"Mr. Sudeikis has a natural stage presence, a baritone voice, and he’s charming...But when he’s exhorting everyone to find their singular selves, he often looks as if he’s aching to send up his lines...If the students switched roles midway through, I doubt you’d notice...Doyle's habitually ingenious, less-is-more staging yields fewer dividends than usual.'Dead Poets Society' needs the cinematic distractions of sets and camera work. Stripped naked, it comes across as blunt and bland."
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"Let’s just say Classic Stage Company’s earnest but flat-footed adaptation inspires thoughts of Netflix streaming more than leaping up on one’s desk to cry, 'O Captain! My Captain!'...Tom Schulman has competently translated his screenplay to the stage, with scenes smoothly flowing in and out. And Doyle has assembled a solid ensemble of keen young actors as the boys...Sudeikis has a smooth, easygoing air...but he’s far too flip and contemporary to believe as a poetry-loving pedant circa 1959."
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"The play, by Tom Schulman is mostly holes, except when it’s goo...No extreme is extreme enough, especially no extreme of obviousness or cliché...At least for the first two-thirds of the 90-minute play, Doyle is almost completely successful in keeping the actors from falling into the pit of sentimentality. The boys are great...But once the story goes into overdrive, Doyle loses control; it’s as if the play were insisting on being bad despite his attempts to tame it."
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"Jason Sudeikis has enough mischief in his eyes to make John Keating a credible non-conformist hero in 'Dead Poets Society'...While there are some pleasures to be had in Sudeikis’ tweedy performance, they’re offset by the blandness of the others and some genuine weirdnesses in the script...The stage version has Sudeikis displaying his own charms, small-scale though they are. But no matter how many dead poets’ names are dragged in to class up the act, hokum is still hokum."
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"Unfortunately, promising potential doesn't materialize into much on stage, where the earnest play fails to get traction. Issues are drawn in such black and white terms — adults, bad; youth, good — there’s no room for tension or drama, just pushing your buttons. But it doesn't."
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"Doyle’s clever, simple-truths staging beguiles audiences much in the same way English teacher John Keating, portrayed here by Sudeikis in a remarkable performance, leaves a mark on his impressionistic students...Despite the colorful personalities this ensemble of young performers bring to their roles, the characters are fundamentally written as adjectives...Schulman doesn’t take the opportunity to expand his screenplay, deepen the characters, or explore the complexities of his story."
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"Doyle brings his customary stripped-down elegance to the production, and elicits sensitive performances from the young actors playing Keating's students. But Schulman's thin adaptation of his screenplay exposes its contrivances and sentimentality, failing to make a strong case for its stage translation...Despite the classy production's strengths, its insurmountable shortcoming is that this drama remains an imitation, stuck in the shadow of its source."
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"Sudeikis doesn’t deliver the same whimsy that Robin Williams brought to the role but does manage to bring a confident charm all his own. Sudeikis plays the humor of the character as deftly as he does the more thoughtful, emotional moments...'Dead Poets Society' follows the same path as its cinematic predecessor perhaps too faithfully, and unfortunately doesn’t find the same level of poignancy...It all pales in comparison to its source material."
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