Theatre in Review: Fish in the Dark (Cort Theatre)

	Rosie Perez, Larry David. Photo: Joan Marcus

I feel the need to make a clarification. A couple of reviewers have expressed, with some disappointment, that, with Fish in the Dark, Larry David, a revered comedy pioneer thanks to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, has written the equivalent of a '60s-era Neil Simon comedy. Fair enough, if you mean the Neil Simon of such forgotten potboilers as The Star-Spangled Girl and God's Favorite, not the creator of such classics as The Odd Couple. In fact, compared to the slapdash proceedings at the Cort, Simon is the second coming of Molière.

Even in his weakest plays, Simon understood that something -- anything -- has to happen. David, best-known for Seinfeld, a show famously about nothing, can't be bothered with the niceties of plot and character. He just wants to deliver gags, period. In all honestly, he does manage a pretty good laugh line now and then, but as a playwright he is still locked into his own peculiar form of television comedy, and what works in 22-minute increments and scaled for the small screen looks awfully flimsy on a Broadway stage. Fish in the Dark is little more than a collection of Larry David's favorite jokes. And, at these prices, the jokes should be much, much better.

Not that any expense has been spared. David's producers have sprung for a cast of 18, five sets, an animated show curtain, and a stage-spanning drop depicting a death certificate. The latter is the key to the show; Fish in the Dark is predicated on the idea that a death in the family is a laugh riot. We meet David, as Norman Drexel, and Rita Wilson, as his wife, Brenda, in a hospital lobby, waiting for news of Norman's dying father, Sidney. Not that anyone seems too upset; from the get-go, the wisecracks fly, rank insensitivity being the author's stock in trade. Brenda, it turns out, has total recall, which allows Arthur, Norman's brother, to snap, "They're an interesting couple -- the idiot and the savant." Norman brings his girlfriend to the hospital -- actually, he admits, it is only their fourth date. The young lady, Michelle, is sexually harassed by Norman and Arthur's dying father. As she notes, why not? The old man is dying anyway.

And so it goes: the characters crack wise in the hospital, they crack wise at the funeral, they crack wise when discussing who will take Norman and Arthur's abrasive widowed mother, Gloria, and they crack wise when Fabiana, the Puerto Rican maid, drops the bombshell that she has been sleeping with Sidney for 20 years -- and he is the father of her 18-year-old son.

The basic situation of Fish in the Dark might have been more amusing if it had actually been worked into a plot, and the people would be funnier if they had any characters to play. Instead, each has a single trait affixed to him or her, like one of those name tags that says, "Hi! My name is..." Norman is a nudge. Brenda has a phenomenal memory. Arthur is selfish and a skirt-chaser. Fabiana wants her money. Natalie, Norman and Brenda's daughter, is an actress who stays in character during the run of a play. She is currently cast as Eliza Doolittle, so she speaks in posh British tones until Norman gets fed up and tells her to use her own voice, at which point she switches to an incomprehensible cockney accent.

As an actor, David relies entirely on a set of awkward gestures; with his gangling posture and waving arms, he resembles a baby giraffe struggling to walk for the first time. When he reverts to one of his signature TV mannerisms -- calling something "pretty, pretty good," stretching out the vowels to remarkable length -- he gets a round of applause from the fans in the audience. This isn't acting; it's a personal appearance. He is supported by a number of Broadway pros, all of whom, I hope, are getting big, fat paychecks for making something out nothing. As Arthur, Ben Shenkman proves adept at ducking any conversation that involves letting go of a dollar. Jayne Houdyshell generates laughs as the imperious, entitled Gloria, especially when she reveals her unexpectedly lusty side. Rosie Perez does all that can be done to make the grasping Fabiana appealing. Molly Ranson makes the most of that English accent gag as Natalie, and Jonny Orsini is fine as her boyfriend, who counsels Norman to tip the doctor, with predictably embarrassing results. As another member of the family, Marylouise Burke is...well, Marylouise. Lewis J. Stadlen is the uncle nobody likes, although he is no more abrasive than anyone else on stage. (Speaking of the departed Sidney, he admits to feeling exhilarated: "It's like life is an elimination tournament and I've moved to the next round.") Jake Cannavale makes a solid Broadway debut as Perez's son, who is enlisted in a ridiculous scheme to convince Gloria that Sidney is making ghostly nocturnal visits. As Sidney, Jerry Adler gets his biggest laugh with his curtain call. Stuck with a dreary sensible-wife role, Wilson does her level best.

Only a few years ago, the director Anna D. Shapiro stunned Broadway with her handling of another comically dysfunctional family in August: Osage County. Here she functions mostly as a traffic cop; even so, certain scenes end up with the actors standing in a row, in community theatre fashion. And if her handling cannot be faulted of a gag that hinges on the untimely sound of a flushing toilet, it doesn't make it any funnier. Todd Rosenthal's show curtains are clever, but his sets are surprisingly bland and lacking in any kind of detail. Ann Roth's costumes help to fill out the characters a little bit. (I did like the grotesquely oversupplied buffet at the post-funeral reception, however.) Brian MacDevitt here delivers the least interesting lighting of his career, but it gets the job done; the same is true of the sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen.

The run of Fish in the Dark is basically sold out, thanks to David's fans, and I suppose they are getting their money's worth. At the press performance I attended, you could tell where they were from the pools of laughter in the audience; where I was sitting, surrounded by journalists, a cathedral-like silence reigned. If anyone wants to pay premium prices for what amounts to four episodes of the kind of TV series that desperately needs the assistance of a laugh track, it's fine with me. But really, a professionally written play would have been nice.-- David Barbour.