THE GRAND MANNER OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

Show	NY TIMES	NY POST	BLOOMBERG	TM	BACKSTAGE

Synopsis: In 1948, playwright A.R. Gurney, then a young boarding school student, traveled to New York where he attended a performance of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, going backstage afterwards to meet the production's star, the great stage actress Katharine Cornell, who was dubbed "The First Lady of the American Stage" by the legendary critic Alexander Woolcott.. A mix of remembrance and imagination, The Grand Manner is a love letter to this fabled actress and a heartfelt look back at the glorious heyday of the Broadway theatre.

Broadway Reviews

NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW:

"The title is “The Grand Manner,” but the style of A. R. Gurney’s latest play, which opened Sunday night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, is definitely on the cozy side. A homey needlepoint embroidery on Mr. Gurney’s encounter as a prep school student with the fabled American actress Katharine Cornell, this fantasy memoir allows the author’s younger, provincial self a seductive first glimpse of a world where being merely life-size isn’t enough."

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NEW YORK POST REVIEW:

"Watching A.R. Gurney's new play is like soaking in a warm, soothing nostalgia bath for an hour and a half. Ah, for the days when theater stars were larger-than-life household names, Gurney seems to sigh. "

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BLOOMBERG REVIEW:

"As a New Hampshire boarding- schoolboy, A.R. Gurney (Pete to his friends) traveled to Manhattan on a weekend to catch fellow Bufallonian Katharine Cornell as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra on Broadway. In the green room after the show, he managed with minor difficulty to get her to sign his program. "

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THEATERMANIA REVIEW:

"Katharine Cornell, who was considered one of the greatest stage actresses of her generation, is paid loving tribute in A.R. Gurney's latest play, The Grand Manner, now at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater. Despite some flaws in both the play and Mark Lamos' production, this is an entertaining 95 minutes that sheds a little bit of light on the grandeur of a true star, who is perhaps not as well remembered as she should be. "

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BACKSTAGE REVIEW:

""The Grand Manner," inspired by a 1948 real-life backstage meeting between an 18-year-old A.R. Gurney and theater star Katharine Cornell after a Broadway performance of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," finds the playwright in a gentle, ruminative mood. The four-character play spins a passing encounter into a touching if slight fable about the theater's allure and the costs of maintaining it, the encroachment of the new generation on the old, and the dangers of hiding one's true self from the world. If none of that is particularly new, Gurney compensates with engaging characters and wise observances married with pure, old-fashioned charm."

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