Beast

Michael Weller knows that war can't be understood from afar, but he doesn't even try: he just distills a secondhand vision into comedic form. He ends up beating a corpse to death, in this case, the otherwise fresh concept that has a GI (Corey Stoll) rise from the dead to travel America with his buddy Jimmy (Logan Marshall-Green), exposing corruption, decay, religion, and capitalism in America. The aesthetics are always top-notch at New York Theater Workshop, but the cold use of video clips and flag-painted boxes to show a once-removed America ends up as just a glib surface. Despite great performances from Stoll and Marshall-Green, not to mention double-cast ensemble members like Lisa Joyce and Dan Butler, the play is too elastic to ever snap back at us.

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