Wednesday September 30, 2009

Hollywood hunks Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman opened their new play, A Steady Rain, on Broadway Tuesday night.

The production sees sees Hugh and Daniel portray tough Chicago cops. On Monday night, the pair had to contend with a rather annoying theatergoer, whose mobile phone kept going off.

Here’s a couple of reviews:

“It all comes across like an elongated pitch meeting for an over caffeinated buddy-cop movie that might be directed by Sidney Lumet or Martin Scorsese,” writes Reuters critic Frank Scheck.

“You can feel the audience yearning to embrace Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig and the troubled cops they play. Sorry, folks. That would be tougher than giving Wolverine a manicure or asking 007 to commit,” writes New York Daily News critic Joe Dziemianowicz, who gives the play three out of five stars. “Chicago writer Keith Huff’s play is a stark and modest work that’s all talk and no action. It keeps you at arm’s length.”

“It’s hard to avoid thinking that had they chosen to recite the alphabet in counterpoint (which might have been more fun), their joint appearance would still generate ticket sales unknown for a straight play since Julia Roberts appeared in Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain,” says Ben Brantley of The New York Times, referring to Roberts’s 2006 Broadway debut, which similarly sold out despite mediocre reviews.

Despite the reviews, A Steady Rain has broken the Broadway record for the highest weekly gross of a non-musical production, making $1,167,954 in its opening week. It is slated to run until Dec. 6 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.

[Pic: Janet Mayer]

Tags: daniel craig, hugh jackman