Misery

[MrMiniver]

Having seen Bruce Willis in Misery and George Takei in Allegiance, I respectably disagree with you. Takei puts his heart and soul into his role. His acting is good and believable. He makes a good connection with the audience and earned his standing ovation. I can't say the same for Willis.

 

Oh, c'mon, seriously? Takei makes Shatner look like an actor. He's a complete joke. He's not acting, he's just being himself. These days audiences stand up for dogs barking.

I can't believe how low standards have gotten that anyone thinks that George Takei is an actor.

[MrMiniver]

I don't care what you think about Takei or Willis, the fact that you know who Alfred Lunt was is thrilling enough!!!

 

I would hope anyone interested in the theater would know who Alfred Lunt was. If they don't, I don't think their opinion of anything theatrical is worth listening to

[rogerG]

Looks like Ben Brantley of the NY Times agrees with everyone here who thinks Willis phones in his performance. I wonder what was Willis thinking? I can only imagine he can't wait to get out.

[edjames]

Just in case, here's Benita's review from the NYTimes:

 

Review: In ‘Misery,’ With Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf, the Ghost of Productions Past

Misery

 

By BEN BRANTLEY NOV. 15, 2015

 

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Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf in “MIsery” at the Broadhurst Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

• Though it is based on one of Stephen King’s most terrifying novels, the stage version of “Misery” will not, I promise, leave you cold with terror. The production that opened on Sunday night at the Broadhurst Theater, which stars a vacant Bruce Willis (in his Broadway debut) and a hardworking Laurie Metcalf, sustains a steady, drowsy room temperature throughout.
   
  Never mind that we start off in darkest, deepest winter in an isolated gothic farmhouse as thunder cracks and lighting flashes. You’re more likely to experience chills sitting in a tepid bath at home.
   
  This lack of shivers may not bother theatergoers who have bought their tickets simply to see an action hero of the screen in the flesh. Portraying Paul Sheldon, a best-selling novelist who finds himself held captive by a deranged fan who wields a mean mallet, Mr. Willis behaves in much the same way as he does as the indestructible Detective McClane while being tortured, shot at and nearly blown to oblivion in the
  film series, for which he is best known.
   
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  Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf in “Misery.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
  That is, he’s a wisecracking, sleepily charming stoic who occasionally flinches or roars when he is subjected to severe pain, but never, ever lets us see that he might be afraid. Even when he’s strapped to a bed, with both his legs broken while the psychopath, played by Ms. Metcalf, hovers over him with a hypodermic needle, we do not doubt that good old John McClane — I mean Paul Sheldon — will prevail.
   
  The sense of security that such confidence inspires perhaps is not the best foundation for a show meant to be if not outright scary, then at least suspenseful. Mr. King’s original 1987 novel, which I read for the first time only recently, had me on edge for days after I’d finished it. And I knew what was coming, having seen (and leapt out of my seat during) Rob Reiner’s 1990 film, which starred Kathy Bates in an Oscar-winning turn as Annie Wilkes, the role assumed here by Ms. Metcalf.
   
  The movie was a pretty good fright flick; the novel is something else — an airless, claustrophobic portrait of an egotistic writer pushed to the edge of madness by pain, pills, incarceration, the expectations of his reading public and a deadline like he’s never known before. In the book, our hero is as threatened by the demons within as he is by the madwoman beside his bed. Like him, you the reader can’t wait to escape; yet you can no more walk away from Mr. King’s tightly spun yarn than Paul can walk away from his captor.
   
  In contrast, “Misery” the play is saturated in what feels like an amused, nostalgic distance from its source material. It’s as if Mr. Willis and Ms. Metcalf had shown up at the behest of a “Misery” fan club to share memories of our enjoyment of the book and movie and to chuckle over how they once scared the wits out of us. Even the requisite dark-and-stormy atmospherics (with lighting by David Weiner, sound by Darron L West and creepy music by Michael Friedman) register as gentle, teasing reminders of guilty thrills past.
  Directed with a slack hand by Will Frears, the stage adaptation is by William Goldman, the scriptwriter’s scriptwriter, who also did the screenplay for the film. The ingeniously diabolical setup remains the same: Paul, the author of serial period romances built around a beautiful orphan named Misery, awakens from a car crash in snowy rural Colorado to find himself in a guest room in the house of a raving fan who intends to keep him there until death do them part.
   
  That fan is a plum Grand Guignol role for an actress who relishes scenery for dinner: the aw-shucks, wholesome homicidal maniac Annie Wilkes, a onetime nurse for whom the instincts to love and to kill are dangerously intertwined. On screen, Ms. Bates was bland, implacable and impenetrable, a figure destined to show up in your nightmares.
   
  Ms. Metcalf, one of the best stage actresses working, creates a life-warped, love-starved figure who, while psychologically persuasive, is not all that daunting. This wiry aging waif feels more vulnerable than the screen Annie did, partly because she lacks Ms. Bates’s imposing physical solidity. But Mr. Goldman’s script has also erased much of Annie’s grisly back story, which included evidence of a double-digit roster of earlier victims.
   
  Though still subject to wild mood swings and a predilection for torturing her adored house guest, Ms. Metcalf’s Annie is rather touching when the suave Paul pretends to pay court to her in the hope of facilitating his escape. And it did not seem inappropriate that when Paul finally landed a blow on his demented captor, I heard a woman in the audience murmur, “Awww,” as if Mr. Willis had just kicked a kitten.
   
  Unlike the movie — which, as movies will, opened up the action to let the camera travel more widely — the play stays entirely in Annie’s house and yard. David Korins has designed an impressive revolving set for the Wilkes homestead, which looks like a nice, cozy country place you would be happy to rent, at least when Annie’s in one of her compulsively tidy manic phases. This folksy self-contained world is inhabited, for the most part, by only Mr. Willis and Ms. Metcalf, though there is a third character, a sacrificial cop played by Leon Addison Brown.
   
  But this concentration of focus does not generate a matching intensity. Much of the show, which runs 90 minutes, is devoted to flat stretches of exposition in which Annie tells us about Paul’s history as well as her own, and oddly tension-free sequences in which the resourceful Paul gathers his wits and weapons for his deliverance from evil.
   
  Mr. Willis, who has shown a knack for offbeat originality in films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Mortal Thoughts,” here goes through the motions of these preparations with a generic gruff good humor and the air of someone who would just as soon be taking a nap. In that sense, at least, it is quite easy to identify with him.
   
  

[edjames]

NYPost critic has a different view of Willis:

 

Sorry, haters, but Bruce Willis doesn’t embarrass himself in “Misery.”

 

Admittedly, his Broadway debut does find him looking a little stiff — then again, his character spends the entire time either in bed or in a wheelchair. And since Laurie Metcalf does so much of the heavy lifting in this play, you barely notice her co-star seems a bit wooden. So give the guy a break!

 

yes, the pun is intentional. If you’re familiar with Stephen King’s best seller, especially its movie version, you’ll be happy to know that the most brutal scene is in the show. And it delivers a knockout blow.

 

The plot is simple: When writer Paul Sheldon is badly injured in a car accident, he’s taken in by Annie Wilkes, his self-described “No. 1 fan.”

 

She’s also a total psycho, and it doesn’t take long for Paul and the audience to figure that out.

of the action involves Paul’s schemes to escape Annie’s snowbound farm while his captor toggles between fawning praise and violent fury. If you only know Metcalf from her run on “Roseanne,” you’re in for a shock. She may look straight out of a 1980s L.L.Bean catalog, but here — playing the role that earned Kathy Bates an Oscar in 1991 — she’s scarily intense and mad as a homicidal hatter. Her Tony nomination is a lock.

 

As for Willis, he’s best with the show’s dry, ink-black humor, which isn’t surprising for an actor who’s long specialized in laid-back one-liners.

 

Well-adapted by William Goldman, the horror-tinged thriller “Misery” is popcorn theater — it’s a carnival ride that piles on the twists and thrills, complete with ominous thunder and lighting during particularly tense moments. It’s genre theater that’s gotten rare on Broadway, which is too bad: The show is shameless, and that’s what makes it so fun.