Photo by Johan Persson
Anyone interested in Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking would do well to steer clear of her memoir of the same title, because the whole show is in there. Having read the book prior to seeing the show, I can attest that only a few of Fisher’s anecdotes benefit from her martini-dry delivery. What mostly remains charming in its move from page to stage, however, occasionally annoys as the evening wanders towards its second hour.
Fisher, who regales the audience with tales of growing up in a Hollywood bubble as a celebrity offspring before launching into superstardom as one of the stars of Star Wars and then battling various addictions and mental illness, grows hoarser and hoarser as the show goes on, like a hostess who isn’t quite ready for her guests to leave and insists on telling just one more story.
Which is perhaps not the best simile to employ, given that one of Fisher’s first stories is about her gay friend who died in his sleep in bed with her. Still, clad in a robe and wandering around the small set on the large stage and periodically indulging in audience participation, Fisher does seem like the hostess of an intimate party, albeit one who repeats the same stories so frequently she no longer hears them. There’s a feeling of a well-oiled machine kicking into automatic gear about Wishful Drinking, and Fisher’s laundry list of woes regarding her addictions seems simultaneously too glib (she never discusses any specific incidents) and blandly familiar.
Equally familiar is Hamlet, imported from London’s Donmar Warehouse with its raison d’etre, star Jude Law, intact. But faced with both “To be or not to be” and “Alas poor Yorick,” Law is giving a master class in refreshing a text that has threatened to disappear under the barnacles of high school English classes. Too bad that director Michael Grandage hasn’t been able to raise the rest of the cast to Law’s level, allowing performances that range from adequate (Matt Ryan as Horatio) to unmemorable (John MacMillan and Harry Attwell as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so boring one wonders why Tom Stoppard thought these two characters worthy of their own play) and downright puzzling (Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s turn as Ophelia).
But, to contradict Shakespeare, this time the play is not the thing: the star is. And Law never disappoints, giving a marvelously physical performance that no one else in the cast even attempts to match. As lithe and sinuous as a Fosse dancer, Law slinks around the stage as a Hamlet who could rival Carrie Fisher herself for changes in mood, finding both the humor in overly familiar words and phrases—I spent much of the play counting how many titles come from the dialogue—and proving himself worthy of all the attendant hype. Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman, and even Fisher could take notes, because this is how a film star becomes a Broadway star.
Wishful Drinking. Through Jan. 3. At Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-719-1300. $31.50–$111.50.
