The Playgoer: Whither Manhattan Theatre Club:
Myself I don't think Accent on Youth is that much a crime against the theatre. David Hyde Pierce is in top form, Byron Jennings and Charles Kimbrough are wonderful, and, at its best, the scipt plays like a perfectly charming Molnar farce or Lubitsch film. (Its author Samson Raphaelson was one Lubitsch's screenwriters of choice.) But for $100 a seat???
The truth is, Accent would be a perfectly fine choice in a rep theatre's second (or third) space. But MTC--despite the fact that, as Feldman points out, they're decidedly not a rep company--made an oddly fateful decision. They programmed this brittle trifle in their high visibility (and Tony-eligible) Broadway venue, while the play they imported from Chicago that would eventually win the Pulitzer--Ruined--got stuck in their Off Broadway "Stage 1". And there it remains, even after its sixth(!) extension.
In short, despite incredible buzz coming out of Chicago's Goodman, where the premiere was a box office phenomenon, MTC didn't know what they had.
2:08 PM
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