The 1991 film “Frankie and Johnny” finally lands on Broadway!
And the headliner is none other than Hollywood favorite Michael Shannon, known from “Pearl Harbor,” the villain in “Man of Steel,” and the Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water.”
With a movie star onstage, this play has become a hot ticket, so we went to see “Frankie and Johnny” and report back.
Table of Contents
About Frankie and Johnny
Because both leads are busy Hollywood actors, this run is a limited engagement through August 25, 2019.
The piece is based on the 1987 two-hander that premiered off-Broadway. That first production featured Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci, then up-and-coming and now familiar faces in film and TV.
Tucci has appeared in countless Hollywood films. Note that it has nothing to do with Elvis Presley’s 1966 movie of the same title, though that film’s songs are sometimes referenced.
The 1991 movie starred Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer and became a talking point as a bittersweet romance between wounded adults. It was released in Japan as “Koi no Tamerai Frankie & Johnny” and did well thanks in part to Pacino’s performance.
Frankie doesn’t reciprocate because of deep emotional and physical scars from a past relationship. Not knowing this, Johnny pushes clumsily and egoistically, barging into her boundaries and driving her away.
Things change when Frankie hears her favorite song requested for her on the radio by Johnny. But the Broadway staging follows the original two-actor play, not the movie’s tone, and stays faithful to that intimate format.
Now playing at the Broadhurst Theatre
Broadhurst Theatre
Address: 235 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036
For more about this unusually simple, brick-forward Broadway venue, see the page below.
The orchestra floor is quite flat
The room isn’t very tall either, so from the rear orchestra the mezzanine overhang feels close, even heavy. It fits the theater’s commercial, no-frills purpose. From the mid-orchestra forward, the slight rake helps and the space feels more open.
Drinks and merch are downstairs
Since this isn’t a musical, there’s no cast recording. Instead you’ll find books by playwright Terrence McNally.
I grabbed my usual beer (Corona: $15) and skipped the swag this time.
The interior is deliberately plain
That restraint makes the standard Broadway chandeliers pop dramatically. You’ll see them in the lobby and downstairs too.
The theater is named for playwright George Howells Broadhurst.
Our seats
How to read the ticket: ORCHE K 8
K8 = row K (11th row), seat 8 (fourth from the aisle)
Misprint alert! Our ticket should have shown OCHE (or OCHR for right) to indicate an even seat block, but it printed “OCHO” as if it were odd-numbered. We still got to the correct place without trouble, but it was a funny catch.
After the show stage-door experience
With Hollywood stars in the cast, we hustled to the right-side stage door from the main entrance the moment the curtain fell. I brought a permanent marker and kept the Playbill pristine in hand through the bows.
Audra appears in major screen work too, including Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” so the VIP exit made sense.
We skipped the curtain call, sprinted to the barricades, and waited. Fifteen minutes, then twenty, the SUVs still running. After about thirty minutes, it finally happened.
He exited to the street, then ducked inside the barricade, took a marker from staff, and started signing.
We were giddy after watching a relentless two-plus-hour performance without cuts. Shannon greeted each person, listened, responded, and stayed gracious to the end.
Click images to enlarge
Post-show impressions
This is a pure two-hander: two actors, no scene changes, no cuts, and a straight-through runtime of a bit over two hours. My first thought as a civilian: how on earth do you memorize that much text and sustain that much presence?
There are plenty of laugh lines and American-style jokes, but Act 1 ends with the two still missing each other. We found ourselves wondering what this play was trying to say.
The full title is “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” “Clair de lune” means “moonlight” in French. From the title we expected a tender romance, but Act 1 subverts that with Johnny’s pushy pursuit and Frankie’s firm refusals.
Taking back the time we lost
We wondered when the ice would truly break. Early in Act 2, Frankie heads for the door in anger.
Then Johnny opens up about his own painful past, and the room goes silent. Frankie confesses hers in turn. The tiny apartment seems to dissolve, replaced by an invisible space where two bruised people hold a fragile, shifting distance and search for something they can share.
Johnny says, “We wasted time, but we can take it back by living forward together.” That thought begins to move Frankie, who had more or less given up. Audra McDonald’s tear-streaked honesty in that stretch silenced the whole house.
Across this uninterrupted run, he laughs, rages, shouts, and finally breaks open. You can almost feel the energy it costs.
Two hours of soul-forward stage work at arm’s length reminded us what theater can do. And yes, the autograph we took home felt different after that, like a small proof of what we had just witnessed.
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