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PRESS INQUIRIES
PRESS CLIPPINGS Magic in Miniature Big-budget productions are the garlic in the salad of a drama critic's life, a coarse, exciting flavor of which you can tire all too quickly. I like them enormously when they're done well, just as I like dancers who can jump really high, but if you're looking for magic, you're more likely to find it in a theater small enough to put you within a stone's throw of the stage. When you sit that close, sparks start to fly, and suddenly you and the actors start breathing in unison, swept up in the collective pursuit of illusion. That's why I'm pleased to direct you to a pair of shows currently being performed in two very small Off Broadway houses. Neither is the least bit fancy, and both are disarmingly delightful. Read More Philip Fisher Review How can you criticise a production that, by the end of two and a half blissful hours, has its tightly-packed audience collectively rocking with laughter? Read More Victor Gluck Review They don't write them like this anymore! And except for a few musical comedies based on films, you don't see them on stage much either. John Murray and Allen Boretz's classic farce, Room Service, has returned and it is just as funny as you remember. The Peccadillo Theater Company revival which had a successful run this summer is back for a two month engagement with its original cast intact. Credit director Dan Wackerman with truly making this (as the production's subtitle says) a “screwball comedy.” Read More A 1930s Comedy Takes Off, Both Feet on the Accelerator The Peccadillo Theater Company has its very entertaining production of the 1930s comedy “Room Service” revved up to warp speed, and by the end you have a new appreciation for that disclaimer often seen on car commercials: “Professional driver; do not attempt.” In amateur hands speed can mean recklessness, sloppiness, catastrophe. Only professionals, like the ones at work here, can maintain a frenetic pace while remaining completely in control. Read More Lessons from a legend
By HAL PRINCE I was introduced to the theater or, more appropriately, was taken by my family from the age of 8, every Saturday afternoon. I don't know why they chose Orson Welles' Mercury Theater production of "Julius Caesar" as my baptism, but they did. I remember also seeing Robert Morley in "Oscar Wilde." Why anyone would take a 10-year-old kid to see "Oscar Wilde" is a good question! Not to leave musicals out of it, the first I remember seeing starred Kitty Carlisle Hart in "White Horse Inn." Read More Steven Suskin Review Broadway hits of the Depression are typically relegated to the pile of unproduceable plays. Lincoln Center Theater bucked the trend this spring with its Tony-winning revival of 1935's "Awake and Sing!," and now Off Broadway's Peccadillo Theater Company delivers a modest yet delightful mounting of "Room Service." This daffy 1937 farce concerns a producer barricaded in a Broadway hotel room, with an unpaid $1,200 tab, battling to mount new play "Godspeed," "an epic of American history, as seen through the eyes of an ignorant Polish miner." Read More "'Room Service' Delivers Laughs" Out of the Great Depression came some of our best farces. People voraciously craved boisterous, therapeutic laughter and playwrights rose, or lowered themselves, to the occasion. Read More Slamming doors are supposedly damaging to soufflés, but there is a scintillating exception to that rule: the Pecadillo Theatre Company's revival of the 1937 John Murray-Allen Boretz farce Room Service. There are four doors on Chris Jones' Manhattan hotel-room set which are constantly being slammed by the frantic characters. Yet, when the slamming has ceased, director Dan Wackerman has baked a nearly perfect theatrical soufflé. Read More Director Dan Wackerman comments in his program notes for The Peccadillo Theater Company's new revival of Room Service that "in troubled times, people turn to farce." If this is true, then John Murray and Allen Boretz's play must have arrived at just the right time. Read More "Room Service: Four Star Entertainment" Is "hilarious" funnier than "hysterical"? Is "riotous" funnier than "side-splitting"? Just use whatever superlatives you can think of and apply them to the Pecadillo Theatre Company's new production of John Murray and Allen Boretz's 1937 rib tickling show biz farce, Room Service. I dare you to find a funnier two hours in town than this gem of a production. Read More "The Show Must Go On" It is often said that they don't make them like they used to, which implies that today's creative forces favor unoriginal productions that appeal to an impatient audience expecting formula work and phoned-in performances. But with the Peccadillo Theater Company's revival of the 1937 slapstick comedy Room Service, it can safely be said that they have made this one like they used to: just right. Read More "4 Stars: Room Service" Most of us know Room Service as a film vehicle for the Marx Brothers. By reputation it's one of their worst movies because Groucho, Chico and Harpo had to play essentially real people rather than their iconic characters. It's fascinating, therefore, to go back to the original source material – the hit Broadway play – and see what was there before it was turned into hash. That opportunity has been provided in the impeccable Pecadillo Theatre Company's revival of the 1937 John Murray/Allen Boretz comedy. Read More Frank J. Avella Review In 1937, the first staged version of Room Service opened to great notices and ran for 500 performances. The 1938 film version featured the Marx Brothers and a 1944 musical version starred Frank Sinatra! Read More
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