Title: Not an Inspired or Coherent Production
Product review: This review is of this production, not this play--the play is great; this production, if it were music, would be frequently flat and off key. Some actors seem fine in their roles, and others are jarringly in-apt, if not inept. I want to like this performance, but I keep being distracted by the clunky manners of some these players. Also, the timing and verbal phrasing is often odd, even among the better actors, as if they were speaking lines from Ionesco, or another translated "absurdist" work. Saroyan is closer to lyric poetry than to absurdism. There are casting problems with the James Cagney version that he stars in, too, but he and his sister nail the poetic qualities of their lines--check out that film version from 1948, available for a pittance.
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