Reviews for Cocktail Hour: A Comedy

The average rating for Cocktail Hour: A Comedy based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-31 00:00:00 Christopher J Mahan In all honesty, I read this as a desperate attempt to reach my reading goal for the year. But it was a happy accident that I picked this particular play off of my shelf, because it seems to fit nicely with all that today stands for. This play's themes of wrestling with the past, coming to terms with family relationships, clarifying one's individual identity, embracing risk, and refusing to settle for anything other than happiness aligns with my NYE ruminations this year. I could relate to the characters and their relationship with one another, and I really appreciated the scene between John and his mother where she shares some of her own story that wasn't formerly known to John. The continual exploration of who we are in context of our families, our past, our choices, and our future goals is center stage in this play, and I'm glad I read it as my final book of 2018.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-22 00:00:00 Monty Brigham Read along with "The Perfect Party" in the collection, "TCH and Two Other Plays". In the Days of Yore A R Gurney would be known as "Neil Simon the Lesser". God he cranked them out! Theatre by numbers - has not aged well. Keep the number of characters simple - 4 here (5, if brother on phone is counted). Throw in some Cultural References, so the audience can pat itself on the back for catching the jokes. Some self-referential bits. Oh, and in my volume, he wrote his own Introduction, and starts it out rather more-or-less comparing himself to Shakespeare! OK, how did I come to this? Well, in my F&B reading, came across a reference to this play. Best point of the play - "cocktail hour" is family, "cocktail party" is outsiders included. And, yes, this will drop me down a rabbithole to Eliot's play ("The Cocktail Party") and the Euripides play he based his play on. "The Perfect Party" - throw in some Wilde and French farce. "The Cocktail Hour" - WASP, non-NY, family angst. Frost with a touch of Marxist and Freudian subtext. Make jokes about critics. One of his other good points - theatre critics are vicious, while book critics all seem to be buddies reviewing each other's books. Everyone is happy (or semi-happy, and paid off by big-pockets daddy) by the end. I can see the surburbanite filled matinees just eating this stuff up.