6 Reasons Dog Day Afternoon on Broadway Isn’t What You Expect

Everyone nods like they know Dog Day Afternoon. Maybe you saw the 1975 movie. Or at least you know it starred Al Pacino and John Cazale (a.k.a. The Godfather’s Michael Corleone and brother Fredo). There’s the “Attica! Attica!” moment, the sense of a sweaty 1970s New York coming apart. Sure. But the play, starring The Bear’s Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, which opens on March 30 at the August Wilson Theatre, is something else entirely. If you walk in expecting a stage version of the film, you’re going to be pleasantly disoriented. Here’s what’s actually going on once you’re in the room.

1. It’s not a straight adaptation of the movie. 
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis didn’t simply adapt the screenplay. He went back to the real events and drew on the film to build his own version, adding his own dashes of profane comedy. If you are familiar with his work from Between Riverside and Crazy or The Motherf**ker with the Hat, you realize he's known for giving actors dialogue they can sing their teeth into and isn't interested in keeping things tidy or safe. As The New York Times put it, his writing has “an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk.” 

2. The connection sneaks up on you.
As you might imagine, there is no comfort zone during a bank robbery. If the definition of character is who you are in the dark, a 1970s Brooklyn bank heist on a sweltering day will really show you if you play well with others (or not). It’s messy. People talk over each other and go off track. But then you catch these moments where they reach each other. It’s not about good guys or bad guys to root for. It’s about rooting for human compassion in the least schmaltzy way possible. 

3. It’s funnier than you'd think.
Not in a punchline way. The humor isn’t added on. It comes from who these people are and how they talk to each other. Speaking to Broadway.com, Bernthal, who plays Sonny Amato (the role Pacino originated in the film), called the original screenplay “an American masterpiece” and said the company approached the source material with “absolute and utter reverence.” But he’s also quick to say this version is its own thing: “It’s got a lens on it, a specific New York lens that I think is modern and pertinent and exciting and funny and dangerous.” Those last two words say it all, and they do it with a bona fide Brooklyn accent.

4. This actually happened.
There was a real John Wojtowicz, and there was someone he loved enough to do something stupid. Yes, there’s an intense love story at the center of this. A Life magazine feature about the heist caught a Hollywood producer’s eye, and a path that started in a Brooklyn bank branch eventually led to a Sidney Lumet film and now, more than 50 years later, to the August Wilson Theatre. Start here before you walk in the door.

5. The Bear boys are here, and this is nothing like The Bear.
Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach have known each other for more than two decades, but this is both of their Broadway debuts. When Guirgis called Moss-Bachrach out of the blue to ask if he wanted to do a reading, “I said yes before I even knew what it was. And then when I heard what it was, I was like, triple yes,” he told us. That energy is probably worth something when you’re walking into a bank robbery.

6. The cast around them is not an afterthought.
Director Rupert Goold has assembled an ensemble that delivers. John Ortiz, a longtime Guirgis collaborator, anchors the company alongside three-time Tony nominee Jessica Hecht, Spencer Garrett and Michael Kostroff, who The Wire fans will recognize as Maury Levy. Small roles punch above their billing here. This is not a two-man show with people standing around the edges looking busy. Watch everyone in that room.

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