Nora Ephron’s 'Lucky Guy' Starring Tom Hanks Opens on Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

The late Nora Ephron’s new play Lucky Guy, which opened on Broadway last night at the Broadhurst Theatre, resembles not so much conventional drama as kinetic, straight-talking journalism. Starring Tom Hanks as renowned tabloid reporter and columnist Mike McAlary, Ephron’s play depicts the newspaperman’s rise and fall in the world of city tabloids as if it were a feature profile. It's an insider story with many contributors.

The stalwart writers and editors in the smoky newsrooms of Ephron's 80's and 90's New York vie for narrative authority as they retell major events in McAlary’s career — though ultimately all the voices on stage add up to Nora’s own. A veteran of Gotham newsrooms, including a stint at the New York Post, Ephron’s sharp personal insights are the play’s unmistakable highlights.

Often told in the same exclamatory tones as headlines splashed across city tabloids, the main events in McAlary’s life are more illustrated than they are dramatized. Players agree (or disagree) about timelines and scenes are assembled accordingly, but Ephron’s characters rarely divert their attention from addressing the audience — storytelling is their business.

George C. Wolfe (Angels In America) directs an ensemble cast of fifteen led by Hanks, whose signature everyman demeanor and accessible charm are put to good use. Hanks takes the audience into his confidence with ease and brings warmth to the surface of a bullish, ambitious character. He transforms smoothly from a pavement-pounding reporter covering the police beat to a weekly columnist blinded at inopportune times by the size of his byline.

Standouts among the cast include Courtney B. Vance (Fences) as Hap Hairston, and Peter Gerety (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) as John Cotter, two of McAlary’s Newsday editors with whom he had strong bonds. Deirdre Lovejoy is refreshing as two of the only apparent women in the newsroom boy’s club, while Maura Tierney’s subdued performance as McAlary’s wife Alice feels like a missed opportunity to lend the story a more solid emotional anchor.

Yet as events turn to McAlary’s struggle with terminal illness, it’s difficult to overlook the parallel to Ephron’s own, which ended last summer while she was continuing work on this play. Between Hanks' heartfelt performance and words that at moments resonate beyond the character on stage, it’s an affecting conclusion with a broader context.

Ultimately, Ephron’s play is an earnest tribute to a particular heyday of sensational print journalism before the age of Perez Hilton and TMZ. If her characters aren't easy to get to know, it's because they're essentially beat reporters spinning stories about their lives rather than living them on stage.

Ephron's Cotter boils it down: "You’re born, you die. Everything in between is subject to interpretation. […] Everything in between is how you tell the story and who’s telling the story and what they think is important and which order to put it in and where they’re coming from." As her characters maintain their distance, the 'who' in Lucky Guy rarely ceases to be Nora herself—though there are worse ways to spend an evening than listening to anecdotes and insights from a revered New York legend.     

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar (photos: joan marcus)

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #1237

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE: Ken Burns' new documentary about the 1989 case in which five young black men were wrongfully convicted of rape, and eventually exonerated.

TOM HANKS: A slam poem about the sitcom Full House.

SH*T ANDROID FANATICS SAY: The latest in the well-known meme.

THE BOARDROOM: Improv Everywhere stages an unauthorized boardroom meeting in the office chair department of a Staples.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.

Tom Hanks Drops the F-Bomb on 'Good Morning America': VIDEO

"I'm sorry. I slipped into a brand of acting," said Hanks following the GMA wake up call.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

(via dlisted)

Tom Hanks Sorry He Called Mormons "Un-American" for Prop 8 Vote

Tom Hanks has apologized for remarks he made last week calling Mormons who voted for Prop 8 "un-American":

"Last week, I labeled members of the Mormon church who supported California's Proposition 8 as 'un-American. I believe Proposition 8 is counter to the promise of our Constitution; it is codified discrimination. But everyone has a right to vote their conscience; nothing could be more American. To say members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who contributed to Proposition 8 are 'un-American' creates more division when the time calls for respectful disagreement. No one should use 'un- American' lightly or in haste. I did. I should not have."

Hanks made the remarks at the HBO premiere of Big Love, a series centered around a fundamentalist Mormon family that practices polygamy.

Tom Hanks Calls Prop 8 Supporters 'Un-American'

At Wednesday night's premiere of HBO's Big Love, which as you may know centers around a fundamentalist Mormon family that practices polygamy, Executive Producer Tom Hanks decried Mormon support for Proposition 8, calling it "un-American," saying he hoped more light would be shed on the church's activities:

"The truth is this (show) takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen. There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here's what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who's responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process."

And, if you missed it, more light was shed on it yesterday.