The Parisian Woman
Opening Night: November 30, 2017
Closing: March 11, 2018
Theater: Hudson Theatre
Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman stars in The Parisian Woman, a new play written by Academy Award and Emmy Award nominee Beau Willimon (“House of Cards”) and directed by Tony Award® winner Pam MacKinnon (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). The Parisian Woman is set in Washington, D.C., where powerful friends are the only kind worth having, especially after the 2016 election. At the center is Chloe (Uma Thurman), a socialite armed with charm and wit, coming to terms with politics, her past, her marriage and an uncertain future. Dark humor and drama collide at this pivotal moment in Chloe’s life, and in our nation’s, when the truth isn’t obvious and the stakes couldn’t be higher. In addition to Ms. Thurman, the cast of The Parisian Woman also stars Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama), Marton Csokas (The Lord of the Rings), Tony Award® nominee Phillipa Soo (Hamilton), and Tony Award® winner Blair Brown.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
November 30, 2017
The title of The Parisian Woman, the new stage play from House of Cards creator Beau Willimon, is a red herring. The play’s actually set in Washington DC, within and around the sprawling living rooms and ornate balustrades of lawyers, elected officials, and K-street lobbyists. Plus, no one is French.
READ THE REVIEW
November 30, 2017
Difficult as it may be, let us put Uma Thurman aside for a moment, though she is obviously the main reason that “The Parisian Woman” opened on Thursday at the Hudson Theater on Broadway. Instead, let’s begin with Derek McLane’s sumptuous set: the sitting room of a Capitol Hill townhouse with a sofa as long as a limo and breathtakingly tasteful Air Force blue walls. It’s the kind of place you’d move into instantly, if you wanted to live in a play. But I’m afraid you’d get bored in this one.
READ THE REVIEW
November 30, 2017
The name of Donald Trump is never spoken in playwright Beau Willimon’s “The Parisian Woman,” a stunningly smug, utterly incredible and wholly inept political satire of the sexual mores of the chattering Republican classes, starring Uma Thurman. At the Hudson Theatre, Broadway is teaching an object lesson in how the looming presence of the 45th president of the United States is spawning way, way more than his fair share of lousy art. Especially when progressive scribes throw their barbs with all of the nuance, sophistication and intellectual complexity of a presidential tweet. To oppose, even at fictional remove, does not, ipso facto, mean to descend to the same level. One of the fundamental problems of this terrible show is that you never for a moment believe that anyone involved here really knows how the people they are lampooning actually function. The other side, maybe. But not the Trumpians. Not even the expedient classes.
READ THE REVIEW
November 30, 2017
Beau Willimon has written the story of a D.C. couple whose power grab pitches them against unexpected roadblocks along the Via Dolorosa that is the Beltway, before reaching their destination. That’s of course an apt description of Willimon’s Netflix series House of Cards, but it also works for The Parisian Woman, which opened tonight on Broadway in a production starring Uma Thurman, making her Broadway debut in the title role. Her name is Chloe, and she’s the soignée wife of Tom (Josh Lucas, of Mark Felt and The Mysteries of Laura, etc.), a comfortably set tax lawyer well-connected in the way of fixers whose job is to keep the images of his high-profile clients blemish-free, like acne cream. The work has provided Tom with a well-appointed townhouse (the set is by Derek McLane) and Chloe with enough leisure time to indulge her passions for art, movies and a lover, Peter (Marton Csokas, Loving), a super-rich banker with a direct line to the White House.
READ THE REVIEW
November 30, 2017
Writer Beau Willimon made his mark on the stage with “Farragut North,” which shape-shifted into the film “Ides of March,” starring George Clooney, and led to his role as the creator of Netflix’s “House of Cards.” If his 2013 play, “The Parisian Woman,” leads anywhere, it will be down the drain. Naming no names here, but any number of savvy Broadway actresses might have made a formidable stage presence of Chloe (Uma Thurman), a vibrant Washington hostess who exercises her considerable seductive wiles to claw her way to political power. But entrusting this captivating character to a star from another artistic solar system proves an unkindness to both character and star.
READ THE REVIEW