The Joys Of Feel-Bad Theater

Ben Brantley: “An acridness hung in the air during the New Group’s revival of Wallace Shawn’s Marie and Bruce the other night, something I don’t often experience at the theater. It was the thick, curdled aura of an audience’s collective discomfort … that palpable unhappiness that arises when an audience feels utterly ill at ease with what’s happening onstage.”