And Away We Go
Opening Night: November 12, 2013
Closing: December 15, 2013
Theater: The Pearl Theater
Times change but life in the theatre remains the same: chaotic, sometimes brutal but often euphoric, too. And Away We Go jumps through time from backstage in ancient Athens to a rehearsal at the Globe, from Versailles’s Royal Theater to the first reading of a new play by Chekhov – with an unlikely stop in Coral Gables and the American premiere of Waiting for Godot along the way.
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November 26, 2013
Terrence McNally plants a big kiss on his lifelong love — the theater — in his latest play, “And Away We Go,” a time-traveling romp set backstage during epochal moments in the history of drama over a couple of millenniums. As smooches go, this one is wet — which is to say lavishly affectionate — and sloppy, meaning overstuffed and halfway to haywire. Nevertheless, fellow adorers of theater will find much to divert them in Mr. McNally’s frolicsome valentine to the glorious, maddening, demanding (insert your own clichéd adjective here) world of footlights, spotlights and ghost lights.
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November 25, 2013
Actors actually bend down to kiss the stage at the start of Terrence McNally’s thespians-through-the-ages tribute And Away We Go. But forgive them their indulgences. A funding crisis postponed the premiere of this play, which McNally wrote for the Pearl’s resident acting company, so the metatheatrical gesture isn’t as precious as it could seem. One might not be quite so understanding of the author, however. The Tony-winning playwright loosely knits together a series of sketches for a play that’s lovingly made, but not an exemplar of craftsmanship.
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November 26, 2013
Playwright Terrence McNally (Master Class, Golden Age) continues his love affair with backstage stories, but this time with diminishing returns. And Away We Go, playing at Off Broadway’s Pearl Theatre Company, is a mystifyingly schizophrenic new play about theater troupes through the ages, in which every lumbering scene seems to boil down to one of two capital-P Points: Theater is Always in Trouble or Theater Fills the Soul.
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November 24, 2013
It’s hardly the height of originality to say so, but Terrence McNally’s And Away We Go is a veritable love letter to the theater. There are, however, no better words to describe this engaging new work by one of the more celebrated and prolific contemporary American playwrights. McNally has, of course, written such letters before to both the theatre and its musicalized persona, opera, sometimes ironically, sometimes with overwhelming affection. In his It’s Only a Play, from 1986, he took a satirical look at the backstage hysteria accompanying an opening night on Broadway. In And Away We Go, McNally celebrates the behind-the-scenes dramas at various forms of repertory companies, striving through the ages to create and keep alive the classics of dramatic literature. And it’s fitting that the play is being presented by one such New York company, The Pearl, as it celebrates its 30th anniversary
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November 24, 2013
Theater nerds, rejoice! All others? Well, you may find yourself a bit confused when you see Terrence McNally’s new play, And Away We Go, directed by Jack Cummings III and now staged at The Pearl. To help you get through, you may want to bone up on Aeschylus, Shakespeare, the Burbages, French theater, Chekhov, and Beckett (you know, the basics) before you enter, because this rollicking production, which gambols higgledy–piggledy through the history of histrionics, can delight if you know what to look for.
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