Woody Allen fans--there’s a treat waiting for you on Broadway. Allen’s Honeymoon Motel takes over the last half of Relatively Speaking, an evening of three comedies by three funny folks. Prepare for a feast of vintage Woody one-liners flying around the set of the tackiest honeymoon suite this side of Atlantic City. His is the most hilarious of the three one-act plays. All directed by John Turturro, the first half of the evening is divided between Ethan Coen’s Talking Cure and Elaine May’s George is Dead,and all three deal with the joys and sorrows of family relationships, the sorrows viewed with sharp irony.
Talking Cure by Coen has two scenes. The play opens in a mental hospital with an argument between Larry (Danny Hoch), the obstinate patient and his doctor, played by Jason Kravits. Larry is a hulking, angry postal worker with Mommy issues. In the second scene, set sometime in the 1950’s, we meet Larry’s pregnant mom (Katherine Borowitz) bickering with her husband played by Allen Lewis Rickman. Anything will set off a squabble between the two, although their favorite target is Hitler. It is not hard to guess how Larry got his hostility problems. While uneven, the sporadic spurts of absurdity provide laughs.
May’s George is Dead reaches its comic peak early when Carla (Lisa Emery), upset by numerous personal problems, is surprised by a visit from Doreen, played by Marlo Thomas. Carla’s mother was once Doreen’s nanny and did everything for her. Now the overindulged Doreen, dim and demanding, turns to Carla after her husband suddenly dies on a ski slope. Although they hardly know each other, Doreen expects Carla to take care of her just as “nanny” once did, even asking Carla to scrape the salt off the Saltines and expecting her to make the funeral arrangements. Carla, trying to maintain some balance between Doreen’s situation and her own problems, makes good use of her role as straight person. “Don’t you ever listen?” she asks Doreen. “No, not really,” is the innocent response.
Thomas, in a blonde wig, is flawless as the spoiled, selfish widow, helpless and clueless of how life works. Emery is tensely restrained as Carla. The ending arrives through extraneous issues, shifting the focus to a sad darkness. The laughs in this comedy, which sags under a few repetitive spots, come mainly from Thomas’ portrayal and ludicrous demands.
Woody Allen’s family relationships are farcical, beginning with two newlyweds about to seal the deal in Santo Loquasto’s opulently designed, tacky honeymoon suite in a Long Island motel. The randy groom is Jerry (Steve Guttenberg), a middle-aged writer and the bride, lusty young Nina (Ari Graynor). They eloped just as she was about to marry someone else. Awkwardly, that someone else is a family member. After they call in for a pizza, the door is opened for a parade of relatives, not only interrupting their moment of intimacy but demanding to discover what happened and give their opinions. Issues and grudges collide with an angry wife, stunned parents, the groom left at the chuppah, a rabbi with his own off-beat perspective and an analyst adding a Freudian zing. When the pizza delivery man arrives, he adds his view along with the pizza.
Director Turturro paces the Allen play like a concert, letting the random characters paint their individualistic colors, including Richard Libertini as the flamboyant rabbi.
