Watching the Odyssey’s revival of Bruce Jay Friedman’s 1970s Steambath was a painful experience, largely because the play seemed dated and unfunny. Then I realized that maybe the play would have worked better had there been a larger audience. But it was a Thursday night, and the handful of people in attendance never once laughed out loud. With no giveback from the audience, the actors were left to work in a vacuum, fighting desperately to pump life into the text. Steambath’s comic setup is a promising one: Tandy (the admirable Jeff LeBeau) passes out from food poisoning in a Chinese restaurant and wakes up in a steambath which turns out to be a way-station between life and death. The man in charge, a Puerto Rican towel attendant, is God himself. Paul Rodriguez, transitioning from comedy clubs to the stage, was cast as the attendant, but on the night I attended, his alternate Peter Pasco stepped into the role. Pasco did his valiant best to channel Rodriguez but fell short, though again maybe the blame should be put on the cold-fish audience, not him. Character rather than story drives the play’s engine. The bath house (remarkable set by Gary Guidinger) is packed with oddball, semi-naked characters, all of whom are waiting to die. The Oldtimer (the spunky John Moskal) is a cynical reprobate who has traveled the world seeking pleasure and seems quite resigned to his fate. Two young men (DJ Kemp and Devan Schoelen) are caricature gays who dance, prance and prattle like demented chorus boys. Bieberman (Robert Lesser) is a crude, cantankerous old Jew (another caricature, this one shading into anti-Semitism). Meredith (the delightful Shelby Lauren Barry) is a ditzy blonde who can’t understand why God thinks she should die. “I just had my first orgasm,” she wails. “And I haven’t paid my last Bloomingdale’s bill!” The last of the shvitzers is Broker (Brian Graves), a Wall Street wheeler-dealer whose run of bad luck has culminated in his being sent into this overheated limbo. In smaller roles we meet Yusuf Yildiz as God’s goofy sidekick Gottleib; Anthony Rutowicz doubling up as Longshoreman/Detective; and Shay Dennison as a disco-dancing Young Girl. How we act in the face of death is what Steambath is all about. Could we have postponed our demise had we been a better person? What have we done in life to deserve such an ignominious end? These are the questions the playwright raises in his offbeat, irreverent play, but the way he goes about answering them, with shtick replacing story, is unsatisfactory and disappointing. Hats off, though, to the hard-working and talented cast, and to director Ron Sossi for his inventive staging.
