Starry Messenger has for its star Matthew Broderick, and, like a star, he is cold and remote. This is the story of an emotional- ly dead man who achieves resurrection through adultery—oh, boundless self-serving theme!—but this particular Lazarus never manages to shake off the dirt of the grave. They might well have titled this production Portrait of Ferris Bueller as a Very Sad Middle-Aged Man, except that Bueller did not, after all, grow up to be a fry cook on Venus, as prophesied, instead contenting himself with becoming a planetarium lecturer, his gaze falling not upon the stars themselves but upon facsimiles of them.

Mr. Broderick plays Mark Williams, a character you have met before. You have met him in novels written by adjunct professors of English, about adjunct professors of English, for adjunct professors of English. You have met slightly more ribald versions of him as Philip...

 

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