SLAB BOYS Promo Press Flyer Reviews Bacon Kilmer Penn 1983 Broadway Vintage

Description

Original (not a reproduction) rare color single page Handbill Flyer Press Promo for Broadway Play 'Slab Boys' 1983 starring multitude of young stars including Sean Penn, Val Kilmer, Jackie Haley and Kevin Bacon.  The Flyer features reviews from several critics and was sent to columnists and writers to help production gain traction.  The production opened in March and was a major flop running for only 48 performances.  Flyer measures 8.5 x 11" and has crease in middle.  Back is blank.  There is some minor fading along edges normal with age but condition overall is VG.  This is a very rare item haven't seen one anywhere else.  Purchased from estate of person who was writer and columnist in NYC.  Great for any fan, collector or theater historian.  Would look great framed.  Zoom in on photo as part of description.  We ship fast and FREE!  Contact us with any questions we try our best.
Here is original NY Times reivew if you want to read it:
JOHN BYRNE'S ''Slab Boys'' is set in a dingy workroom of a carpet manufacturer in Scotland. The walls are institutional green; the towering windows are so grimy that the sun hasn't a chance of peeking in. Yet the effect is far from depressing. This is a cell where the title characters mix the paints that are used by carpet designers, and those pigments are splattered willy-nilly over nearly every inch of the place. Though the setting may well be a Dickensian sweatshop, it somehow manages to contain the jagged, abstract hint of a rainbow. Mr. Byrne, an artist as well as a playwright, designed the set himself in collaboration with Ray Recht, and it's the perfect metaphor for his play. ''Slab Boys'' is about working-class boys who, while engaged in drab mechanical labor, thirst for escape into a color-drenched world tantalizingly situated just out of reach. For Spanky (Sean Penn), the dream is to graduate to a desk job outside the slab room, as a designer. His best pal, Phil (Kevin Bacon), hopes somehow to break into the ''real world,'' to make a career as an artist. But most of the slab boys aren't going anywhere; they're sentenced to grind away at their drudgery for life. ''Slab Boys,'' at the Playhouse, tells of one fateful day in the existence of Spanky, Phil, their cronies and their bosses. Set in 1957, the play is at once an autobiographical account of Mr. Byrne's own escape from the slab rooms and a proletarian slice-of-life drama in the contemporary British tradition. (There's a particularly strong whiff of Trevor Griffith's ''Comedians.'') It's a very uneven and ultimately less-than-satisfying evening - both in the writing and in Robert Allan Ackerman's production - but, at its best, we are taken into a gritty and exotic milieu where sassy characters fight back against their lot with both robust humor and anger. Mr. Byrne scores when he just allows his young men to wisecrack and goof around, which is what the slab boys do whenever their superiors are not snooping. Spanky and Phil have turned their daily work routine into a veritable comedy routine; though their heroes are Elvis Presley and James Dean, they trade rat-a-tat punchlines like burlesque clowns. They even lock arms and kick up their legs whenever their zingers, whether sharp or crude, draw an inkling of blood. The butts of their jokes and pranks are a woolly crew. They include the factory's gum-chewing sex symbol (Madeleine Potter), the runt of the slab boys (Jackie Earle Haley), a barking boss (Merwin Goldsmith), a pimply-faced underling (Brian Benben) and the inevitable crusty tea-cart matron (Beverly May). For added measure, on the day ''Slab Boys'' is set, Phil and Spanky get a shiny new victim: a blazer-wearing middle-class ''new boy,'' Alan (Val Kilmer), who is passing through the factory's depths on his preordained way to the managerial heights. Much to his tormentors' delight, Alan is the sort of fellow who carries a Parker 51 pen as if it were a badge of intellectual superiority. While the humor, the dialogue and the atmosphere are salty and vibrant, ''Slab Boys'' becomes plodding when Mr. Byrne starts directly stating his points about his characters' domestic miseries and greater aspirations. Phil soliloquizes at artificial length about his suicidal, alcoholic mother and announces his identification with Giotto once too often. Alan, who turns out to be less of a stuffed shirt than he first appears, is too rhetorically inspirational when he implores Phil to move on to pursue his artistic calling. Thanks for reading The Times. Subscribe to The Times We're also aware of the grinding wheels of Mr. Byrne's plot, which relies heavily on messages and phone calls from outside. Much of the narrative is contrived and, in Act II, it's padded. Once the forestalled climax arrives, the author unveils some sudden character reversals that are as bogus as the ambiance is authentic. ''Slab Boys'' has been previously produced Off Broadway at the Hudson Guild. I didn't see that version, but I wonder if the play benefited from being performed in a tiny house. The stage at the Playhouse is so expansive that the set, wonderful as it is, looms over the cast like an airplane hangar. Mr. Ackerman, the first-rate director responsible for the muscular staging of the current ''Extremities,'' here seems to work overtime to create broad, fussy physical business that will help his actors grab our attention. We're often too conscious that a small, intimate play is straining to fill a big space and a full evening. There is also an audibility problem, which may be a function of the theater's acoustics or the American cast's zealous Scottish accents, or both. Otherwise the acting is mostly good. Though the gifted Mr. Bacon, the dissolute rich kid of the film ''Diner,'' is not ideally cast as an aspiring working-class hero, he usually captures the confused Phil's mixture of yearning, self-pity and rage. Mr. Penn, of the film ''Taps,'' is perfect as Spanky, forever transforming his seething bitterness into wounding sarcasm, and Mr. Kilmer brings fine, firm shading to the seemingly placid Alan. In their smaller roles, Miss Potter, Miss May and Mr. Goldsmith also contribute lively brushstrokes to a colorful theatrical canvas that falls short of finding the shape of a finished, well-rounded work. A Gritty, Exotic Milieu SLAB BOYS, by John Byrne; directed by Robert Allan Ackerman; scenery by Ray Recht, after designs by Mr. Byrne; lighting designed by Arden Fingerhut; costumes by Robert Wojewod- ski, after designs by Mr. Byrne; general manager, Paul B. Berkowsky; production stage manager, Thomas Kelly. The Laura Shapiro Kramer and Roberta Weissman production pre- sented by Paramount Theater Productions, in association with Jay D. Kramer. At Playhouse Theater, 359 West 48th Street. George ''Spanky'' Farrell ...................Sean Penn Hector McKenzie ....................Jackie Earle Haley Phil McCann ...............................Kevin Bacon Willie Curry .........................Merwin Goldsmith Jack Hogg ................................Brian Benben Alan Downie ................................Val Kilmer Sadie .....................................Beverly May Lucille Bentley ......................Madeleine Potter