Theater: American Airlines / 227 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Charlie Castle is a Hollywood actor longing to walk away from his studio contract when an incident from his past threatens to enslave him. Starring Bobby Cannavale and directed by Doug Hughes.
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April 16, 2013: Being a movie star these days definitely has its drawbacks. The paparazzi who swarm whenever you approach a Starbucks. The brutal scrutiny of those red-carpet choices. The tweet that never dies.
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April 16, 2013: There’s no denying that the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Clifford Odets’ rarely seen 1949 drama “The Big Knife” is misconceived and altogether embarrassing.
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April 16, 2013: Roundabout Theatre Company adds to Broadway’s Clifford Odets renaissance with the first Main Stem revival of his 1949 drama about Hollywood, “The Big Knife.” If the show doesn’t quite rise to the level of Lincoln Center Theater’s terrific productions of “Awake and Sing” and “Golden Boy,” that’s probably because “The Big Knife,” though a sturdy piece of writing, isn’t top-drawer Odets. Still, in director Doug Hughes’ tough-minded, well-acted production, this gimlet-eyed look at the cost of selling out builds to a climax of harrowing emotional devastation.
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April 16, 2013: Clifford Odets is widely viewed as a conflicted artist torn between his social idealism and the compromising reality of working in a commercial industry. In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller wrote that Odets’ art was “the real cross he bore in a popular culture demanding instant and painless entertainment.” The weight of that cross hangs heavily in his 1949 play The Big Knife, a blunt attack on Hollywood that smacks of a playwright bitterly exculpating himself after a decade spent as a studio-system screenwriter.
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April 16, 2013: The darker side of mid-20th-century Hollywood glamour found movie stars struggling to retain their identities and souls despite the iron grip of the all-powerful studio and publicity machines. Perversions and crimes that would reflect badly on their wholesome public images were routinely covered up for the sake of the studios' revenues.
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