Theater: Second Stage Theatre / 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
It's the dead of winter and the summer vacation getaway of Long Beach Island, New Jersey is desolate and blanketed in snow. Charlie is 35, heartbroken and just wants some time away from the rest of the world. The island ghost town seems to be the perfect escape until his solitude is interrupted by a motley parade of misfits who show up and change his plans. A hired beauty, the townie fireman, and an eccentric British real estate agent desperately trying to stay in the country suddenly find themselves tangled together in a beach house where the mood is anything but sunny. All New People is a world premiere by Zach Braff.
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July 26, 2011: If you’re contemplating suicide by hanging, keep in mind that it’s sensible to have that last cigarette before stepping onto the chair. That’s the little, um, life lesson enacted with bleak comic panache in the opening moments of “All New People,” a slick and slight but lively new comedy by Zach Braff at the Second Stage Theater.
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July 21, 2011: Braff is one of those multi-hyphenate creatives who can't sit still, with credits ranging from his starring gig in longrunning NBC skein "Scrubs" to writing, directing and toplining 2004 feature "Garden State." The strong visual sense that comes from working in movies and TV kicks in here with the play's morbidly funny opening image of a guy named Charlie (Justin Bartha) standing on a chair with a noose around his neck, smoking one last cigarette. But instead of stepping off when he's smoked out, this incompetent suicide candidate thrashes around, looking for an ashtray so he can put out the butt.
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July 25, 2011: While his character is the sober, responsible member of the wolf pack in the Hangover movies, Justin Bartha gets to play a suicidal mess in All New People. But the unforced charm he brings to the central role of a lovelorn depressive is a quality too frequently absent from Zach Braff’s slight debut play.
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July 27, 2011: After a while I stopped jotting down lines that made me laugh in Zach Braff's play "All New People," which opened Monday night at Second Stage. That's because there were so many. And life's short. So is the play — about 90 minutes. When it comes to chuckles-to-running-time ratios, then, this spiky dark comedy from the "Scrubs" star and writer-director-star of "Garden State" ranks well up there.
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July 26, 2011: A man tries to hang himself while listening to the music of Riverdance at the beginning of Zach Braff's All New People, making its world premiere at Second Stage Theatre. This opening sequence nicely establishes the tone of this quirky albeit uneven play, which mixes despair with absurdly humorous touches.
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July 25, 2011: "All New People," which marks Zach Braff's debut as a playwright, is not all that bad in spite of some structural problems. But it is hardly ready for a first-class Off-Broadway production. It's hard to believe Second Stage would be producing the play if not for Braff's celebrity - you remember him from "Scrubs and "Garden State," right? - and the fact that he starred in a play there last summer.
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