The Performers
Opening Night: November 14, 2012
Closing: November 18, 2012
Theater: Longacre Theatre
The Performers is a romantic comedy about two high school friends (Cheyenne Jackson and Daniel Breaker) — and the women in their lives (Ari Graynor and Alicia Silverstone) — who reconnect at the Adult Film Awards in Las Vegas. When the night takes an unexpected turn and relationships are threatened, Chuck Wood (Henry Winkler), the hardest-working man in the business, steps in to lend a hand. Sex, love and Barry Manilow intersect in this comedy about the ups and downs and ins and outs of love.
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November 14, 2012
“The Performers” offers proof positive that it’s possible to talk real dirty and still be the squarest show in town. Even in a season featuring two works by a king of Anglo-Saxon expletives like David Mamet, this comedy by David West Read may well clock the most obscenities per minute of any play on Broadway. Nonetheless Mr. Read’s perky account of innocents in porn land, centered on a film awards presentation in Las Vegas, feels like a throwback to the more discreetly risqué entertainments of 40 and 50 years ago. Though its author is only 29, “The Performers” is like an early Neil Simon farce with an X-rated vocabulary, or a blue-tongued episode of the smirky but sentimental TV series “Love American Style.”
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November 14, 2012
Most of the jokes from the new Broadway comedy “The Performers” cannot appear in a family newspaper. The world of adult films doesn’t lend itself to cleanliness.
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November 14, 2012
Even though it has probably set a world record for the most sexually graphic language ever thrown into a single play, David West Read’s 90-minute comedy "The Performers" contains not an ounce of actual nudity.
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November 14, 2012
The draw of The Performers for many will probably be a near-naked Cheyenne Jackson, playing an adult film star named Mandrew, or possibly Henry Winkler as Chuck Wood, an egomaniacal porn-industry veteran famed for his endowment. But the money shot of this production is an incandescent comic turn by Ari Graynor, her inventive line readings matched by the daffy expressivity of her face and body. As for David West Read’s play, it’s a so-so Broadway boulevard comedy with a generous dose of raunch. But while the material is as skimpy as Mandrew’s suede microshorts, the cast works on this fluff like expert fluffers.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 14, 2012
The Performers is everything the masses want on Broadway: It’s short (just 90 minutes), sexy (a send-up of the porn industry), and ruled by a ditzy scene-stealer (The Sitter’s Ari Graynor). Oh, and it also stars Alicia Silverstone, Henry Winkler, and Cheyenne Jackson, whose ripped body is blessedly on display for the show’s first 10 minutes. David West Read’s laugh-a-minute script is light, but it fires on all cylinders.
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