A surprising sleeper off-Broadway
hit at the Theatre Row complex was Dan Lauria’s light-touch dark comedy Dinner With
the Boys. It’s about a
couple of older-middle aged Mafia hit men who have been hoping to retire from
the Mob after botching a job, and have been cohabitating (and laying low) in a
nice little suburban house, away from the rat race of the city, where Dom (Richard
Zavaglia) cooks outrageously delicious
Italian meals that he uses to coax Charlie (author Lauria) into telling secret
tales of snuff-outs gone by. But “management” manages to find them (in the
manner of, first, the hot=tempered son-of-a-don Big Anthony, Jr. and later,
senior and much more calculating, “the Uncle Sid”, both played by Ray
Abruzzo); so the big question becomes,
what kind of punishment awaits the boys? Or…are the boys capable of protecting
themselves…?
As
comedies go, this one doesn’t have the assured style of, say, Neil Simon or
Herb Gardner; it’s a little rough, a little raggedy, a little crude…but then,
what it’s about isn’t exactly delicate, and the plot takes some turns that
aren’t exactly dainty. So that's kind of okay. You could give it a try. It wouldn't kill you. Probably.
Act of God, which just finished up at Studio 54 is less of a play, per se, than a Shavian dialectic
for one comic and two straight men. Specifically, the evening by David
Javerbaum, gives us God—a God
acknowledged as inhabiting the person of TV actor Jim Parsons for
the 90 minute and intermissionless
duration (though the text could be adjusted for any celebrity or local
favorite)—finally breaking his silence about the new millennium and
abuses
of power and philosophy in His name, and expounding upon his own
version of the
ten commandments (not all of them the commonly known ones). The
straight men
are two of his angels (played in NY by Tim Kazurinsky, as the feed, and Christopher Fitzgerald as the foil).
It’s
very witty social commentary stuff, but as the premise is that God is going to
hit all the rules from one to ten, it follows a schematic structure. There’s no
denying that in general, the audience seems happy to be on the ride, but be
forewarned: how funny you find it to be
for the long haul depends on your stamina for the single idea adhered to that
unwaveringly. I found Parsons to be a delight, his cohorts equally sharp but
way under-utilized, and the direction by Joe Mantello to be fine;
but personally, I was pretty much done about 40 minutes in.
The
Qualms, a social comedy
by Bruce Norris, is about a suburban
sex-partner swapping club, on an evening when veteran members welcome a couple
who haven’t ever indulged in anything quite like it before and aren’t quite
prepared—not for the activity and not for what its impending reality will
force into the open about them. While not up to his Clybourne Park—and arguably even somewhat familiar, if your point of reference goes back to
Paul Mazursky’s film of the late 60s, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,
which covered the same ground (the sexual
revolution) in its own way—The Qualms was still, at Playwrights Horizons,
a highly watchable, well-rendered play with good roles for an ensemble of
excellent actors, and Pam McKinnon's direction
top notch.
Of
Good Stock, at Manhattan
Theatre Club, was a similarly nothing-new
but very decent play, likewise with excellent roles and solid direction (Lynne
Meadow). The website boilerplate says
this: “The three Stockton sisters are witty, brilliant, beautiful – and a
total mess, thanks to the legacy of their complicated novelist father. In Melissa
Ross’ new play, these women gather at
their family home on Cape Cod for a summer weekend. Their reunion ignites
passions, humor, and wildly unanticipated upheavals.” Add their respective male
partners to the mix, equally idiosyncratic, and you have a play worth adding to
a season.
Rajiv
Joseph’s two hander, Guards
at the Taj, which
debuted and extended at the Atlantic Theater, is worthy of a permanent place in the repertoire of plays for two
actors. Here’s the website boilerplate for that one: “In 1648 India, two
Imperial Guards watch from their post as the sun rises for the first time on
the newly-completed Taj Mahal—an event that shakes their respective
worlds. When they are ordered to perform an unthinkable task, the aftermath
forces them to question the concepts of friendship, beauty, and duty, and
changes them forever.” As with Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, he’s
not interested in creating, emulating or suggesting a locution unique to his
storytelling universe. The two guys speak contemporary, colloquial English that
only skirts the idiom of distracting anachronism; and while usually I’d see
that as a lapse in verisimilitude, it’s bizarrely right, here. These are just
two young guys coping as best they can in an impossible situation, and the easy
colloq brings you in closer and makes you care about them more. You may even
identify with them a little, at least to the point of wondering what you would
do in a situation with no absolutely righteous path…or so you have to tell
yourself…
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