‘The Violet Hour’ lands on Broadway
A year after it launched South Coast Repertory’s Julianne Argyros Stage, “The Violet Hour,” Richard Greenberg’s science fiction-tinged play about young Manhattan literati in 1919 who get a strange preview of how future generations will perceive them, has made it to Broadway and divided New York theater critics.
Ben Brantley of the New York Times loved Greenberg’s script (one of several SCR has commissioned from him over the years) but lamented that the “wonderful new work” is undermined by a “less than wonderful production.”
Newsday’s Linda Winer had fewer reservations; she found the staging by Evan Yionoulis, who also directed at South Coast, “handsome” and the play “beguiling” and “gorgeously written.” Clive Barnes of the New York Post panned the show as “the feeblest April Fool’s jape I’ve ever encountered in the theater.”
Greenberg’s Tony-winning baseball play, “Take Me Out,” is still running on Broadway, so “The Violet Hour” gives him a rare double-header.
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