Star Light, Star Bright

Any performer who has become famous in a medium other than the theater inspires audiences to see them on stage for one of three reasons: the chance to spend an evening in the same room as a celebrity; an opportunity to see an actor embarrass himself; or to watch a performer stretch their wings on stage in ways that film can’t allow them. And in the last few weeks, with Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, Lauren Ambrose, Joan Allen, Jeremy Irons, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, and James Gandolfini all opening on the Great White Way, it’s interesting to note which actor falls into which category.

Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons should by all rights land firmly in the third. Both are fine, intelligent actors, but in Michael Jacobs’ Impressionism, they end up embarrassing themselves. Coming across as a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie adapted for the stage, Impressionism finds lonely gallery owner Katherine (Allen) spending her days kookily preventing customers from buying anything and bantering with lonely photographer Thomas (Irons). Their fate is obvious from the start; everyone gets a happy ending in Jacobs’ world, no matter the clichéd trials in their pasts. Every flashback (all of which are accompanied with excruciatingly dull projections of famous paintings) descends to yet another subbasement in the warehouse of threadbare plot devices: Katherine’s parents’ divorce, her disillusionment at the hands of an older painter, Thomas’s personal heartbreak over a small child in Africa. Nothing is new, nothing is inventive, and Jacobs’ assiduously avoids all sharp edges in his writing, forcing Allen and Irons to tread water. Meanwhile, Marsha Mason pops up occasionally in various brash, comic roles; Michael T. Weiss hides his sexy light under the bushel of a bad wig; and André De Shields offers not one but two turns as a Magical Negro who sets the neurotic, middle-class white folk straight with earthy wisdom.

Exit the King features stars in all three categories, with Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush giving the season’s most inventive, dazzling performance as Eugene Ionesco’s 400-year-old king finally facing his own mortality. But while audiences will most likely buy tickets to see Lauren Ambrose and Susan Sarandon in person, Sarandon teeters on the brink of embarrassing herself. Usually a cool and confident performer, she gives away her unease on stage by incessantly clenching and unclenching her fists. It’s a telling tic, and a disappointing one.

And then there’s God of Carnage. Yasmina Reza’s one-act comedy, about Brooklyn parents whose conversation about their sons’ playground fight devolves into a boozy screamfest, offers four actors the chance to strut their considerable stuff on stage. Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Jeff Daniels all play roles that seem like heightened extensions of their usual characters (the neurotic, the Neanderthal, the cocky asshole), but Marcia Gay Harden stretches and shines with a blissfully unhinged performance that is the only surprising one of the play. When her Veronica finally lets loose a floodgate of repressed emotions, Harden nails the comedy, but she also delivers a welcome pathos to the proceedings. Reza’s play is little more than an enjoyable reason to watch adults behaving (and boozing) badly, but Harden’s devastating closing speech will remain with you long after both the play and the current crop of film stars on stage have faded from memory.