Fish in the Dark at
the Cort Theatre
Larry David, playwright and star of Fish in the Dark.
Once again
the panic is on here on Broadway as ticket-buyers rush in droves to spur a
sold-out run of a straight play still in previews, starring
personalities known for their work elsewhere.
But this time the play is not the atrocious It’s Only a Play (still running, by the way, at a new theatre,
having conscripted a new source of star power in the person of the unfortunate
Martin Short). It’s far superior fare,
Larry David’s first play, Fish in the
Dark, in which he also stars, making his Broadway debut. It’s not exactly where you’d imagine Mr.
David going after a twenty-year career in television, a medium of close-ups and
quick cuts and turns to camera in which he thrives, and in which he proved
himself the king of television comedy.
So how do he, his ensemble, and the phenomenally talented director, Anna
D. Shapiro, come off in this experiment?
To paraphrase Mr. David, pretty… Pretty… Well.
Mr. David’s
script, at least in the opening scenes, is not immediately compelling—and who
could blame him, he’s not exactly an old hand at playwriting. But it quickly reveals itself to be a
compendium of jokes, setups for further jokes, and an almost shocking number of
combative, acidic, and occasionally offensive confrontations. That is to say, it’s essentially a really
good, two-hour episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” No wonder everyone wants to see it.
There is
one key difference—this is a family comedy, about the Los Angeles-based Drexel
clan, of which Normal Drexel (Mr. David), a urinal manufacturer, is the oldest
son. So basically, it’s a “Curb” episode where we meet Larry’s family
and, unsurprisingly, they’re all exactly like him—obsessive, angry, and
endlessly questioning social mores. Thus
we discover what it would be like if everyone acted like Larry David all the
time. It’s a very different concept for
Mr. David given the direction Curb took
from the beginning, wherein his insult-spitting disaster machine of a character
faced off against the supposedly “normal” denizens of Hollywood. There’s no straight man—in the very first
scene, Norman, his younger brother Arthur (Ben Shenkman), and their father’s
notary, Michelle (Jenn Lyon) discuss in exhaustive detail an incident in which
the borderline comatose patriarch of the Drexel clan, Sidney (Jerry Adler,
Heshie on “The Sopranos”) groped Michelle’s breast from his hospital bed. This scene goes on for nearly three minutes.
Needless to
say, this world of Larry Davids takes a little while to become satisfying, but
when it hits home, it does so with gusto.
Sidney soon passes on, and Norman and Arthur are thrown into conflict
when their mother, Gloria (Jane Houdyshell, tolerable) moves in with Norman,
much to his chagrin, and a revelation by Norman’s housekeeper, Fabiana (Rosie
Perez) leaves him in need of cash. There
is a great deal of secrecy surrounding the plot of the production (in
interviews, cast members are forbidden even from describing set designer Todd
Rosenthal’s scenery—which is beautiful, by the way). Therefore, I’ll refrain from discussing it
further, but for saying that Mr. David, despite getting off on shaky footing,
knows what he’s doing as a writer on the stage just as well as on the screen.
But the
real allure—as usual for Broadway—is not really the script, but the prospect of
seeing the Jewish messiah, Larry David, live and in person. Ms. Shapiro's dramatic flourishes and the
antics of the comparatively large cast will entertain, but Mr. David, true to
form, will be the most truly memorable part of the production. His immediacy in presence as a performer is
tangible even on television—you can see why he found success as a stand-up
comedian—and Fish in the Dark is no
exception. Being in a room with Larry
David is uniquely electric. Even the way
he stands (slight lean backward, hands usually in pockets if not gesticulating)
is naturally funny. Mr. David never
intended to play the part of Norman Drexel, but as he said, “The older brother
character just sounded too much like me.”
The whole play sounds like Mr. David, and its sensibility, especially
live in a theater, feels like him too.
If nothing else, Fish is a
showcase for a comic who has no equal on the modern scene, and that alone
sounds pretty, pretty good to me.
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