Dog Day Afternoon
Opening Night: March 30, 2026
Theater: August Wilson Theatre
Website: dogdayafternoon.com
Step back into the sweltering summer of 1972, New York City—a time when the Vietnam War looms large, Watergate headlines flood the news, and one man’s desperate act captivates the nation. Emmy Award winner Jon Bernthal (“The Odyssey,” “The Bear”) and two-time Emmy Award winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach (“The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” “The Bear”) ignite the stage with grit, heart, and humor. Witness the gut-wrenching twist as it unfolds, immersing you in the unfiltered chaos of a man—and a city—on the edge.
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March 30, 2026
But the comic bits and the raucous sound design, which includes deafening helicopter propellers and blaring ’70s pop hits, belong to a more cartoonish entertainment. While Bernthal is chewing scenery, Moss-Bachrach appears in an altogether different play, delivering a nicely restrained performance of a terse, repressed man. The overly articulate arguments outside the bank between Detective Fucco (John Ortiz) and the F.B.I. agent (Spencer Garrett) about the state of the city feel shoehorned in.
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March 30, 2026
Oddly, it is during that act one closer, when Sonny rallies the audience into chanting the film’s famous “Attica!” cry, that the production feels most itself. It’s essentially Disney for Dads, a curious blend of head-patting nostalgia and earnest artistry, delivered with a refreshing lack of cynicism. For all its flaws, and unlike its protagonists, Dog Day Afternoon is not trying to put one over anyone.
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March 31, 2026
Guirgis and director Rupert Goold have certainly leaned hard into the funny aspects of the plot—too hard. Now, this ultimately tragic story of two desperate bunglers comes off as a sitcom with almost zero dramatic tension or suspense. Let’s not even talk about the send-them-out-the-door-smiling ending (a bane of modern plays) that made my eyes roll to the back of my head.
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March 30, 2026
As a piece of stagecraft, “Dog Day Afternoon,” directed by Rupert Goold, does a canny job of translating the film’s logistics, keeping the flow of action taut and invigorating. But it also does something that’s very Broadway… On stage, the comedy gets ratcheted up, especially when Sonny is dueling with Colleen, the head teller, played by Jessica Hecht with an abrasive punch that makes you think of Anne Meara. Each of the tellers, and even Sal in his paranoid stupor, are slotted into an increasingly companionable back-and-forth repartee that makes the play, at times, feel like a version of “Cheers” if “Cheers” had been a trip-wire crime drama with a lost psycho at its center.
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March 31, 2026
There’s been a robbery! A new Broadway play starring Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach has stolen the title of the classic New York film “Dog Day Afternoon” and slapped it on a midseason-replacement sitcom. You certainly recognize the plot, no-nonsense characters and Brooklyn bank setting from the 1975 Best Picture-nominated heist film with Al Pacino. But the weird show that opened Monday night at the August Wilson Theatre has contorted it into something altogether unfamiliar: a stress-free series of drama-deflating punch lines that add up to little more than a barstool yarn.
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In the end, the new Dog Day Afternoon is a mostly satisfying experience that offers impressive big production values. It has the right star. It has the right set. And with a few tweaks, this Dog could truly have its day.
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March 31, 2026
Not all the well-chosen Brenda Abbandandolo costumes and David Bowie songs in the world can disguise this production’s flaws. Guirgis has written plays that capture the spirit of New York City in vibrant and original ways. But this one? This one’s a dog.
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March 31, 2026
Guirgus’ “Dog Day Afternoon” is a big, hugely entertaining and laugh-filled dramedy that’s crafted to delight the typical Broadway audience.
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What if “Dog Day Afternoon” was actually a poor man’s attempt at “The Carol Burnett Show”? That seems to be the tonally incoherent concept behind Rupert Goold’s new screen-to-stage production, an appalling near-disaster that opened at the August Wilson Theatre March 30.
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March 30, 2026
Adapted by Pulitzer-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, this Dog Day is an antic comedy of bumblers and busybodies and freaks, of nasty jokes and weak attempts at rabble-rousing. It’s a frustrating image, Guirgis and everybody else involved in this folly watching the intimate neorealism of Lumet’s film and saying, “Let’s turn this into a big Broadway farce.”
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March 30, 2026
Under the direction of Rupert Goold, the production leans into broadness. Scenes that should crackle instead drift into exaggerated, sometimes sitcom-like exchanges, leaving the show caught awkwardly between hostage thriller and ensemble comedy. Even the impressive revolving set, which fluidly shifts between the bank interior and the surrounding street, begins to feel overworked, with repeated transitions that stall rather than build momentum.
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The direction is neither sufficiently cohesive or detailed to really pull all of these different strands together to offer much more than a chance to have fun with genre stereotypes or relive a favorite movie. All night, you wait for a truly visceral scene, but it never comes.
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Director Sidney Lumet’s film managed to balance off-kilter humor and idiosyncratic humanity, but between Guirgis’s script and Goold’s staging, the play misses that mark, and the tone is out of key. It leans too insistently into farce, effectively self-sabotaging and undercutting life-and-death stakes. This story is ripe for get-real, overlapping dialogue. Instead, at times, lines are delivered sitcom-style, as if pausing for a laugh from the audience.
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Bernthal gives it his all, proving both charismatic and funny, but he too often seems to be delivering a Pacino impression. And since Sal has relatively few lines, Moss-Bacharach largely melts into the background, not being able to benefit from cinematic close-ups. Indeed, the large August Wilson Theatre, more often used for musicals, seems too vast a space for what should be claustrophobic proceedings.
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The absurdity of it all is somewhat comical as we observe Sonny and the bank staff warm to each other. The film portrayed the dynamic with a nuanced sensibility. Despite the friendlier tone, there was always an understanding that things could turn violent, and it created an air of suspense that heightened the drama. The play, conversely, lacks any real suspense, choosing a more comedic approach with forced humor. When the head teller is finally allowed to use the restroom, her peeing behind a closed door is amped up so that everyone hears it for a cheap laugh. The hostages all have superficial backstories that are inconsequential for the most part. And for whatever reason, when Sonny demands that the cops bring them something to eat, instead of pizza which was the food of choice in real life and in the film, the stage characters end up with donuts after a silly back and forth with the police deciding where to buy them.
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Over the past quarter century, in such original plays as the Pulitzer-winning “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Jesus Hopped the “A” Train,” Guirgis has proven to be our premier poet of the New York City streets, with gritty, witty, profane and humane portraits of New Yorkers on the margins and on edge. If anybody could make “Dog Day Afternoon” something other than a crass commercial venture, it would be Guirgis. But I guess nobody can, because Guirgis hasn’t.
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