'Strangely Shrill' Katie Holmes Hijacks Broadway
STV · 10/17/08 11:40AMThe Katie Holmes Road Show and Protester Revival landed last night near Times Square, where the star made her Broadway debut amid a devoted crowd of tourists, family and Scientology nemeses flanking 45th Street. The reviews — and the heartfelt pleas for calm — are in after the jump.No one was anticipating miracles from the Schoenfeld Theater, where Holmes joined John Lithgow, Patrick Wilson and Dianne Wiest for the premiere of Arthur Miller's 1947 breakthrough All My Sons. So no one seemed disappointed that they didn't get them: Despite his best, unfailingly self-promotional intentions, Fox's Roger Friedman dampened expectations earlier this week, and the word so far from New York's more authoritative drama critics took care to treat Holmes as just another distinguished board-treader: · "The very different leading actresses — the stage veteran Ms. Wiest and the neophyte Ms. Holmes, in her Broadway debut — are sad casualties of [director Simon] McBurney’s high-concept approach. [...] Ms. Holmes delivers most of her lines with meaningful asperity, italicizing every word. This Ann is straight from the school of the Erinyes (those avenging furies from Greek mythology), and I didn’t believe for a second that she really loved the honorable, naïve Chris." — Ben Brantley, The NY Times