse's zany 'Uncle Fred Flits By,' a veddy British comic tale of embarrassment and family tension. It is a quaint and slender tale-more jam than scone-but Lithgow's love of sharing it is infectious. Likable though the stories themselves may be, the heart of this show is in their telling.
Wodehouse isn't as easy to read aloud as Lardner, but Mr. Lithgow takes a great deal of pleasure in mapping sentences whose verbs are barely in earshot of their subjects. And he revels in Dadaist assemblages like this one: 'I know if someone came to me and said 'Jelly this eel!' I should be nonplused.' Yet the Wodehouse, for all its airy wit, is not about nothing: It too is a story of deception, only in this case the kind that delivers delicious comeuppance to the puffed-up and slow-witted. And what could feel more current, more worthwhile, in the first cold days of 2018 than that? The imagination, Mr. Lithgow wants us to know, is a powerful weapon if we don't let it go dull.
2008 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2012 | US Tour |
US Tour |
2018 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2018 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | John Lithgow |
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