And the Reviews are In!

One Man, Two Guvnors Takes New York by Storm

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One aspect of the whole One Man, Two Guvnors phenomenon that several of us physical comedy mavens have commented on is that today's theatre-going audience, no matter how sophisticated, has seen little if any really well-done physical comedy, and certainly not the heavy dose they get served by this production. So far I've seen the show once on film (National Theatre Live series), once in previews here in New York, and then again on opening night. The response of the live audience was great, with both performances earning hearty, non-stop laughter and a standing ovation at the end.

It turns out the critics liked it just as much. There's this great web site, stagegrade.com, which reproduces all of the reviews to commercial productions here in New York and gives them an approximate grade. In other words, they read the review, estimate the critic's response as being, say, a B+, and then average all of these into a composite grade. As you can see above, One Man, Two Guvnors got an "A". No surprise there.

Click here for access to all of the reviews. A lot of them make interesting reading, as they try to grapple with a form they're less used to and have to figure out who to give the credit to!