Reviews of Good Night, Oscar in London starring Sean Hayes [Updated]

"Sean Hayes gives an astonishing performance"

"Will and Grace’s Sean Hayes stars as trouble pianist Oscar Levant in a fast-paced, zinger-packed play which has an unforgettable climax"

"Sean Hayes, best known as the bitchily bright-eyed Jack McFarland in sitcom Will and Grace, transforms himself here into Oscar Levant"

"Doug Wright’s play is a fast-paced, highly polished, zinger-packed vehicle for his astonishing performance, which culminates in an electrifyingly expressive live rendition of Rhapsody in Blue"

"Sure, the play is schematic in its discussion of genius and madness and the boundaries of taste in television, and in the way it tees up one-liners for Oscar to thwack home."

"... everyone else on stage is a mere feed for Oscar and the show is built around Hayes’s performance."

"The deployment of the dapper ghost of Gershwin (David Burnett) is a glib device. But director Lisa Peterson moves things along with apparently effortless briskness"

"Sean Hayes on dazzling form"

"The Will & Grace star delivers a fantastically energised performance as the troubled musician Oscar Levant in this fine Broadway import"

"What sets this dazzling, considered Tony award-winning Broadway transfer apart is the fantastically energised performance from Sean Hayes"

"The director Lisa Peterson snaps sure-footedly through the action, while allowing the tender moments to breathe."

"Sean Hayes and Rosalie Craig shine in the transfer of this Tony-winning play about a pianist disintegrating on a ’50s talk show"

"Focused so tightly on the early days of American TV, this could potentially sound niche for a British audience. But in Wright’s assured hands, the collision of Levant’s private and public life down the barrel of a camera lens becomes a play about the beginning of so many things we now recognise as staples of celebrity culture."

"Hayes is extraordinary as Levant, crumpling into himself even as he makes the one-liners prompted by Parr sing off the stage. His well-honed way with comedy is the play’s secret weapon."

"There’s a grippingly feverish quality to how Rachel Huack’s dressing room and studio sets end up sharing stage space."

"It's fragmentary and frantic – culminating in a truly virtuosic piano performance by a spotlit Hayes, who looks agonisingly at his own hands as if they belong to a stranger. It’s hauntingly powerful and the apex of this funny and devastating play."

"Sean Hayes is flawless in his West End debut"

"Anybody who only knows Sean Hayes from his beloved turn as sassy, über-gay Jack in long-running US sitcom Will & Grace... is in for a revelation when they see his Tony-winning performance in this Broadway import. He’s barely recognisable."

"Doug Wright’s play, running at a snappy, high-stakes, interval-free 100 minutes"

"Wright’s script is very funny indeed, interpolating outrageous real-life quotes from Levant (“schizophrenia: it beats dining alone”, “underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character”), but also deals with the unscrupulous, exploitative nature of the entertainment industry."

"Hayes inhabits his role so completely and with such detail that he’s equal parts mesmerising and painful to watch."

"All of the acting is first-rate. Craig’s innate likability has seldom been employed as advantageously as it is here"

"... this remains a waspish, compulsive, meticulously well-crafted piece of theatre. Hayes’s brilliance elevates it into a must-see."

"Manic energy"

"Sean Hayes’ powerful, committed central performance holds together this story of a musical genius unravelling live on air"

"Wright’s writing can feel overwrought in places, cranking up the interpersonal drama with predictable, mechanical regularity like a metronome. But the script is at its best where Wright simply lets Levant speak for himself, rolling out a slew of his most quotably snarky remarks."

"Director Lisa Peterson gives the production a slick, effective staging, conveying both the exhilarating momentum and crushing time pressure of a live broadcast"

"Heading an uneven cast, Sean Hayes gives a consummate, larger-than-life performance as Oscar, channelling a profoundly unsettled, manic energy"

"... Rosalie Craig is a point of strength and stillness as Oscar’s reserved but strong-willed wife June, carefully balancing admiration for his talent with a believable wariness around his erratic changes of behaviour."

"Sean Hayes brings panache to tense talkshow encounter"

"Will & Grace star reprises his Tony award-winning role as Oscar Levant in Doug Wright’s play about a ratings-crucial TV interview"

"... in a play that explicitly hymns integrity and honesty in the entertainment industry, it feels queasy that the events depicted in Good Night, Oscar never occurred as shown."

"As Levant, Hayes gives a performance of such busyness – twitches, tics, lip curls, cigarette business – that you wonder if the stage has a fast-forward button. He also, in the moment that surely guaranteed his Tony award, delivers the piano climax live at a Steinway with exceptional panache."

"Lisa Peterson’s slick, whizzy production, co-starring Rosalie Craig as Levant’s wife June, is a thrilling theatrical experience but, perhaps perversely for a play arguing for television to be more serious, does not bear looking at too closely."

"Sean Hayes hits the right notes in quippy pianist bio-drama"

"Mental health and the ghost of Gershwin loom large in Doug Wright’s Tony-winning play about the darkly witty Oscar Levant"

"... as the play shifts from faction to expressionist psychodrama it feels as if Wright and director Lisa Peterson can’t decide where they want to take us."

"There are rather lukewarm parentheses on comedy’s duty to say the unsayable, tantalising moments of tenderness between Levant and his wife (Craig bringing emotional hurt to a script heavy on flashy quips) and hints of a deeper exploration of mental health."

"But that’s all blown away by one coup de théâtre... Hayes on a Steinway is the real deal — and it’s worth the wait."

"Tony-winning Sean Hayes exudes awkward brilliance and pathos as a troubled pianist"

"Doug Wright’s midcentury period piece delivers a glimmering, beguiling surface without looking too hard at what’s going on underneath"

"In a Tony Award-winning performance, its star Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) drenches this role in pathos and awkward brilliance, his sharp edges and jagged nerves rubbing uncomfortably against the smooth patter of a 1958 episode of Tonight Starring Jimmy Paar."

"Playwright Doug Wright is clearly captivated by his subject, but UK audiences might not be too familiar with Levant"

"As Wright’s play emphasises, Levant’s worldview was ahead of its time – and so were the people who hired him... Still, this drama doesn’t feel quite as forward-looking in its perspective on mental illness."

"This play’s exposition-heavy early scenes move slowly. But once recording starts, director Lisa Peterson’s lavishly drawn period piece comes alive."

"This play might be satirising the media world that exploited and destroyed Levant, but it nonetheless falls into the same trap – of delivering a glimmering, beguiling surface without looking too hard at what’s going on underneath."

"Good Night, Oscar is a Tony Award winner, but nobody this side of the Atlantic will care"

"Doug Wright has serious points to make but it’s a tricky proposition in Britain"

"... we leave this 100-minute play no wiser as to the real man behind this troubled facade. Although we understand that Wright has serious points to make about the shifting morality of what is served up in the name of ratings and entertainment, we cannot help but feel a little bit grubby."

"Oscar has proved a career-changing role for Hayes... accomplished though Oscar’s slurred drawl and twitches are, it’s a performance that lacks any sense of interiority."

"We must wait until right at the end of Lisa Peterson’s production to witness Hayes in true virtuoso mode, as he sits down at a Steinway and reveals himself to be a dazzlingly accomplished pianist... All the same, I don’t think that theatre awards should be given out for piano playing."

"I cannot say that I was sorry to bid goodnight to Oscar and his colleagues."