Word: mantello
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...injustice. Years from now, when the brouhaha is past, Corpus Christi may get its due as one of McNally's best, most moving and personal works. His updating of the Christ story is witty but not patronizing, as sober and cleansing as a dip in baptismal water. Joe Mantello's production--a bare stage, apostles clad in identical white shirts and khakis--is a marvel of spare inventiveness. And the hushed audience reaction at the climax testifies to an artistic success that will outlast the howling...
Eight gay men on three summer weekends: a simple device for Terrence McNally's elegant meditations on manhood and friendship, maturity and mortality. This witty, generous, intimate epic (in a pristine off-Broadway production directed by Joe Mantello) follows McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart and A Perfect Ganesh. By now he has to be rated our most consistently satisfying playwright...
...Leibman, in the role of his career, makes the ruthless lawyer a delinquent child, waggling his tongue, mocking his superiors, cackling as he spews abuse, playing the telephone like an organ as he hypocritically curries or grandiosely dispenses favor. Stephen Spinella as the sick, saintly queen and Joe Mantello as his unhinged lover are endlessly watchable, nakedly real. Alas, David Marshall Grant and Marcia Gay Harden are ciphers as the Mormons, he as stolid as wood and she vibrating like Jell-O; neither offers insight into the pain that mainstream audiences are most apt to understand...
...other actors are bland, save for Cynthia Mace as the Mormon's deranged ; wife, but her role starts at a mountaintop of emotional frenzy and leaves her nowhere to go. As a gay man who deserts a dying lover, Joe Mantello projects a nihilism far more intriguing than Stephen Spinella's saintliness as the lover, although Spinella has the almost unplayable task of being visited by angels, ascending to heaven and returning to earth -- alive despite two apparent death scenes -- to bless the multitudes. Kushner has said the play's second half is two drafts away from being done...