Review of "Prodigal Son"

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

This is from The Clyde Fitch Report.

John Patrick Shanley’s “Prodigal Son”: Too Prodigal?

With Prodigal Son, John Patrick Shanley has written a fascinating play. This doesn’t mean he’s written an entirely successful play, although he’s completely successful with the performance that, as his own director, he gets from Timothée Chalamet as the focal figure, a deeply distressed schoolboy named Jim Quinn.

According to the playwright’s program note, Jim Quinn is actually a moniker for Shanley himself. Thus, Prodigal Son is nothing less than a memoir conceived as a play. There you have the fascinating source for this intermissionless, 90-minute work, and there you have its complex flaw. Certainly anyone who knows anything about Shanley but doesn’t read his program note before the performance begins (as I hadn’t) will immediately wonder how autobiographical Prodigal Son is.

The full review is here.