Oliver Parker! OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

NY TIMES
AFTERELTON
BACKSTAGE
NY THEATRE GUIDE
CURTAIN UP

Opening Night:: May 17, 2010
Closing:: June 6, 2010

Theater: Cherry Lane Theatre / 38 Commerce Street, New York, NY, 10014

Synopsis:

Oliver is 17 and Jasper is 60. They are best friends. Oliver wants to get laid, and Jasper wants to help. Jasper wants to drink himself to death, and Oliver wants to save him. And they share a secret that could ruin them both... if it hasn't already. A jet black comedy about hurting the ones you love, and loving the ones that hurt.

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NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF Oliver Parker!

Sitcomish Squalor and Dysfunction
Charles Isherwood

May 21, 2010: The new play “Oliver Parker!” at the Cherry Lane Theater might qualify as offensive — certainly it strives mightily for that dubious laurel — if it were not so patently artificial. Set in a noisome New York apartment, where an adolescent boy and his alcoholic older companion enact a sitcomic relationship that gradually reveals darker shadings, Elizabeth Meriwether’s comedy combines the crass vulgarity that passes for wit in teen-aimed Hollywood movies with a well-worn stage cliché, the scabrously dark story of family dysfunction.
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AFTERELTON REVIEW OF Oliver Parker!

Oliver Parker!
Andy Propst

May 21, 2010: Elizabeth Meriwether's Oliver Parker!, which stageFARM is currently producing at the Cherry Lane Theatre, brings to mind Joe Orton's plays as it finds comedy in some of the darkest corners of our contemporary world. It's a bracing, yet only fitfully satisfying, black comedy that's enhanced immeasurably by four remarkably daring performances.
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BACKSTAGE REVIEW OF Oliver Parker!

Oliver Parker!
Mark Peikert

May 21, 2010: To label "Oliver Parker!" a black comedy about child molestation (with an atrocious title) would be an unfair assessment, one that wouldn't be helped much by adding that it's also a very funny one. Yet playwright Elizabeth Meriwether (best known for her "Heddatron") has crafted a swift, lacerating comedy about grief, coping, and, yes, child molestation.
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NEW YORK THEATRE GUIDE REVIEW OF Oliver Parker!

Oliver Parker!
Tulis McCall

May 21, 2010: Jeepers – what a month this has been already for excellent theatre. What did everyone do, wait until the old season was over before they sprung these beauties out of the gate?
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CURTAIN UP REVIEW OF Oliver Parker!

Oliver Parker!
Elizabeth Ahlfors

May 21, 2010: First impressions can tell a lot. Even before the play begins, look at the chaotic set and you can't deny that this is the living room of a very troubled person with its unkempt with food containers, broken glass and shards of pottery. On one side you catch a glimpse of a kitchen that you probably would not want to enter. Slumped in a chair, half-wearing a maroon jacket is Jasper (John Larroquette), staring at a muted television and swigging from a bottle of vodka.
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