Theatre in Review: I Need That (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre) If you want to experience the very definition of a star vehicle, Roundabout has a show for you. Before you bite, however, consider the star: It's unclear if Theresa Rebeck wrote I Need That for Danny DeVito or if she reworked it once he agreed to appear in it. In any case, the lead role fits him like a custom-made glove, giving the popular television and film star a prime opportunity to exercise his comic specialties. Indeed, it often seems to be the reason that I Need That exists. As Sam, a cranky senior citizen holed up, to the point of agoraphobia, in a New Jersey home that looks like the back room of a Salvation Army center -- it is packed with books, clothing, games, magazines, bric-a-brac, and the odd electrical appliance -- he struts around the stage, exercising his patented snappy way with a one-liner. And, believe me, the one-liners require plenty of snap. Recalling his youthful job working bingo nights at a Catholic parish, he says, "Everybody smoked, like, two to three packs a night. The place was like a giant diseased lung." When a friend catches him drinking a bottle of water, Sam replies, "I refill this. I bought this in Calabasas, 1976." When told that, if he doesn't clean up his act, the fire department will post a "condemned" notice, he complains, "You can't just throw out everything. You have to figure out what you want to keep, and what you can let go. It's like Sophie's Choice." With dialogue like that, you'd better have a comic genius onboard, or else. The pint-size DeVito, looking ever more like a human bobblehead with tufts of white hair extending like contrails, spares himself nothing -- taking an epic pratfall, engaging in a wrestling match with a set of TV rabbit ears (all he gets is static and the theme from Jeopardy!), and, in a true tour-de-force moment, solitarily playing a game of Sorry!, drawing cards for four players and delivering an increasingly deranged color commentary until he throws over the board in a white-hot fury. As he demonstrated with his award-winning supporting turn in Roundabout's 2017 revival of The Price -- amusingly, another play about cleaning out a houseful of stuff -- DeVito is an actor made for the stage. (His voice, placed somewhere between a bark and a snarl, acts as an aural astringent, scouring away any opposition to his eccentric ways.) Yet if the role of Sam suits him perfectly, Rebeck's dramatic tailoring is otherwise surprisingly careless, even sloppy. The three-character play worries its central situation for ninety minutes, with Sam's daughter Amelia and his best friend Foster constantly nagging him to fix up the firetrap in which he dwells. But it's an argument that runs in circles, punctuated mostly by winded punchlines. Also, the play's mechanics are too nakedly exposed: A theft committed early on by Foster too obviously sets up an eleventh-hour revelation that triggers the play's climax. Oddly, we learn almost nothing about Sam and Amelia's shared past, largely, I suspect, because Rebeck is determined to hold back the traumatic incident that has triggered Sam's hoarder ways. Amelia remains a total cipher -- What is her job? Does she have friends? Lovers? Goals? -- so the playwright can tee up a twist that makes nonsense of her character while badly undermining the play's premise. Plotting and structure have always been Rebeck's weaknesses; here, they are accompanied by a certain lack of precision that undermines her best efforts. When Sam finally gives up on his ancient, broken television, Amelia says, "I mean, we should take this to an antique store." (Because it is so saleable?) Sam, in a fit of pique, tells Amelia to empty the house, asking her to leave only "a chair and plate and a cup. Maybe a fork. If someone brings me a taco someday. I could have a chair and a plate and a fork and eat my taco." (Who eats tacos with a fork? Is it even possible?) The ending, which feels implausible and entirely manufactured, is accompanied by such insights as: "Things don't give your life meaning. People do." You don't say... Rebeck is lucky to have director Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who, in addition to keeping DeVito on the right side of caricature, gets fine supporting work from Lucy DeVito as the increasingly exasperated Amelia and Ray Anthony Thomas, who generates something generally powerful from Foster's out-of-nowhere aria about his son's wartime-induced psychological scars. (Thomas also handles his eleventh-hour confession scene with just the right mix of shame, sorrow, and defiance.) The playwright is also fortunate to have the services of set designer Alexander Dodge, whose alarmingly shabby living room, filled with the detritus of a life, has a certain haunted-house quality, especially as lit by Yi Zhao. (The ugly saturated color washes between scenes are a distraction, however.) Dodge's design also takes in the house's exterior (love the out-of-season Christmas lights and the suitcase on the roof above the door) and a show curtain depicting a Google Map view of a New Jersey residential neighborhood. Tilly Grimes' costumes are solidly in character and the sound design by Fitz Patton and Bradlee Ward includes some lively music selections, including "Time of the Season" by The Zombies, along with Patton's original music. And there's DeVito, a mini colossus standing amid the piles of trash, worrying about a guest getting crumbs on the floor; frantically throwing a sheet over a couple of boxes in a futile attempt at neatening up; and making unsustainable pronouncements like "Ohio is the source of all disappointment and grief in America." If his special comic attack has long tickled you, I Need That is probably unmissable. If, however, you prefer plays with well-rounded characters and an engaging conflict, you might not need this one at all. --David Barbour 
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