DOG DAY AFTERNOON
by Stephen Adly Guirgis
based on the Warner Brothers film, and the LIFE Magazine by P F Kluge and Thomas More
directed by Rupert Gould
August Wilson Theatre, New York City – until 28 June 2026
running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval
I suspect the best way to enjoy Stephen Adly Guirgis’ stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon is to try to forget about the 1975 Sidney Lumet movie starring Al Pacino. That’s easier said than done though when Jon Bernthal, in a sensational Broadway debut as Sonny, the bungling bank robber with a surprisingly good heart, looks so uncannily like Pacino at moments in Rupert Goold’s flashy, propulsive staging. The award-winning film is a fascinating, painful mixture of social document and crime drama, inspired by a real Brooklyn bank raid that went wrong, and has cultural significance for its warts-and-all depiction of a New York in crisis, barrelling towards bankruptcy and with crime on the rise, and also for sensitive LGBTQ+ representation at a time when that was scarce. The play, with the inevitable softening glow of the footlights, is still potty-mouthed and reasonably unflinching but leans much more into the comedy. That may be problematic for some, but, taken on its own terms, it’s a cracking entertainment, outrageously funny but with a warm, beating heart and a lot of grit; it’s also supremely theatrical.
There’s an undeniable thrill when David Korins’ Tony-nominated set first rolls on, a fully realised mid-1970s bank interior and exterior, complete with tellers’ desks, lounge chairs, corridors off into other parts of the building, and that punishingly functional decor redolent of the time period. It’s an absolute eyeful, and theatrical world-building of the highest order, made immersive by Goold having actors as cops prowling the aisles of the August Wilson and, at a crucial point, the audience corralled into playing the crowd of approving rubberneckers waiting outside on the Brooklyn street waiting to see how the bank robbery and subsequent siege plays out. Brenda Abbandandolo’s sometimes garish but entirely realistic costumes (also Tony-nominated) and Isabella Byrd’s acidic lighting add to the sensational visual impact.
Perhaps inevitably constrained by having to adhere to the beats of the screenplay, Guirgis hasn’t produced a script to rival his very best work (Jesus Hopped The A Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the Pulitzer winner Between Riverside And Crazy) but Dog Day Afternoon on stage, despite a couple of sequences that threaten to run out of steam, has a manic energy and grim vitality that compels and intrigues. Goold’s production is populated by a bunch of terrific New York character actors who invest their roles with such a world-weary authenticity that you can almost feel the exhausted ache in their feet from perpetually pounding the pavements. It’s a feast of wonderful acting, without vanity or sentimentality, but alive to every last scrap of unease, spite, spiky kindnesses and caustic humour in these flawed, jaded humans.
Jessica Hecht, an actress incapable of turning in a bad or even indifferent performance, is on fine, laconic form as head teller Colleen, initially scathing but becoming more and more sympathetic to the desperate Sonny as the bank siege continues. Andrea Syglowski, Wilemina Olivia-Garcia and long term Guirgis collaborator Elizabeth Canavan are all vivid and superb as her professional underlings. John Ortiz brings a grizzled warmth to Detective Fucco, attempting to mediate between the force and the would-be bank robbers, and Spencer Garrett is deliciously horrible as Sheldon, the fellow cop hell bent on disparaging and discrediting him, repeatedly and deliberately mispronouncing his name as “Fuck-o”. Michael Kostroff adds potent comic value as another bank employee and Danny Johnson is genuinely affecting as a former military vet now working as a security guard who becomes collateral damage. There’s firecracker work, witty, full-throttle and eccentric, from Esteban Andres Cruz as Sonny’s lover Leon.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the other above-the-title star, plays Sonny’s sidekick Sal and he delivers an alarming, accomplished portrait of an unstable, unhappy chancer who’s as much to be pitied as feared. Bernthal is stunningly good, mining his role for every ounce of caffeinated macho desperation, exasperated humour and unexpected tenderness. Magnetic and multi-layered, he’s a one-man powder keg of explosives and it’s impossible to take your eyes off him and not to root for him.
It’s impossible to make much of a case for Dog Day Afternoon as a great play, but as a unique theatrical experience, one that brings back to life a specific period in New York history, evoking the atmosphere and feel of a city on the verge of breakdown, it’s a considerable success. Edgy, hilarious and strangely charming, it also seems to be a bona fide crowdpleaser: at the performance I attended, the audience roared their approval and enthusiastically joined in with the chants of “Attica! Attica!” as Bernthal’s Sonny whipped them up into a frenzy of joy and righteous indignation.
ajhlovestheatre 
Leave a comment