Fish In The Dark
Cort Theatre
8 April 2015
3 Stars
Confession time. Both Seinfeld (except for the Soup Nazi episode) and Curb Your Enthusiasm surfed by me in the great maelstrom that is the sea of American television. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because there is only so much long running television one can sensibly invest in. I keep promising to find time to properly explore both, but as the years roll by, opportunity so to do diminishes.
Which either makes me the ideal audience member or the person no one expected to buy a ticket for Larry David’s new comedy, Fish In The Dark, now playing at Broadway’s Cort Theatre. I arrived with no expectations, no hopes, no nostalgia driven memories, no back catalogue of references upon which to draw. I had more anticipatory fondness for the supporting cast than for the star because I had seen and admired their work.
No. For me, Fish In The Dark was entirely blank slate territory.
And perhaps that is the problem.
At interval, all around me were extolling the virtues of the play as “so good, just like an episode of Seinfeld or Curb. I can see this on HBO!” I have no way of knowing if that is fair or not, but certainly by the time interval came around, there was no feeling that this was a great comedic piece of theatre writing.
This is not to say that David’s writing is not sharp and funny. It is, often. But the laughs are driven not by the characters or the situation; rather they could be stand-up routines which have been grafted into a continuous stream of consciousness. The one about the dying Jewish man who wants his widow not to live alone but who fails to identify which son should care for her. The one about the Jewish urinal maker whose wife can remember every detail of every day she has lived for twenty years. The one about the disliked brother-in-law who claims the Jewish man promised him his Rolex on his deathbed. The one about the Hispanic maid with a secret that shocks her Jewish employers. The one about the Jewish mother who hates her son’s wife. The one about the suspicious Jewish uncle who can’t believe his teenage niece could write an eulogy for her grandfather that was better than his. The one about the rapacious greed and wandering hands of Jewish men of all generations.
There is nothing ground-breaking here. But what there is is a great deal of cleverness, wordplay and daft, idiosyncratic physical comedy involving stock, archetypal characters in stock, archetypal situations. No doubt about it – it looks and sounds like slick episodic television.
It is also strikingly Jewish, and a deal of the jokes, physical and verbal, require a thorough working knowledge of Jewish traditions, expressions and culture. Obviously, then, it is most at home in front of a New York audience, where mostly everyone in attendance knows the specific context and idiom.
The most theatrical aspect of the production is provided by Todd Rosenthal’s spectacular set. The Cort stage is not big but Rosenthal uses intriguing, interlocking pieces of set to create different environments, all completely believable and utterly appropriate. There is a reveal of a new set, Mother’s bedroom, which gets as many laughs as some of the best lines, albeit that has a lot to do with the appearance of another character at the same time. The sumptuous banquet for the wake is magnificently funny.
Death is a constant force in the play and Rosenthal emphasises this by a framing device for the Proscenium – there is a hug scrim on which is projected a death certificate, which is filled out electronically, by an invisible typewriter, as the play progresses. Additionally, there is faux proscenium framing which conforms with the style of the death certificate – so the shadow of inevitable death is literally always hanging above the heads of the cast. In the best comic tradition, this framing can be deceptive.
As the writer, Larry David certainly understands his material and how to land laughs. But he is not a natural stage actor by any stretch of the imagination. His vocal support is not good, with the result that he is very hard to hear, especially given the forceful fully trained theatre voices around him. Nor does he have an actor’s instinct about how to hold an audience, or let an audience have a laugh without losing momentum, or not to cut across the height of an audience’s response so that a line (or seven) is lost. Yes, he can say the lines archly, smile knowingly at the audience, and flail his arms in exasperation or surprise – often with very humorous results.
But he is never not Larry David. There is no sense, at any time, that he is the character he is supposed to be playing, Norman Drexel. One suspects that the dynamic of the piece will be entirely changed when Jason Alexander takes over the role on June 9.
The performance of the evening comes from the luminous Jayne Houdyshell who plays the Drexel matriarch, Gloria, with breathless confidence. She is pure heaven, the epitome of Jewish mother manipulation. She is spectacularly funny, in that dry and cutting way at which Ann Bancroft excelled. Her Gloria is entirely real, a glorious, demanding, three dimensional gorgon masquerading as a shattered widow. Boylet! (Yiddish – not a typo.)
Stepping in for an indisposed Rita Wilson, Glenne Headly is wonderful as Norman’s long suffering wife, Brenda, she of the amazing memory, the capacity to serve fish in the dark (thereby cruelly exposing her dinner guests to unwelcome unseen bones) and an unwillingness to wear a scarf Gloria once bought for her. Headly gives a beautifully judged performance, a comic jewel. Her voice is throaty and exhilarating to hear.
Rosie Perez is terrific as Fabiana, the long term housekeeper/maid for the Drexel family. Her comic timing is terrific and she brings a vital self-assurance to her scenes. When the plot turns around her, it is at its very best, its most amusing. Making his Broadway debut as Diego, Fabiana’s son, Jake Cannavale, is also excellent, especially in the scene where he sets out to deceive Gloria about his identity. Later, his ability to convey an horrific image in an unseen room is first rate; compellingly comical.
Johnny Orsini is perfect (but wasted) as Greg, the boyfriend of Norman and Brenda’s daughter, Natalie, a curiously ludicrous wanna be actress who insists on speaking as the character she is rehearsing – Eliza Dolittle. It might have worked well for one scene, but as a running joke, there is more limping than running. This is not the fault of Molly Ranson who does a Herculean job of making sense of the role and the accents.
The rest of the cast are competent but forgettable – they do all that is required of their cipher characters and they keep the light laughs coming.
This is an interesting and entertaining time in the theatre. The New Yorkers and Seinfield/Curb enthusiasts went wild for it. It’s not really a play at present because the central performance does not involve acting. But it nevertheless will make you laugh.
