The Illusion
Opening Night: June 5, 2011
Closing: July 17, 2011
Theater: Peter Norton Space
A lawyer, facing mortality, desperate to find the son he drove away years before, travels in the dead of night to a mysterious cave. There he engages the services of a wizard, who conjures up visions of the romantic, adventurous, perilous life the lawyer’s son has been living since his father expelled him from home. The Illusion, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique, is Kushner’s most joyfully theatrical play, a wildly entertaining tale of passion and regret, of love, disillusionment and magic.
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June 5, 2011
The stage is wreathed in wonders for the Signature Theater Company’s stately production of “The Illusion,” the final offering in its season devoted to the works of Tony Kushner. Adapted by Mr. Kushner from “L’Illusion Comique,” a mongrel oddity of a work from the 17th-century French playwright Pierre Corneille, this “Illusion” trafficks in a special, baroque brand of magic in which flowers bloom out of nowhere, a half-buried piano plays itself, and spectral circles of seemingly airborne lanterns glow wanly, with the threat of sudden darkness always lurking.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2011
Early works from even great artists aren’t always worth the effort to dig up. That’s not the case with Tony Kushner. Before he completed his seminal "Angels in America," the playwright took a commission to reinterpret the 17th-century farcical play "L’Illusion Comique" by Pierre Corneille.
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June 6, 2011
Tony Kushner offers up a heartfelt valentine to the power of theater and the imagination — as well as some shrewd insights on the nature of love — in The Illusion, his free adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique, now being presented at the Signature Theatre Company. It’s a rich play– and one that would beneft from a more even production than the one being seen here.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2011
Signature Theatre Company is capping its highly rewarding Tony Kushner season with one of his earliest works, "The Illusion," a free adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1636 romanesque comedy that was originally commissioned by New York Theatre Workshop, where it premiered in 1988. Full of magic and mayhem, Corneille’s fanciful original is entertainingly amusing (at least as read in what Kushner says is not a very good English translation) if somewhat straightforward. Kushner has expanded and enriched it, resulting in a penetrating and poetic consideration of human desire told with a shimmering theatricality. Produced with the intelligence and meticulous care we have come to expect from this indispensable theater company and graced with Michael Mayer’s inspired direction, the two and a half hour show is a joy from start to finish.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2011
The seats are soft and the leg room generous at the Signature Theatre off-Broadway, which follows "Angels in America" with an adroit revival of "The Illusion," Tony Kushner’s meditation on life in and out of the theater.
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