Ari Graynor and Steve Guttenberg in Woody Allen’s Honeymoon Hotel
(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
Considering the amount of talent involved with the new Broadway triple bill of comedies, Relatively Speaking is a tremendous disappointment. With the number of Oscar and Emmy winners and the number of stars of stage, screen and television involved, this should have been a great deal funnier. The linking pretext of families and their difficulties should have been ripe for satire. If this were a writing assignment to be graded, the grades would be ABC in reverse order.
Scripts by Oscar winners and multiple nominees Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen and such stars as Marlo Thomas, Steve Guttenberg, Julie Kavner and Grant Shaud, among many others, and the evening offers few laughs? Actor-turned-director John Turturro does best with the mirthful Woody Allen farce which makes up the second half of the evening, but probably no one could do much with the Coen or May playlets.
The evening opens with a curtain raiser, Coen’s “Talking Cure” set in a mental institution, film writer and director Coen’s third time out as an author of one-acts. From the evidence of his films such as Raising Arizona, Fargo and A Serious Man, Coen’s brand of humor is extremely dry, but this sketch is devoid of laughs. An inmate (played by monologist Danny Hoch) with anger management issues is being seen by a psychiatrist (The Practice’s Jason Kravits).
In a series of seemingly endless encounters, the inmate proves he may be unstable, but he has remarkable verbal dexterity, topping the doctor in each exchange. Ultimately, we see his parents (Katherine Borowitz a.k.a. Mrs. John Turturro, and Allen Lewis Rickman, appearing in the current Boardwalk Empire) in a flashback and realize that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Although the play is about 15 minutes, it seems interminable.
May won the Outer Critics Drama Award for her famous 1969 one act, “Adaptation,” and joined Allen and David Mamet in the hugely successful triple bill, Death Defying Acts which ran Off Broadway from 1995-1996. Her new play, “George Is Dead” is something else again. Thomas (who has not appeared on Broadway since the 1995 revival of The Shadow Box) plays Doreen, a self-absorbed socialite, who is informed by telephone that her husband has died in Aspen. Having never made a decision in her life she barges in on Carla, (Lisa Emery), the daughter of her longtime nanny, who she considers family, although she hasn’t seen her or her nanny in many years.
In a few pointed exchanges, it becomes clear that Doreen is now totally incapable of taking care of herself or the arrangements that need to be made. Carla, who has her own problems with her marriage to her second husband, is gracious but distant. The comedy of Doreen’s ineptitude and selfishness becomes much darker when Carla’s husband (Shaud) arrives and the couple have an all-out fight over Carla’s helping the woman who has monopolized her mother all through the years, with Doreen interrupting at the climatic moment.
Thomas is able to create an amusing one-note character out of Doreen and gets all her laughs, but May does not know how to end her play. She brings on the Nanny now aged 90 (Patricia O’Connell) and the Funeral Director (a returning Rickman), but gives them almost nothing to do. Emery is rather strident as Carla who is understandably disturbed to see Doreen at the moment when she needs to pay attention to her problems with her husband. Shaud’s Michael seems to be out of another play entirely. Santo Loquasto has designed a very realistic looking lived-in apartment setting, while Donna Zakowska has some fun with Doreen’s totally inappropriate costumes, given the situation.
The second half of the evening is devoted to Allen’s farcical, “Honeymoon Hotel,” which is very funny but not up to his usual standard: the plot isn’t very believable, and the characters are all caricatures. It also crosses over into Neil Simon territory which Simon has written more expertly in Plaza Suite. When the play begins, Guttenberg’s Jerry and Ari Graynor’s Nina arrive at an upstate honeymoon suite in a very tacky motel. With a series of knocks at the door, it transpires that that the married Jerry has eloped with his step-son’s bride during the wedding ceremony.
Judy, Jerry’s tart-tongued wife (Caroline Aaron), didn’t even suspect that Jerry wanted out of their marriage. Nina’s mother (Kavner) is prompted to reveal to her husband (Mark Linn-Baker) all of her infidelities as he has been unsatisfactory in the bedroom. Things really get hot with the arrival of Jerry’s shrink (Kravits) and the groom (Bill Army), author of a bestseller that Jerry resents. Making matters more complicated are the Rabbi who can’t stop giving eulogies (Richard Libertini), and the wise pizza delivery boy (Hoch) who finally solves the whole problem.
Turturro finds his comic timing in this series of one-liners, while Kavner steals the show with her dry delivery. Loquasto’s set is as funny as any of the best lines. The jokes on the level of “can you top this?” include references to all sorts of contemporary buzz words: Netflixs, Lorena Bobbitt, Dr. Freud, Jacuzzis, Zabar’s, Ambien, Alzheimer’s, etc. It doesn’t add up to much, but the zingers come fast and furiously. The wise, witty and sophisticated Woody Allen of such scripts as Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris is nowhere in evidence.
Relatively Speaking is a wildly uneven evening, from the failure of “Talking Cure,” to the unsuccessful “George Is Dead,” to the entertaining “Honeymoon Hotel.” The large cast of 16 which includes many stars of television and screen making a return to Broadway tries hard, but comedy is only funny with good lines and plausible situations. Woody Allen’s fans will probably want to see his latest, although it adds little or nothing to his distinguished film career. However, the rest will probably fade into a quick oblivion.
(open run)
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 W. 47th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 877-250-2929 or http://www.relativelyspeakingbroadway.com