David Ives, in ‘Lives of the Saints,’ Mixes Gags and Philosophy
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February 25, 2015 Nathan Lane Will Return to ‘It’s Only a Play’ on Broadway By William Grimes Nathan Lane will return to Terrence McNally’s comedy “It’s Only a Play” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on March 31, the play’s producers announced on Wednesday. He replaces Martin Short, who has been pinch- hitting since Mr. Lane left on Jan. 4 to honor a previous commitment to appear with Brian Dennehy at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Eugene O’Neill drama “The Iceman Cometh.” Mr. Lane will remain in “It’s Only a Play” until its scheduled closing date of June 7. With the return of Mr. Lane, one of Broadway’s most potent one-two combinations swings back into action. He and his co-star, Matthew Broderick, have been a powerful box office draw in past productions. Their form has held in “It’s Only a Play,” which, by the time it opened on Oct. 9, was already taking in more than $1 million a week at the box office, recouped its capitalization of $3.9 million in December and has twice extended its run. After Mr. Lane departed, the show, while still profitable, saw its box office receipts drop by half. Mr. Lane plays James Wicker, a television star whose best friend, Peter Austin (Matthew Broderick), nervously awaits the reviews of his new show at an opening-night party. The cast includes F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, Katie Finneran, Maulik Pancholy and Micah Stock. Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000 February 25, 2015 Review: David Ives, in ‘Lives of the Saints,’ Mixes Gags and Philosophy By Charles Isherwood A woman returns from the dead to reveal uncomfortable secrets. A friendship almost founders over a gift gone unappreciated. A boy becomes romantically obsessed with a washing machine. A man runs into a fellow who seems to embody, with eerie specificity, the life he chose not to live. Do these sound like subjects rich in belly laughs? Well, maybe the boy-loves-washer one does. And yet in the dexterous hands of the playwrightDavid Ives (“Venus in Fur”), metaphysical questions and elbow-in-the-ribs gags coexist peacefully; thoughtfulness and silly wordplay live side by side with equanimity. Mr. Ives’s new collection of short plays, “Lives of the Saints,” which opened on Tuesday night at the Duke on 42nd Street, is continually piquant and pleasurable, sometimes deliriously daffy (the pun-allergic should stay away), and surprisingly moving. The production, directed with sly finesse by Mr. Ives’s frequent collaborator John Rando, comes from Primary Stages, which revived Mr. Ives’s earlier collection “All in the Timing” a couple of seasons ago. Among the new show’s pleasures are the juicy performances of its gifted cast of five: Arnie Burton, Carson Elrod, Rick Holmes, Kelly Hutchinson and Liv Rooth, all adept at loopy sketch-comedy pyrotechnics but also capable of creating fully realized characters within small frames. It’s hard to choose a favorite among the six plays, half of which are new, with only one having been seen in New York before. If scored by the number of guffaws induced, the winner would have to be “Life Signs,” which opens the second act on an explosively raunchy note. Helen (Ms. Hutchinson) has just died at home, under the supervision of the oily Dr. Binkman (Mr. Burton), whose greatest skill as a physician appears to be his ability to insert his own foot in his mouth. Bald platitudes (“May she rest in peace”) alternate with wildly inappropriate comments (“Of course you’re going to have to get someone to cart the corpse away”) as he tries and fails to make a smooth exit. Once he’s left, Helen’s son, Toby (Mr. Elrod), bestows a farewell kiss on Mummy’s forehead and says a soft “Goodbye,” only to hear a sudden chirp from the still figure: “Hello!” Helen, known for her severity in life, turns out to be a woman of far different character in death, barking out staggering confessions of infidelity that are as vulgar as they are hilarious. At one point, she rhapsodizes about the genitalia of the man she cheated with for a quarter-century — and makes invidious comparisons with her husband’s and son’s. Mr. Elrod’s staggered stupefaction, the sympathetic noises coming from Ms. Rooth as his wife (who shares a secret or two of her own) and Ms. Hutchinson’s croaking confessions combine to whip the play into a bawdy froth. But there’s a bleak undertow to the play, too, like the thick black lines outlining a cartoon: Toby’s Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000 relationship with his mother turns out to be more open and honest in death — albeit a little uncomfortable — than it was in life. A still more thought-provoking piece, “It’s All Good,” features Mr. Holmes as a best-selling writer named Stephen Rivers — né Rivzikowski — who’s preparing to travel from New York to his hometown, Chicago, to give a keynote speech at a literary confab. The name of his book, “The Jolly Corner,” swiped from a famous Henry James story, hints at what’s to come. Although his girlfriend, Leah (Ms. Hutchinson), teases him about looking up an old flame, Stephen demurs, saying: “Chicago is a distant memory. Thank God. Given what I might’ve turned into. Or not.” Without giving too much away, I can say that those words prove strangely prophetic when a chance encounter with a friendly fellow named Steve (Mr. Elrod) turns this business trip into something much, well, trippier. Both Mr. Elrod and Mr. Holmes, along with Ms. Rooth as Steve’s wife, give nicely etched performances that draw out the latent poignancy in this sort-of ghost story. Among the lighter diversions on the menu is that sudsy (sorry, it’s catching) romp about the boy who falls for a gorgeous spin cycler. “Soap Opera” is inspired by the old Maytag commercials featuring the sad-sack repairman with no work to do, a reference likely to be lost on anyone under 40 in the audience (although there weren’t too many young ’uns at the performance I caught). Mr. Elrod is endearingly earnest as the besotted repairman, who carries on a long, tempestuous romance with the Neptune IT-40. (“I’m dating a model,” he tells a friend.) Ms. Rooth plays the glamourpuss washing machine — she pops out of it, looking and sounding like a 1930s pinup — and Mr. Burton has a lively cameo as a stereotypically snooty French maître d’ who turns even snootier when Mr. Elrod’s character asks for a table for two for himself and, um, his date. The sweet-natured play that gives the collection its title — and closes the evening — stars Ms. Hutchinson and Ms. Rooth as a couple of older Polish Catholics preparing the feast for a funeral breakfast in a church basement. The list of food they are planning to provide grows to amusingly staggering proportions, considering the guest list runs to just a dozen. A metatheatrical conceit revealed halfway through doesn’t really add much to the play’s impact, but Mr. Ives’s portrait of two do-gooding churchgoers contemplating mortality has a tender tug. So, too, does the evening’s opener, “The Goodness of Your Heart,” in which Mr. Burton and Mr. Holmes play longtime friends and neighbors downing beers in the twilight of a suburban evening. Their easy intimacy suddenly becomes strained when Mr. Holmes’s Marsh casually suggests that maybe his buddy Del should buy him one of those fancy flat screens, since his old TV barely gets reception. The stunned Del isn’t sure whether to treat this as a joke, an indication of real need or simply a bizarre transgression. What’s certain is that Mr. Ives’s play becomes a small meditation on what can and cannot be asked of friends, or said to friends, and how we all abide unthinkingly by the unwritten rules of such relationships. Like most of the other pieces here, it’s a short play that leaves a long, affecting afterglow. Lives of the Saints By David Ives; directed by John Rando; sets by Beowulf Boritt; costumes by Anita Yavich; lighting by Jason Lyons; music and sound by John Gromada; wigs by Tom Watson; props by Christine Goldman; production stage manager, Robbie Kyle Peters; production manager, Mind the Gap; general manager, Toni Marie Davis; associate artistic director, Michelle Bossy. Presented by Primary Stages, Casey Childs, executive producer; Andrew Leynse, artistic director; Elliot Fox, managing director; in association with Jamie deRoy and Barry Feirstein. At the Duke on 42nd Street, 229 West 42nd Street, 646-223-3010, primarystages.org. Through March 27. Running time: 2 hours. “The Goodness of Your Heart” WITH: Arnie Burton (Del) and Rick Holmes (Marsh). “Soap Opera” WITH: Arnie Burton (French Maître d’/Madman), Carson Elrod (Repairman), Rick Holmes (Loudspeaker Voice/Friend), Kelly Hutchinson (Mother/Mabel) and Liv Rooth (Washing Machine). “Enigma Variations” WITH: Arnie Burton (Bill 1), Carson Elrod (Fifi), Rick Holmes (Bill 2), Kelly Hutchinson (Bebe 2) and Liv Rooth (Bebe 1). “Life Signs” WITH: Arnie Burton (Dr. Binkman), Carson Elrod (Toby), Kelly Hutchinson (Helen) and Liv Rooth (Meredith). “It’s All Good” WITH: Carson Elrod (Steve), Rick Holmes (Stephen), Kelly Hutchinson (Leah) and Liv Rooth (Amy). “Lives of the Saints” WITH: Arnie Burton, Carson Elrod and Rick Holmes (Stagehands), Kelly Hutchinson (Edna) and Liv Rooth (Flo).