Globe's Louise Kennedy likes Orson Play, too.....

STAGE REVIEW
When Orson met Larry: A tale about shadow of fame
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | February 27, 2007
WATERTOWN -- "A play about Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier has a double trick to pull off. The first and more obvious one is to persuade us that we're really watching those famous actors. The second, trickier one is to make us forget the first trick entirely. Only then can we settle down and just watch the play.
Happily, the New Repertory Theatre production of "Orson's Shadow" succeeds on both counts. Steven Barkhimer and Tuck Milligan quickly establish themselves as Welles and Olivier, respectively, not so much by exact mimicry as by an assured sense of intonation, gesture, and presence. Then they draw us irresistibly into the deeper resonances of Austin Pendleton's fine, funny, and meditative play......(snip)
The women are just as successful as the men at evoking their famous characters; Debra Wise brings a magnificent subtlety to (Vivian) Leigh's unraveling, and Helen McElwain is just perky enough as the bright young Plowright. If Jason Marr seems a little too fresh-faced for Tynan, he nevertheless captures the critic's unique blend of enthusiasm and acid. Adam Soule's Sean, though a smaller part, lends another note of brash youth to counterpoint the aging lions who no longer quite believe their own roars."

Particulary pleased when actors I like as well as admire get raves in the Big Paper!

Orson's Shadow, Ken Tynan

Just saw Austin Pendelton's ORSON'S SHADOW at the New Rep here in Boston -- Tynan's a character, and the narrator. I loved it! Mainly, I suppose because as an old theatre nut I'd read everything I could get my hands on about at least 3 of the 5 characters: they were round and rich to me before I came to their embodiments. Tynan was least interesting-- as is appropriate for a writer among stars of stage & screen, but pale compared to some of the anecdotes I'd read, and pale compared to the impression his prose made on me when we were both young. As Jeff Sweet says, Tynan "caught performance in print with a vividness and specificity few have matched." His descriptions of rehearsals and performances are more alive in my mind's eye than many I have sat through. I'm not sure what the effect of ORSON'S SHADOW would be on a general audience, or a young one. Certainly the New Rep audience was enthusiastic about the production