Is Isherwood’s Boffo Review Get-Rich-Quick Scheme?
Second-string Times critic Charles Isherwood’s epic (if also painfully, Eggers-ishly knowing) gush over Thom Pain (based on nothing) last week immediately deluged its 99-seat theater. “Forgive the hysteria,” wrote Isherwood, just six months out of Variety. “Or the faux hysteria.” But there was hysteria nonetheless: The show sold $120,000 in tickets that day. The show’s star, James Urbaniak, told playwright Will Eno, “I’m afraid I might be doing this fucking thing for the rest of my life,” and its producers are looking to find a bigger theater (possibly De la Guarda’s former space). But is Isherwood trying to help himself the most by playing at Frank Rich–style king-making? A theater source says he shouldn’t get his ego up: “It’s the paper, not the name.”
—Boris Kachka