Starry Some Girl(s) Faces New York Critics

With a cast full of famous faces Eric McCormack, Fran Drescher, Judy Reyes, Brooke Smith and Maura Tierney, the MCC Theater production of Neil LaBute's Some Girls is a hot ticket, extending its run at the Lucille Lortel through July 8 even before it opened. The play had its official off-Broadway bow June 8. Did critics enjoy the time they spent with these girls and their guy?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Edward Karam in his Broadway.com Review: "LaBute has provided McCormack with a psychologically complex character, and the actor delves into it with relish. Apart from the opening moments of banter, when Will Truman seems to be hovering, McCormack succeeds in shaking off any identification with his persona from TV's Will & Grace and creates a character who fascinates and repels simultaneously. Although the themes of perpetual male adolescence, ruthless manipulation and fear of commitment run through the piece, director Jo Bonney keeps the pitch and pace of the four encounters different."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "Some Girls, an MCC production directed by Jo Bonney, is one part LaBute bile to eight parts watery contrivance. And most of the performers—who include Mr. McCormack's fellow television alumni Fran Drescher The Nanny, Maura Tierney E.R. and Judy Reyes Scrubs, as well as Brooke Smith, the show's standout—do little to diffuse the impression that misanthropy, in this case, breeds monotony… Playing a thoughtless, woman-despising heterosexual, Mr. McCormack isn't much different from when he was playing a thoughtful, woman-worshiping homosexual. As in Will & Grace, he italicizes every other line for maximum comic spin and punctuates his dialogue by earnestly furrowing his features."

Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "Some Girls is one of those plays that puts a concept where its story ought to be… Very few laughs are provided by the pedestrian script... Neither director Jo Bonney nor the cast can get the thing off the ground, not even at the end, when LaBute finally exhibits a touch of his much-fabled misanthropy… The cast works hard. McCormack as LaBute's single-minded, self-absorbed egoist of an anti-hero does well enough but hardly ignites the theater with the natural charisma of a star. The four ladies he's loved and ditched vary from the rather awful, stilted Drescher as a married lady he abandoned after being discovered in flagrant circumstances by her husband, to the excellent, cheerfully spunky Tierney as a young woman prepared to give as much she takes."

David Rooney of Variety: "Four wounded women and the architect of their hurt don't add up to an awful lot in Neil LaBute's elegantly constructed but slight Some Girls. While it's laced with the usual mordant serving of misogyny and misanthropy, self-loathing and self-congratulation, and it unleashes the trademark revelatory twist, the prolific playwright's work here lacks bite. Jo Bonney's slick production, a personable cast and LaBute's chiseled dialogue keep the one-act play absorbing, but its indictment—and indulgence—of the emotionally dishonest, commitment-phobic American male feel naggingly familiar.

Justin Bergman of The Associated Press: "McCormack's transformation to narcissistic womanizer is so believable in LaBute's Some Girls, making its New York debut at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, it's hard to imagine him having trouble getting it on as his perpetually celibate gay alter-ego on television…. LaBute's words cut and wound but they are also incredibly funny, and at times poignant... One of the joys of Some Girls is knowing that every conversation will end badly but hanging on to every word and watching mouth agape, as if rubbernecking at an accident on the highway… Though dense with language, the production is imbued with a natural fluidity under the direction of Jo Bonney.

Rob Kendt of Newsday: "From its TV-minted cast to its sleek realization by director Jo Bonney, this feels like LaBute Lite: a scourging dissection of dating ethics, as usual, but one that's surprisingly agreeable, almost breezy… Ultimately, as its title promises, Some Girls feels as studiously generic as Neil Patel's modular hotel room set: The walls move, the bedding changes, the 'girls' come and go, but our hero is none the wiser."