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Steve Martin’s writing is as sharp as ever in an incredibly fun, incisive, and ultimately hopeful look at how couples find strength in their relationship. (seen 2 PM 11/4/2017)

Hoo-rah!

  • Fantastic premise: a couple that has been actively working on their marriage deals with the conniving plans of another couple that gets their kicks destroying the relationships of others.
  • When I think about the writing on its own, I can (wonderfully) imagine dozens of ways this show could be performed. A lot of freedom for actors and directors to play with, and I would go see another production of this show in a heartbeat with every expectation that it would be totally different from this one.
  • Love the set design (little details especially like the garden hose) and the way meteors fly through the sky. And yeah, as a character mentions, it totally looks like a house from Architectural Digest.
  • I spent a lot of the show having a good time but wondering if the experience was going to add up to anything, and then the last act pays off in spades. A genuinely cathartic experience.
  • All the actors were excellent, and congrats to Keegan and Amy on their Broadway debut. Keegan was borderline a cartoon, but so much damn fun to watch that I was just delighted to hear whatever he was going to say next.
  • So many wonderful little seeds are planted early on in the show that pay off later, and, as usual, my wife figured them out long before I did.
  • Similarly, there’s a lot of little silent moments– a look, a high-five, a ritual, a drink, a dance– that are just wonderf
  • Great show to go on a date with!

Blech…

  • There’s an ongoing subplot about ‘exploding head syndrome’ that could easily be cut; it makes Amy Schumer’s character a little too over the top. There’s a cannibalism backstory element that accomplishes everything exploding head syndrome is trying to do, but better.
  • The night sky was a little too shiny. When Jeremy slid the glass door open to the outside, with the reflective backdrop,  from the audience it still looked like the glass door was closed. This problem was two-fold in that 1) you had to focus to remember when the door was open or shut and 2) the interior of the house was reflected on the sky the same way it was on the windows.
  • There’s a bunch of David Ives’ Sure Thing-y repeats of the same setup with minor variations that only really justify themselves when we get to the last act. While absolutely hilarious in their individual incarnations, structurally the sum of the parts are not greater than the whole.
  • There’s some infidelity that I didn’t super buy… maybe I don’t need to, but a little more work could have been done to make it feel plausible.

Random: 

  • Was super-bummed when I heard Alan Tudyk was leaving his role over ‘creative differences,’ but Jeremy Shamos (who I loved in Better Call Saul) fills the role perfectly. And while I have no insight into the deeper reasons Alan Tudyk left the show, allow me to speculate: he’s played a lot of characters like this one, and I can imagine him trying to take a few more liberties with the role to make it fresher than perhaps the show could handle. After all, Keegan chews the scenery so much that it kind of falls to the other characters to be more subdued and, in some ways, archetypal.
  • This would be such a fun show to put on. The last act in particular… mmm. My theater group in college had a blast putting on both Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Wasp and let me tell you: Steve Martin knows how to write a show actors can have a good time with.