The Playgoer: NYT spins Julia review?

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Thursday, April 20, 2006

NYT spins Julia review?

Look at this blurb now showing on NYTimes.com homepage and tell me if it accurately reflects the Ben Brantley review of Three Days of Rain:
Theater »
Review: 'Three Days of Rain'

Julia Roberts is "stiff" but "disturbingly beautiful"
in her Broadway debut, says Ben Brantley
Uh, I don't think it was the acting that was called "beautiful"...
The Julia story is interesting today as one of those rare theatre stories that "cross over" into the greater media. Ben Brantley may be powerful, but more people will read this review today probably than all his other reviews all year. NYT.com knows people will be coming to the site for this. Why the false--ok, miselading--advertising?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brantley's Juliaphilia, as shamelessly exhibited in that review, isn't just embarrassing, it's downright gross.

Alison Croggon said...

And creepy. Worse, it's the kind of rabbit-in-the-headlights celebrity worship that gives theatre-goers everywhere a bad name.

James Wolcott is particularly hilarious on this: "What is it about Julia Roberts that reduces grown men to such goops? The reviews for her impersonation of an upright ironing board in Three Days of Rain acknowledge that even as a stationary object she might have tried putting a little more oomph into it. But the same reviewers use the occasion of her Broadway debut to pay slave tribute to her plebian-royal majesty, swooning as if no pair of goggles devised by science is strong enough to shield the eyes from the solar radiance of her beauty whenever she parts those lush lips and gives us one of her heehaw grins."