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
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