Marion (Marin Ireland) and Charlie Castle (Bobby Cannavale) face some tough decisions about their future together in revival of THE BIG KNIFE (photo by Joan Marcus)
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through June 2, $42-$127
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org
Clifford Odets skewers Hollywood and the studio system in The Big Knife, a sharply drawn tale of greed, temptation, and ambition that ultimately dulls as it reaches its melodramatic conclusion. Bobby Cannavale stars as Charlie Castle, a studio-era B-movie star whose twelve-year contract with Hoff-Federated is up and who needs to decide whether he is going to sign on for another fourteen years. The strong first act focuses on Charlie’s relationship with his wife, Marion (Marin Ireland), who threatens to leave him if he signs, wanting the company out of their life. But studio head Marcus Hoff (Richard Kind) and his right-hand man, Smiley Coy (Reg Rogers), are essentially blackmailing Charlie, ready to tell the truth about a scandal they helped cover up that could ruin him. Meanwhile, gossip columnist Patty Benedict (Brenda Wehle) wants the inside scoop on the Castles’ potential divorce, Charlie’s fast-talking agent, Nat Danziger (Chip Zien), is caught in the middle, and family friend and writer Hank Teagle (C. J. Wilson) wants Marion if she leaves Charlie. “Well, get seven of Hollywood’s intellectual hillbillies at one nightclub table and you’re in titanic trouble,” Hank tells Marion. “Men of a thousand causes and quips, not one unpopular or human. And then to be so dull — success has made them all so dull.” In the second act, the play becomes repetitive and predictable, the characters less likable, and many of the situations less believable, taking twists and turns that grow frustrating. The Roundabout Theatre production — the first Broadway revival since the play’s 1949 debut on the Great White Way, directed by Lee Strasberg and starring John Garfield as Charlie (Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Silver Lion-winning film featured Jack Palance as Charlie, Ida Lupino as Marion, Rod Steiger as Hoff, Shelley Winters as Dixie, and Everett Sloane as Nat) — is less successful than Lincoln Center’s recent revival of Odets’s Golden Boy, which also deals with such themes as career ambition and artistic integrity. Fluidly directed by Doug Hughes (An Enemy of the People, Born Yesterday,), the show features a solid cast highlighted by Kind’s marvelous portrayal of the sleazy, powerful Hoff, from how he walks around with hunched shoulders to how he confidently relaxes in an armchair on John Lee Beatty’s lovely Beverly Hills living-room set. The Big Knife might lose its edge as it approaches its grand finale, but is has plenty of cutting moments as it asks the age-old question, What price Hollywood?