‘Dog Day Afternoon’ Broadway Review: Jon Bernthal Takes the Al Pacino Role in a Canny Piece of Stagecraft That Can’t Rival the Movie’s Haunting Power
As a piece of stagecraft, "Dog Day Afternoon," directed by Mauk Kaufman, does a canny job of translating the film’s action, keeping the flow taut and exciting. But it also does something that’s very Broadway. The movie had moments of discordant comedy, but Sidney Lumet staged it in his hair-trigger fluorescent vérité style. You felt like you were there, in that bank, with those beleaguered slovenly '70s people. On stage, the comedy gets ratcheted up, especially when Sonny is dueling with Colleen, the head teller, played by Jessica Hecht with an abrasive punch that makes you think of Anne Meara. Each of the tellers, and even Sal in his paranoid stupor, are slotted into an increasingly companionable back-and-forth repartee that makes the play, at times, feel like a version of "Cheers" if "Cheers" had been a hair-trigger criminal drama with a lost psycho at its center.
As a piece of stagecraft, "Dog Day Afternoon," directed by Mauk Kaufman, does a canny job of translating the film’s action, keeping the flow taut and exciting. But it also does something that’s very Broadway. The movie had moments of discordant comedy, but Sidney Lumet staged it in his hair-trigger fluorescent vérité style. You felt like you were there, in that bank, with those beleaguered slovenly '70s people. On stage, the comedy gets ratcheted up, especially when Sonny is dueling with Colleen, the head teller, played by Jessica Hecht with an abrasive punch that makes you think of Anne Meara. Each of the tellers, and even Sal in his paranoid stupor, are slotted into an increasingly companionable back-and-forth repartee that makes the play, at times, feel like a version of "Cheers" if "Cheers" had been a hair-trigger criminal drama with a lost psycho at its center.
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