Three of the theatre's most inventive, inspired and award-winning artists will bring to vivid theatrical life a comic and dramatic portrait of a mother, a father and the son who photographed their lives. Based on the landmark photo memoir by Larry Sultan, adapted to the stage by Sharr White, starring Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker and staged by award-winning director Bartlett Sher, Pictures From Home will evoke memories of childhood, parenthood, and the hard-won wisdom that comes with both.
“Pictures,” directed by Bartlett Sher as an afterthought, is not really a play at all, so much as one guy’s musings about the middle class. It’s a drama-free paraphrase of Sultan’s essays punctuated by Nathan Lane and Zoe Wanamaker, as Irving and Jean respectively, wisecracking about being old. When you occasionally laugh at their jokes, you briefly forget that you’re bored.
Despite its distinctive visual source, the optics generally disappoint. Scenic designer Michael Yeargan’s suburban living-room set and Jennifer Tipton’s lights clutter and flood the broad stage of Studio 54, when they ought to be boxing, isolating, and rotating domestic areas for detailed inspection. Everything looks a bit loud and obvious, as if the elder generation’s kitschy, bright-hued aesthetic were allowed to call the shots. Sultan’s photographs are projected to fill the rear wall, a digital blow-up that does the art a disservice and only underscores the compositional blandness around it. No matter how many millions producers poured into the affair, Broadway stars and a team of designers can’t manifest what Larry Sultan did with his camera: the mystery and grace of people we thought we knew our whole lives.
2023 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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