Theater Review: ’Grand Horizons’ Jokes as Creaky as the Characters

Broadway’s Grand Horizons could have been titled Not Particularly. A not-particularly-engaging elderly couple has a not-particularly-compelling two-hour quarrel expressed in not-particularly-funny one-liners. Do I recommend it? Not particularly.

The play by Bess Wohl (at the Helen Hayes Theater through March 1) has been compared to the work of Neil Simon, but Neil Simon, though he was too fond of stagey contrivance and too often content to glide above the surface of his situations, was a master of comedy. A Broadway theater on West 52nd Street is named after him. Wohl, on the other hand, writes weak gestures in the direction of comedy, thin one-liners that fall into dusty silos like “inappropriate sexual reference.” It was 15 minutes before the show ended when I laughed for the first time: A self-important high school drama teacher who has huffily reminded us that he has 200 charges who look up to him is told, “200 kids is way too much for The Crucible.”

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Broadway’s Grand Horizons could have been titled Not Particularly. A not-particularly-engaging elderly couple has a not-particularly-compelling two-hour quarrel expressed in not-particularly-funny one-liners. Do I recommend it? Not particularly.

The play by Bess Wohl (at the Helen Hayes Theater through March 1) has been compared to the work of Neil Simon, but Neil Simon, though he was too fond of stagey contrivance and too often content to glide above the surface of his situations, was a master of comedy. A Broadway theater on West 52nd Street is named after him. Wohl, on the other hand, writes weak gestures in the direction of comedy, thin one-liners that fall into dusty silos like “inappropriate sexual reference.” It was 15 minutes before the show ended when I laughed for the first time: A self-important high school drama teacher who has huffily reminded us that he has 200 charges who look up to him is told, “200 kids is way too much for The Crucible.”