Stage Kiss
Opening Night: February 7, 2014
Closing: March 22, 2014
Theater: Playwrights Horizons
Art imitates Life. Life imitates Art. When two actors with a history are thrown together as romantic leads in a forgotten 1930s melodrama, they quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage follows them offstage. Sarah Ruhl’s singular voice returns to Playwrights Horizons with Stage Kiss, a charming tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss—or when actors share a real one.
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March 2, 2014
Two actors—one-time lovers with a tempestuous history—fall easily into old patterns when they’re cast opposite one another in “Stage Kiss,” a smart backstage comedy from two-time Pulitzer finalist Sarah Ruhl. The play is now having its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. Stage Kiss begins at an audition, where we’re introduced to a nameless 40-something actress returning to her career after a professional dry spell. Played with spacey self-absorption by Jessica Hecht, the actress hasn’t bothered to learn her lines for this tryout, but still lands the lead, as a dying woman whose last wish is to see a former lover.
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March 2, 2014
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have to passionately smooch someone eight times a week in front of an audience? What if the person you were mackin’ on happened to be your ex? And what if your family was watching from the front row? These are the questions at hand in Stage Kiss, Sarah Ruhl’s new romantic comedy at Playwrights Horizons. The gorgeously articulate author of The Clean House and Eurydice is in top form with this delightful piece, which also happens to be the least "Sarah Ruhl-like" play she’s written.
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March 3, 2014
Who are you and what have you done with Sarah Ruhl? Ruhl’s built a sterling reputation — Pulitzer and Tony nominations, a MacArthur “genius grant” — with works invariably described as whimsical or quirky: Dead Man’s Cell Phone and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) among them. But nothing prepared me for Stage Kiss, a comedy that aims for big laughs and hits its target.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 2, 2014
Stage Kiss is part parody, part inside-baseball valentine to theater, part falling-down silly physical comedy about love. It is by Sarah Ruhl, whose plays are widely celebrated in many other corners, but whose work — including her Broadway debut, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play — tends to wear me down with self-conscious whimsy.
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March 2, 2014
“When I kissed you just now, did it feel like an actor kissing an actor or a person kissing a person?” asks the heroine of Stage Kiss, Sarah Ruhl’s daffy comedy about the emotional pitfalls of the acting life. “Because I’ve kissed you so many times over the last few weeks, I’m starting to not know the difference.” A definitive answer to her question remains troublingly elusive for the befuddled actress at the center of Ms. Ruhl’s scattered but lively blend of romantic comedy and backstage farce, which opened on Sunday night at Playwrights Horizons in a production directed by Rebecca Taichman. Jessica Hecht and Dominic Fumusa play two actors with a heady affair in their past who find themselves uncomfortably cast in a revival of a musty play from the 1930s. Their roles? A man and woman with a heady affair in their past.
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