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April 5, 2011

“Marie and Bruce,” Wallace Shawn’s 1979 portrait of a festering marriage, is just the show to see when you’re in a really, really bad mood. Not that Mr. Shawn’s play, which has been revived in high style on Theater Row by the New Group, is likely to pull you out of that mood.

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Entertainment Weekly
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Adam
Markovitz

April 5, 2011

By the time you take your seat at the new Off Broadway revival of Wallace Shawn’s 1979 play Marie and Bruce, the drama is already in full swing. Marie (Marisa Tomei) lies awake in the bed of her middle-class 1980s New York City apartment, smoking and glaring while her husband Bruce (Frank Whaley) snores away. The effect is exhilaratingly intimate — we’ve tiptoed into the epicenter of a marital crisis in medias res.

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New York Daily News
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Joe
Dziemianowicz

April 6, 2011

Take that as a heads-up about "Marie and Bruce," Wallace Shawn’s unpleasant squall of a play about a day in the life of a curdled Manhattan marriage. In the New Group revival, Oscar winner Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley star as the dysfunctional duo, characters portrayed by Bob Balaban and Louise Lasser at the Public Theater in 1980.

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April 5, 2011

In the first few minutes of the New Group’s "Marie and Bruce," the title couple take their place among some of history’s most codependent antagonists: George and Martha in "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Felix and Oscar in "The Odd Couple," Itchy and Scratchy in "The Simpsons."

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April 5, 2011

Perhaps “Marie and Bruce” was shocking when it was first performed at the Public Theater in 1980. But as revived by the New Group, in spite of strong performances from Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley, Wallace Shawn’s absurdist, downbeat drama comes across as a third-rate version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

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