True enough that "It's Only a Play," but one only wishes it was a good play and not the joke-drenched, up-dated name-dropping, plot-deferred vehicle for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick that is the hottest ticket in town. A flop when it was first produced in 1986, Terrence McNally's insular comedy is about an actor (Lane) who left the stage to star in a TV series and his contentious relationship with his former friend, a playwright (Matthew Broderick) having his first play produced on Broadway.
The opening night party is in progress and it's a barrel of laughs - - - that is when Lane is left alone to do his incomparable shtick, and also when a host of opening nighters, including a producer, a critic, a star, and others get time and space to say and do a lot of very funny, often outrageous, and generally unacceptable things that more or less are meant to define what life is like in the theater. It's a shame that the energy level drops precipitously the minute Broderick enters, doing his version of a schlemiel in need of a transfusion of blood.
There is no reason in the world Play should suddenly come to a dead stop and only get revived when Broderick is not at the center of it. Lane, however, is not left without a complimentary straight man. He is Micah Stock who is hilarious as a young innocent (or is he?) wannabee who has been hired as a coat checker and greeter and who parries expertly with Lane, as does everyone else in the cast including a terrific Megan Mullally as the play-within-the-play's nutty novice producer, a scene-stealing Stockard Channing as a drug-fortified leading lady, an off-the-wall Rupert Grint, as a kleptomaniac avant-garde director; and the excellent F. Murray Abraham, as an acerbic critic who gets what's coming to him.
Jack O'Brien's direction, that is except for his inability to extract something resembling a performance from Broderick, makes sure that guffaws follow every gag and that we are never concerned overly with what happens to whom and why at the producer's townhouse, as elegantly designed by Scott Pask. If it's only a laugh that you need, then go for it.
