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.
While the intimate and honest views of a family’s inner workings can’t help but touch our hearts at steadily paced moments, Pictures From Home is too blunt in its characterizations, with father and son especially, repeating their arguments and complaints with unstoppable frequency. Lane has the toughest job here, having to convince the audience that we don’t know who he really is, that we haven’t seen a version of this guy displayed and portrayed in everything from An American Family to (at its most extreme) Succession. The challenge proves a bit too tough even for the indefatigable and always appealing Lane, whose left to fill the holes with high-volume point-making.
The play tries to tell what Sultan’s photographs show, and to some extent it succeeds. Because the actors are so appealing, they make for good company: Lane can wring laughs out of any line he wants just by slapping a comic cadence on it, and his restless, carping Irv is an apt foil for Burstein’s tender, reflective Larry; Wanamaker brings wit and spine to a part that is supporting in more ways than one. Director Bartlett Sher frames the play in a spare, asymmetrical physical space-designed by Michael Yeargan and lit by Jennifer Tipton—that helps keep it from seeming too cozy.
2023 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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