Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – J.B. Priestley’s TIME AND THE CONWAYS receives a rare New York revival

• By drediman
• October 11, 2017
• No Comments

The company of Roundabout Theatre Company’s “Time and the Conways” at the American Airlines Theatre.

J.B. Priestley is perhaps best known to New York audiences as the playwright who wrote  An Inspector Calls, which received a stylish award-winning revival more than two decades ago. For the Broadway revival of Time and the Conways (it’s first since the original production), Priestley’s crusty and metaphysical play about the fortunes of an upper middle class British family between the two world wars, Roundabout Theater Company has employed recent Tony-winning Indecent Rebecca Taichman to dust off the mothballs. She does so, for the most part.

Ms. Taichman’s lovely production, which officially opened at the American Airlines Theatre last night, is full of pleasures. Particularly, she elegantly weaves in visual support for Priestley’s concept of time in a visually haunting manner (thanks to Neil Patel’s deceptively shifting and layered sets). By slowly moving the production from realism to a more cosmic realm, Ms. Taichman has unmoored the Conway family from time, and as a result, all their tiresome, melodramatic tantrums.

The cast is mostly very good. Elizabeth McGovern (of Downtown Abbey fame) is appropriately doting and self-absorbed as the family’s matriarch. As the four children, Anna Baryshnikov, Charlotte Parry, Matthew James Thomas, and Anna Camp give cleanly delineated performances. Even if their work rarely moves beyond the two dimensional – I believe Priestley’s fault more than anyone else’s – they do well to effectively and convincingly incorporate into their characterizations the ravages of time (a feat not always easy to pull off).

RECOMMENDED

TIME AND THE CONWAYS
Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre
2 hours, 10 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 26