Megan Mullally and Nathan Lane (photo: Joan Marcus)
True enough that "It's Only a Play," but one only
wishes it was only a good play and not the joke-drenched, up-dated name-dropping, plot-deferred vehicle for Nathan Lane and
Matthew Broderick that is the hottest ticket in town. A flop when it was first
produced in 1986, Terrence McNally's insular
comedy is about an actor (Lane) who left the stage to star in a TV series and
his contentious relationship with his former friend a playwright (Matthew
Broderick) who is having his first play produced on Broadway.
The opening night party is in progress and it's a barrel of
laughs - - - that is when Lane is left alone to do his incomparable shtick, and
also when a host of opening nighters, including a producer, a critic, a star,
and others get time and space to say and do a lot of very funny, often
outrageous, and generally unacceptable things that more or less are meant to define
what life is like in the theater. It's a shame that the energy level drops
precipitously the minute Broderick enters, doing his version of a schlemiel in
need of a transfusion of blood.
There is no reason in the world the play should suddenly
come to a dead stop and only get revived when Broderick is not at the center of
it. Lane, however, is not left without a complimentary straight man. He is
Micah Stock who is hilarious as a young innocent (or is he?) wannabee who has
been hired as a coat checker and greeter and who parries expertly with Lane, as
does everyone else in the cast including a terrific Megan Mullally as the play-within-the-
play's nutty novice producer, a scene-stealing Stockard Channing as a
drug-fortified leading lady, an off-the-wall Rupert Grint, as a kleptomaniac
avant-garde director, and the excellent F. Murray Abraham, as an acerbic critic
who gets what's coming to him.
Jack O'Brien's direction, that is except for his inability
to extract something resembling a performance from Broderick, makes sure that
guffaws follow every gag and that we are never concerned overly with what happens
to whom and why at the producer's townhouse, as elegantly designed by Scott
Pask. If it's only a laugh that you need, then go for it.
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