THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER

The sudden explosion of exasperation is a trademark, and to Mr. Lane’s credit, he only pulls it out once—not a bad measure of artistic restraint when you consider that Whiteside exists in a perpetual state of exasperation. But Lane and his director Jerry Zaks have very carefully varied the stew, and the classic 1939 Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman farce "The Man Who Came to Dinner" gets all its laughs and then some. As does its star.

That’s the good news.

The "other" news—it seems churlish to call it "bad" under the circumstances—is that the production misses its minimal level of genre authenticity more often than it hits. No mistake, as the play’s cranky—yet oddly endearing—and thoroughly nightmarish—trapped houseguest/hero goes through his insensitive paces, the play is presented faithfully, funnily and respectably—but it rarely gets to a comic soul. For the most part it seems like a terrific regional staging with high-octane guest stars, rather than an inspired new Broadway production. Why this should even be a point of much consideration I’m not entirely sure—I only know that I was too often aware of the work that went into the comedy, and too infrequently lost in it, or willing to give over to it without reservation.

Here’s the kind of thing I mean: in the second act, the priceless Jean Smart enters as Lorraine Sheldon, an extravagantly self-absorbed grande dame actress. She greets Sheridan effusively, professing how moving it is to see him again after so long. Then she turns away to conjure crocodile tears. She squeezes and squeezes her eyes closed, desperate to mik her tear ducts—to no avail. Once the audience hips to the bit, the resultant laugh is deservedly huge. And then, Ms. Smart takes the edge off the bit by going all shruggy, as if to say, "Oh, hell, it’s not working, goddammit." This last, extraneous beat falls into the heading of "indicating," inorganic gesturing meant to illustrate a point. And indeed, her laughter dries up at this—because she’s just flipped from something surprising and human into something self-conscious and explanatory. Zaks should have caught this and tightened it—if we assume, charitably, that he didn’t, in fact, encourage or even orchestrate it.

His staging of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" is rife with such little imperfections. There’s no one kind of thing that’s chronic, just a moment here, a moment there, and a number of especially bland casting choices in several supporting roles, that keeps comic Nirvana at bay. What we have here is merely, and mostly, very good. And if that sounds like nit-picking, well, at Broadway prices such merchandise is due a more rigorous inspection.

All that said, one can hardly do better than Harriet Harris as Whiteside’s loyal assistant, the very epitome of a 30s tough broad who’s really a love-starved girl underneath; nor wish for a more scandalously aggressive Borscht Belt-er than Lewis J. Stadlen as the comic Banjo. As "Beverly Carlton"—a gloss on Noël Coward—Byron Jennings is elegant, bitchy, just-barely-in-the-closet heaven; and a good word for Alan Stratton as Ms. Harris’s no-frills leading man beau, played with a kind of George Bush Jr. self-assurance. And Tony Walton’s set, designed as a "continuation" of the theatre’s own architecture (this is the renovated and newly named American Airlines Theatre, by the way, being broken in with this first entry in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s new season) is the very paradigm of an upper-crust manse.

So—the good far outweighs the "other," the play clips along happily and few if any laughs are missed. If only Mr. Zaks hadn’t stopped so few rungs short of the top…

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A brief post-mortem for another sort-of farce—actually farce-cum-drawing room comedy-thriller—the New York debut of "Death in England" by Sam Bobrick. Mr. Bobrick, formerly half of the team of Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark (I assume Mr. Clark is dead or at least retired; I will happily post a correction if wrong), has a career distinguished by several Broadway comedies—among them "Norman, Is That You?", "No Hard Feelings" and "Murder at the Howard Johnson’s"—that flopped ignominiously on Broadway and lived on for years in the stock-and-amateur boonies. None of these plays were much good—they were soulless gag-fests, the kind of special-material long-sketch writing that always seems chintzy on Broadway, but they were light, frothy fodder for theatre groups and one suspects they were produced on Broadway primarily to give them pedigree in the stock-and-amateur market.

As offered up by off-off Broadway’s Vital Theatre Company, "Death…" should have been more amusing—but because at the center the play is just as artificially conceived as Bobrick’s others, it proved an uphill, if amiable, battle. (The premise is that the Grim Reaper shows to dispatch an English gentleman and finds himself unable to do so, while people he has not personally "taken out" are dying. Who has usurped Death’s powers? And a master British police detective is called in to investigate…) The play, however, is not the sole culprit, per se. Having seen several Bobrick-Clark comedies in their Broadway debuts, one of which was actually pretty funny, however unlikely a Broadway survivor ("Murder at the Howard Johnson’s"), I can attest to one more element missing on Vital’s end—

—an element they couldn’t possibly have provided, not at the off-off Broadway level—

—and that’s comic stars. At least the kind of high comic octane worthy of stardom. "Murder…" had Bob Dishy, Tony Roberts and Joyce van Patten—expert light-comedy players—to cover for the authors. I don’t think "Death…" works worth a damn (I can see how it might seem better on paper), but the only chance it has is with a gossamer touch. Scott Embler’s direction, alternately proficient and heavy-handed, rarely found the proper rhythm or tone; and the cast, which included a few game, good-natured Broadway and off-Broadway veterans between bigger engagements—among them Kenny Morris, Karin Wolfe and Todd Butera—likewise kept missing the groove.

The play being more about the gimmick than humanity, that groove is almost impossible to find—but that is the mandate you take on, when you add to Mr. Bobrick’s stock and amateur coffer.

Which is why that Neil Simon option is looking better all the time…