A bit of Broadway buzz comes to Boston’s Huntington Theater as Nathan Lane assays the title role in Simon Gray’s seminal dark comedy, Butley. In retrospect, the play feels like the bridge between Harold Pinter’s grim view of male relationships in the 60s and the explosion of gay theater in the late 1970s. Alas, the piece has little else to recommend it these days, as its look at one long, bad day in the life of a burnt-out professor of literature has the structure of a poignant—or at least spark-filled—character study, but proves merely a long day’s journey into doldrums.
Nathan Lane, being Nathan Lane, tries to make all the punchlines zing home, but Gray is not Gelbart or McNally, nor is he trying to be. Apart from a few laugh-out-loud ripostes, the humor isn’t meant to be stand-up-comedy “big” (Lane’s specialty) but rather desperately acerbic. As Butley copes with students demanding tutorials he can no longer dodge, an ex-wife moving on with her life, and a male lover (Benedick Bates) with whom he will soon no longer share either a bed or an office, we’re supposed to feel empathy for the life crumbling before us. Instead, we just keep checking our watches and wondering when any of this is going to be more than fleetingly engaging. Jake Weber, tall, magnetic, slightly creepy and blessed with an oddly compelling voice, adds oomph to the second act, but just a little.
Neither hilarious nor poetic, Butley now seems consigned to the dustier shelves of modern theater history.
