WHERE’S MY MONEY?
Center Stage, 48 W. 21 St. Through July 21. Call (212) 905-0593.
ONCE AROUND THE CITY
Second Stage, 307 W. 43rd St. (212) 246-4422.
BLUE WINDOW
28th Street Theater, 120 W. 28th St. Through July 28. SmartTix, (212) 206-1515.
‘WHERE’S My Money?” is a dream of a play. The trouble is, is it’s a bad dream.Writer/director John Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for “Moonstruck,” has apparently soured on marriage and on people, judging from this farce.
His script and Michelle Malavet’s setting – with its distorted perspectives – reduce people to toys haunted by the dead.
The story involves two couples. Sydney, a glib divorce lawyer who’s carrying on a sadistic affair with Celeste, and his embittered wife Marcia Marie.
The other couple has a hint of salvation. The problem is they’re haunted.
John Ortiz as Henry – a young lawyer and a disciple of Sydney’s who’s desperately (he gets advice from his mother’s ghost) trying to make sense of life – brings notes of real suffering and hopeful reasonableness to the part.
Paula Pizzi as his wife, Natalie, seems a crisp, chic, together woman. But then we see her disintegrate when faced with the ghost of her old lover.
Pizzi is faced with the tough task of expressing the day and the night of this schizophrenic woman; she is not quite there yet, but she’s on her way.
Toward the end of the play, Henry suggests the ghosts, with their promise of a rapturous, sexy existence, be gotten rid of and instead a prosaic, trusting, affectionate reality be embraced.
Here’s a grownup idea for a play, but it comes too late to make sense of this self-indulgent mishmash.
A bunch of youngish Upper West Siders prepare for a dinner party; they get through the dinner party; they decompress afterward in their own apartments.
This is the shape of Craig Lucas’ “Blue Window.”
The characters include hostess Libby, played with eager spirit by Marin Hinkle, and Norbert, a skydiving teacher nicely done by Jason Kolotouros.
Despite occasionally heavy symbolism, this is a terrific staging that shows off the best of Lucas: his understanding of people.
THE worst musical in the history of the human race has arrived.
That is not a statement to be made lightly, but “Once Around the City” offers impeccable credentials. It’s set in New York in 1987.
The bad guys want to build a gigantic high-rise where a hotel sits, so they send bad guy David to hornswoggle the turf out of its owner. Except that David falls for Elizabeth, who runs the place.
This pathetic parable is unleavened by wit or wisdom. Robert Reale’s music is tuneless; the book and lyrics by Willie Reale are platitudinous. The direction by Mark Linn-Baker and choreography by Jennifer Muller are appallingly flat.
Michael Magee (David) and Jane Bodle (Elizabeth) try gamely, but are helpless with this material.