Julianne Nicholson

Absent the electricity of live-wire live performance, the play's paucity of depth becomes more obvious. What's left to carry the day are a nasty streak of black comedy and the redoubtable acting ensemble.

Like Bill Condon's seriocomic film Kinsey, Masters of Sex takes a sociohistorical perspective on a subject of inherent fascination to us all.

Stars Depp in a performance generating awards talk, makes a complicated story coherent without dumbing it down (much), lets a bunch of strong actors do their things, and yet inspires little more than adjectives like 'efficient' and 'workmanlike.'

Bold, indulgent, polarizing, poetic, rapturous and artfully made but also an epic-length torment, like the secular The Passion Of The Christ.