Theater: Peter Norton Space / 555 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Neil Pepe directs the world premiere of Happy Hour, by Ethan Coen. An embittered barfly has a theory--or two--about whatthe world has become. A lonely young man and lonely young woman can't see how right they are for each other. His motel room is so ugly a business traveler wants to end it all.
Your life could be worse--and in Happy Hour, three one-act comedies show you how.
December 5, 2011: Mix two ounces of misanthropy, one ounce of anomie and a jigger of acrid humor. Add two splashes of bitters and serve with a twist of tedium. That’s the nightly special — three for the price of one — at “Happy Hour,” a wearying evening of short plays by Ethan Coen that opened on Monday night at the Peter Norton Space.
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December 5, 2011: There isn't anyone you'd want to get a drink with in Happy Hour, a new three-part suite of sharply acted dark comedies by Ethan Coen, playing Off Broadway through Dec. 31 at the Atlantic Theater Company's Peter Norton Space. Luckily, misanthropes have made for lively theater since before Molière, and Coen (half of the Oscar-winning brotherly duo) has made a career of putting them to good use.
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December 5, 2011: Happy Hour, the latest string of crappy from filmmaker Ethan Coen (half of the Coen brothers), is a powerful argument for writing plays. Not that Coen has written one. He’s actually written three non-plays—barely even sketches, really—all making use of the aloof deadpan-existentialism that is the Coen brand, never to particularly flattering effect.
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December 5, 2011: The odd birds in Ethan Coen’s acidly funny Happy Hour spend so much time cooped up in their own heads that they can hardly function. In End Days, the first of the evening’s three smart playlets, a glowering barfly (Gordon MacDonald, acing the testiness) rants about the encroachments of the digital age to anyone in earshot. In City Lights, set in the late 1970s, a dyspeptic musician (Joey Slotnick) and a needy schoolteacher (Aya Cash) project their anxiety and disappointment willy-nilly. In Wayfarer’s Inn, a depressed man (Lenny Venito) on a business trip drops out of a planned double date with his friend (Clark Gregg) because he no longer feels welcome in the world.
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December 5, 2011: Theater still seems more of a drive-by than a destination for Ethan Coen, but these grimly comic vignettes offer the therapeutic enjoyment of weighing one’s own issues against other folks’ anguish.
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