Jon Bernthal Takes the Al Pacino Role in a Canny Piece of Stagecraft That Can’t Rival the Movie’s Haunting Power

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.