Were Critics Warm to Off-Broadway's The Wooden Breeks?

A comic tale set in the hamlet of Brood, Glen Berger's The Wooden Breeks opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on February 21 after a one-week delay. Did critics think it was worth the wait?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

William Stevenson in his Broadway.com Review: "Glen Berger's fairy tale-like play boasts a convoluted plot and elements lifted from The Pillowman. It's not nearly as gripping as Martin McDonagh's drama, however, and doesn't hold a candle to Grimm's Fairy Tales. No, The Wooden Breeks is just plain grim… Altogether The Wooden Breeks runs about two hours and 20 minutes, but it feels more like four hours."

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times: "The line dividing inspired whimsy from tedious nonsense can be a fine one, and much of The Wooden Breeks, a new play by Glen Berger, falls on the wrong side of it. This elaborately conceived comedy, which opened last night at the Lucille Lortel Theater in an MCC Theater production, seeks to celebrate the consolations of storytelling through the saga of a Scottish tinker who dreams up imaginary worlds to keep despair at bay. But it's more the pitfalls of narrative, rather than its rewards, that Mr. Berger succeeds in demonstrating… The layered patterns of imagery in the play won't mean much to audiences looking merely to be engaged by a story, not dazzled by filigreed dramaturgy."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "For 15 years, playwright Glen Berger has battled the demons of Brood, a place he describes as a 'miserable, mythical' Scottish village in the 19th century. Drafts of Berger's stubbornly odd script about the place have traveled from Alaska and Southern California as he wrote and rewrote, cut and pasted his way eastward to the West Village. Now The Wooden Breeks comes to the Lucille Lortel Theatre, where the MCC Theater has staged this Dickens-meets-Brigadoon fantasy-adventure with a big, willing cast and a mordant silly streak that makes us wish we could love the event more than the obsession.This is the sort of theater that needs to be adored to be endured. Director Trip Cullman finds affectionate yet efficient ways to clarify Berger's seemingly unstageable imaginings."