Very occasionally a piece of theatre comes along which is so essential that we can’t really say more than this: you absolutely have to see it and you should stop doing whatever you’re doing right now and buy tickets. We will, of course, review Good Night, Oscar in full, but all you really need to know is that it’s absolutely brilliant – the best play we’ve seen in a long, long time.
Good Night, Oscar premiered in Chicago in 2022 before transferring to Broadway for a critically-acclaimed run the following year; lead actor Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) picked up a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for his portrayal of the titular Oscar Levant. The show has opened this week in London at the Barbican Theatre with Hayes reprising the lead role, alongside Ben Rappaport who is also returning from the Broadway production, starring as talk show host Jack Paar; the wonderful Rosalie Craig joins the cast as Oscar’s wife June.
It’s an absolutely incredible performance from Sean Hayes – we couldn’t take our eyes off him the whole evening. Oscar Levant was a complicated character – a talented musician and actor, beset with mental health problems and addicted to medication – Hayes’ detailed and nuanced performance is completely believable. Doug Wright’s script is excellent: there are some incredible one liners and it moves at a scintillating pace (100 minutes, no interval). The supporting cast is universally strong – all of the acting is absolutely first-rate. We loved Rachel Hauck’s set design, too – the TV studio looks great.
We’ll insert one small caveat – while we loved Good Night, Oscar we thought it would land even better with an American audience than a British one. Most people in the UK won’t be particularly familiar with the name Oscar Levant, and the talk show format is far more synonymous with television on the other side of the Atlantic. That being said, there’s plenty of context in the show to understand who these characters are – but a wider general knowledge of American TV culture in general would have probably enabled us to appreciate the material even more.
It doesn’t matter – what we have in Good Night, Oscar is an absolutely incredible piece of writing, with a tour de force performance from Sean Hayes, brilliantly supported by an incredibly talented ensemble cast. Absolutely essential viewing.
GAY TIMES gives Good Night, Oscar – 5/5
More information can be found here.
Latest
