The Transformation of a Poseur, and the Loved Ones Who Suffer the Consequences
Ben BrantleyDecember 9, 2005: And then all at once there is fire. The conflagration occurs midway through what until then has been at best a lukewarm revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Touch of the Poet." Much of the cast of the play, which opened last night at Studio 54 in a Roundabout Theater Company production, has appeared to be under the impression that this is a saggy comedy of manners, not a portrait of a family in hell. And the show's ideally cast star, Gabriel Byrne, playing one of O'Neill's self-dramatizing monster fathers, has barely shaken hands with the Olympian contradictions of his character, much less embraced them.
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