Matt Damon Takes New Job in London
Matt Damon is joining a long line of American performers who tread the stage boards in London's West End. The screen hunk, 31, will open this month in the Kenneth Lonergan play, "This Is Our Youth," at the Garrick Theater, reports Variety. (Lonergan's credits include the screenplay for the Billy Crystal-Robert De Niro comedy "Analyze This.") The play, set in 1982, is described as a lacerating look at affluent young Manhattanites and depicts two days in the lives of three college-age Upper West Siders who come from wealthy families but are living in drug-ridden squalor. Damon, who is replacing actor Hayden Christensen ("Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones"), 20, is making his stage debut in the play. Other Yankee stars to play the West End have included Macaulay Culkin, Jessica Lange and Kathleen Turner. Turner opened on Broadway in the stage adaptation of the classic 1967 movie "The Graduate" (based on the novel by Charles Webb) Thursday night. The show was a hit in London and advance ticket sales in New York have been pretty strong, but Friday morning's reviews were less than complimentary. The New York Times called it "leering" (Turner, 47, appears nude, though under diplomatic lighting) and "undercooked . . . the most cynical specimen to date of the theater's current vogue for cannibalizing Hollywood classics." The New York Post said, "'The Graduate' Fails." Jason Biggs ("American Pie") and Alicia Silverstone ("Clueless") costar. Critics called him bland and her whiny.
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