It’s not every season that a new play clocks in at a leisurely three hours, puts 15 actors on stage, and most astoundingly, features two intermissions. Tracy Letts‘ “August: Osage County” from 2007 comes to mind, but that’s a family soap opera.
J.T. Rogers’s play, “Oslo,” which opened on Broadway Thursday with virtually the same cast as its predecessor at the Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in New York, is much grander, almost Shakespearean stuff. He brings to the stage nothing less than the inspired, complicated subterfuge that was the peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO that led to the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
Sound dry? Hardly. Rogers packs enough suspense, duplicity, and paranoia to recall the very best work of Alan J. Pakula, with a few of Alfred Hitchcock‘s better espionage pictures thrown into the mix.
The Oslo Accords were orchestrated by Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen, who worked as officials in Norway’s foreign ministry. To their credit, Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays play this real-life married couple, making them every bit as colorless as you’d expect mid-level diplomats to be.
But there’s nothing bland about their scheme: Since it’s against Israeli law for any official to meet with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Juul and Rod-Larsen plan for the two Palestinians, Ahmed Qurie (Anthony Azizi) and Hassan Asfour (Dariush Kashani), to begin their clandestine negotiations with a couple of professors from the University of Haifa, Yair Hirschfeld (Daniel Oreskes) and Ron Pundak (Daniel Jenkins).
That’s basically the first act of “Oslo.” The anxiety and fear of disclosure increases dramatically in the second act when an Israeli official, Uri Savir (Michael Aronov) of the foreign ministry, enters the picture. As opponents on stage, Azizi and Aronov are extremely well-matched in the size of their grandstanding egos. Seemingly, these kinds of international agreements only get made because some players, like Juul and Rod-Larsen, have the audacity to remain faceless while they manipulate the outsize personalities in the room.
In the third act, the drama reaches the boiling point when Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Oreskes) enters the negotiations via telephone, and the U.S. government is informed, but somewhat later.
Rogers and director Bartlett Sher are good at telling a complicated story, creating suspense, and keeping over 20 characters from merging into one another. But to achieve these not inconsiderable ends, “Oslo” sometimes stoops to the level of boulevard theater despite its mighty political themes. Too many of the characters are emerge only as broad types. Certainly we never confuse the Israelis and the Palestinians, but often that’s because the one group indulges in schmaltz while the other never stops shouting.
There’s also a Norwegian housekeeper (Henny Russell) who recalls Loretta Young in “The Farmer’s Daughter” and whose scrumptious waffles are credited with world peace. Most superficially written and performed is Juul and Rod-Larsen’s boss, Norway’s Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst (T. Ryder Smith), who is reduced to something of a buffoon whenever he’s at a loss for words, which is often, and he repeats the F-word four times in quick succession.
Rogers even indulges in a bit of real Broadway shtick. Just as Neil Simon liked to make fun of New Jersey and the boroughs, Rogers turns Haifa into the butt of a few jokes. Instilling superiority in an audience is always good for laugh.
Rogers captures the mechanics of the negotiations and Sher’s direction keeps them moving at hyper speed. What we aren’t given during the course of this three-hour play is a character study. Who are Juul and Rod-Larsen? They narrate the drama, give a great deal of exposition, and they keep each other’s egos to the size of a peanut. In “Oslo” they emerge more as devices than characters.
18 All-Time Great Tony Awards Performances, From 'Dreamgirls' to 'Hamilton' (Videos)
"Cabaret" (1967)
Joel Grey sang "Willkommen" to the big time, winning both a Tony (and later an Oscar) playing the M.C. in this musical set in the early days of Nazi Germany.
"Promises, Promises" (1969)
OK, the song "Turkey Lurkey" frankly doesn't make any sense -- and the whole office holiday party is kind of shoehorned into the plot. (The show's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," however, became a big hit for Dionne Warwick.) But Michael Bennett's choreography is head-bobbingly, arm-spinningly awesome.
"A Chorus Line" (1976)
The full "I Hope I Get It!" opening number from the quintessential backstage show -- amazing how long CBS let the numbers run back in the day. Bonus for "Gilmore Girls" fans: That's Kelly Bishop as the haughty dancer who says, "I had it when I was in the front."
"Sweeney Todd" (1979)
Angela Lansbury won the fourth of her five Tony's playing the daffy Mrs. Lovett, the baker of "The Worst Pies in London," in Stephen Sondheim's dark musical.
"Dreamgirls" (1982)
Jennifer Holliday's rendition of "And I'm Telling You..." has been widely imitated, and this is the performance that is most often imitated. A-ma-zing.
"Cats" (1983)
Andrew Lloyd Webber continued his domination of Broadway with this feline musical starring Betty Buckley as Grizabella. Interestingly, the breakout ballad "Memory" was one of the few songs whose lyrics didn't come from T.S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats."
"Grand Hotel" (1990)
Michael Jeter, perhaps best known from the sitcom "Evening Shade," was a rubber-limbed sensation playing a tipsy bookkeeper in the number "Let's Take a Glass Together."
"Rent" (1996)
Jonathan Larson's rock opera version of "La Boheme" gained extra poignance with his unexpected death after the first Off Broadway preview. The show became a phenomenon, and launched the careers of Idina Menzel, Jesse L. Martin and Taye Diggs.
"Chicago" (1997 revival)
Bebe Neuwirth and Ann Reinking displayed all the athleticism of Bob Fosse's original choreography in the hit revival of Kander & Ebb's musical about the dawn of celebrity criminals (which led to the Oscar-winning 2002 movie).
"The Lion King" (1998)
While Disney's stage version of the animated movie swept most of the major awards in 1998, we chose the opening number from the 2008 telecast -- celebrating the show's 10th anniversary and with clearer shots of Julie Taymor's magnificent puppets and stagecraft.
"Wicked" (2004)
Idina Menzel may have had some cold-induced pitchiness on the final note, but she (and co-star Kristin Chenoweth) are still pretty sensational on the now-standard showstopper "Defying Gravity."
"The Drowsy Chaperone" (2006)
Sutton Foster shows off while insisting that she doesn't want to show off no more in this delightful number.
"Spring Awakening" (2007)
Duncan Sheik's rock musical about rebellious teens shook up the staid world of Broadway with a just-mouthed rendition of "Totally F---ed" performed by very young Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff, John Gallagher Jr. and Skylar Astin.
"Gypsy" (2008 revival)
Everything came up roses for Patti LuPone, who won her second Tony Award playing the irrepressible Mama Rose in the classic musical about showbiz striving.
Neil Patrick Harris' Tony Opening Number (2013)
It's hard to fill a space as cavernous as Radio City Music Hall -- but NPH did just that with a "bigger" number (written by "Hamilton" composer Lin-Manuel Miranda) that included high steps, high notes, leaps, magic, shout-outs to "How I Met Your Mother" fans and even Mike Tyson. Wow.
James Corden's Tony Opening Number (2016)
The hard-working late-night host (and a Tony winner himself) did his own version of a dream-big number, running through a dozen classic Broadway musicals from "Les Miz" to "Fiddler on the Roof" to "Annie."
"Hamilton " (2016)
Audiences at home finally got a chance to see a slice of the buzzed-about hip-hop hit, which even scored an intro from Barack and Michelle Obama.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Drama Students Sing "Seasons of Love" (2018)
There wasn't a dry eye in Radio City Music Hall when students from Parkland, Florida, performed the anthem from "Rent" months after a horrific mass shooting killed 17 of their classmates and teachers. The Tonys had honored their drama teacher, Melody Herzfeld, with a special award.
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A look back at some of Broadway’s highest kicks (and notes) over the history of the Tony telecast
"Cabaret" (1967)
Joel Grey sang "Willkommen" to the big time, winning both a Tony (and later an Oscar) playing the M.C. in this musical set in the early days of Nazi Germany.
Robert Hofler, TheWrap's lead theater critic, has worked as an editor at Life, Us Weekly and Variety. His books include "The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson," "Party Animals," and "Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange, How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos." His latest book, "Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne," is now in paperback.