HurlyBurly - REVIEW

[Fran]

Here's a recent review about Elizabeth's performance in Off-Broadway's "Hurlyburly", opposite Ethan Hawke.

Berkley on Broadway

Elizabeth Berkley makes a vivid and difficult entrance in the second act of the off-Broadway hit Hurlyburly. Her character, Bonnie, a promiscuous "balloon dancer," has already been dissected onstage cruelly and coarsely. She must appear convincingly to convey all that the audience knows about her, and hopefully something else. Without warning she is suddenly onstage: with legs that stretch to the back of the house, a mass of tangled blond hair, semi-dressed in a hot pink micro-mini. Berkley conquers the moment, and goes beyond. She handles playwright David Rabe's rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness dialogue and makes poignant sense of a woman whose rage and fear at being thrown from a moving car dissipates alarmingly, so desperate is her need to be needed, even by the vile men of Rabe's play.

Berkley's triumph is underscored by the fact that she had but two days to learn her lines and the staging. She was in New York City a week ago for a screening of a documentary on her mentor, the late acting guide Roy London. She had planned to return to Los Angeles but then Hurlyburly, six months into its run, opened up when the actress playing Bonnie had to withdraw. Berkley, who was on Broadway last year in Sly Fox, says, "I didn't have time to be scared. I just did it. My goal is to work with the best and learn all I can. I didn't think twice, luckily!"

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[Goosin_Gosselaar]

Cool. I still haven't seen it yet. I don't think I will, since my friend doesn't want to go. I really don't feel like going by myself. Even though I go everywhere by myself.

[Fran]

Oh, come on!!! You won't go just because you're going to go by yourself??? This is a great chance to meet Elizabeth personally and actually to see a very acclaimed stage production. I think you should have to go even if you have to by yourself. But, hey, it's just what I think!

[QueenKelly]

It might be just me, but I think this is something you would want to go see with someone. It would be great to see Elizabeth's performance. I'm with Goosin. If she doesn't want to go then why go?
I don't know that much about broadway, but I don't believe you get to meet the performers in person!

[Fran]

I'm not forcing anyone to go! It's just what I think. I would go anyway but I'm CRAZY for her so it's normal, I guess. Maybe if the actor was, I don't know, Dustin Diamond, I would stayed at home! Anyhow, sometimes to can easily catch the actors as they're leaving the theatre. I've met several actors this way (not in Broadway anyhow). But I've recently read posts by people meeting Elizabeth outside the theatre.
Hey, sorry Goosin, I just find out you're a girl!! Sorry, I 'don't know why, I always thought you were a boy!

[QueenKelly]

Fran
I never implied that you were forcing Goosin or anybody for that matter to go.

[Goosin_Gosselaar]

I still haven't gone. I honestly don't think I'll be going. I really don't feel like going by myself, since my friend never told me if she wants to go or not.

[friendsforever1333]

Awsome

[Cee]

TWO DAYS! She had two days to get her lines memorized. I'm into theatre and I don't know anybody that is capable of that! Wait to go Elizabeth!

[Fran]

Here's a part of another article about Elizabeth. It's from NY Times. Seems Elizabeth finally got the respect she deserves from critics.

'....Ms. Berkley is back onstage in New York, having taken over the role of Bobbie, the desperate party girl in Scott Elliott's scorchingly funny revival of David Rabe's "Hurlyburly." By way of making amends for my past sin, I hereby spread the word that she's pretty darn good.

You may have already heard that virtually everyone is terrific in this much-acclaimed production, but acting this rich and risky, this fresh and bold and funny, can hardly be overpraised. Some people who saw the great reviews might still have been tempted to skip the show because they have less than fond recollections of Mr. Rabe's overlong, intermittently self-important dissection of the poisonous culture of Hollywood.

But Mr. Elliott treats the play with an irreverence that lightens it. He has encouraged his actors - who include a revelatory Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton as an ice-cold sociopath and the uber-nebbish Wallace Shawn - to give free rein to their individual, idiosyncratic acting styles. The resulting tone recalls the loopy Norman Lear soap-sitcom "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," with drug-addled Hollywood scroungers replacing the suburban eccentrics. It's a hoot.

That Ms. Berkley holds her own among this skilled company of scene-stealers is a testament to how much her talent has grown since her appearance in the monumentally bad movie. As Bobbie, a "balloon dancer" who gets more than she bargained for on a joyride with a frustrated actor, the statuesque Ms. Berkley is like a big, battered Barbie doll, a bruised good-time girl who, contrary to expectations, turns out to have a more reliable moral compass than almost anyone else onstage. Ms. Berkley handles the more baroque stretches of Mr. Rabe's dialogue with aplomb, and strikes a deeply poignant note in the play's second act, when Bobbie interrupts a drug-induced, nihilistic reverie from Mr. Hawke's character with a morsel of humanistic truth: Life may be a big, empty lie, but that's no excuse for being mean to your friends'

[Cee]

I'm glad she's finally getting credit for her abilities.

[Goosin_Gosselaar]

Great, you thought I was a guy. I feel insulted. I'm kidding. It's cool, but what guy would have a name like Gossin_Gosselaar? Unless they were gay and I'm far from that. I have no problem with that, it's just that I'm not. If it was Mark-Paul on broadway, no questions asked I would go in a heartbeat, also Mario and Tiffani. Tiffani is my favorite female actress on SBTB.

[Fran]

i'm not english or american so i never payed attention to your name.... but now it makes sense!