'Mystery of Love & Sex,' 'It's Only a Play,' 'Fish in the Dark'

It’s an unscripted comedic bit, but it’s the funniest five minutes of this season, because Dad is played by Tony Shalhoub, one of the finest comedic actors today. Shalhoub comes from the classical — as opposed to the vaudevillian — tradition of comedy. Like his predecessors Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers, and Jacques Tati, his technique is impeccable, and the results are delightful. Shalhoub can evoke a full-blown character with a few carefully chosen, quirky tics, just as he did with Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective in his television series.

Shalhoub’s “Dad” appears in The Mystery of Love & Sex, an earnest new coming-of-age comedy/drama by Bathsheba Doran now playing at Lincoln Center. While the play itself may be schematic — tackling a laundry list of topics including sexual identity, marriage, and friendship — it’s nonetheless heartfelt, and the cast (Shalhoub, Lane, and a pair of luminous young actors, Mamoudou Athie and Gayle Rankin) is superb.

Tasty farce

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for sustained comedy on Broadway, It’s Only a Play is dishing out most of the laughs this season. Terrence McNally’s tasty farce about theater and its wicked ways is set on the opening night of a new play, The Golden Egg. You’ll get a kick out of watching theater folk going ballistic and suicidal, as if their lives depended on a good review (in truth, they do).

The assemblage of stock characters features the playwright (Matthew Broderick) and his best actor/friend (Nathan Lane, whose face has launched a thousand comedic ships). While a glitzy opening night party rages below, they’re holed up in the bedroom of a lavish townhouse owned by the show’s neophyte producer (Katie Finneran), waiting desperately for the NY Times notices to come in. With them are the show’s aging star (Stockard Channing), the avant-garde British director with the delicious name of Frank Finger (he’s knighted, so they call him Sir Finger), and an ingratiating critic (F. Murray Abraham).

As you can guess, The Golden Egg has laid one. I won’t reveal the long-awaited review (it’s over the top — even the ushers get panned). Suffice to say, the fun of the show lies in the insider Broadway jokes (“New York without the theater is Newark”) and the running gags (the nerdy butler, a charming Micah Stock, keeps entering with the guests’ coats, including huge furs worn by the cast of The Lion King). At one point a snowball flies through the window (from the cast of Matilda out on the street). And of course you’ll relish the endless name-dropping of the party’s celebrity guest list (from Oprah to Lady Gaga to the Pope). Jack O’Brien directs this high-flying farce with a sure hand, and the Broderick/Lane old-fashioned-style comedy team is irresistible. (Martin Short is standing in until Nathan Lane returns on March 31.)

Oh no, he didn’t

“Pret-ty funny” (to quote Larry David) is an appropriate way to describe his Fish in the Dark, though it’s not as funny as I had hoped. The King of Cringe is making his Broadway debut with a standard Neil Simon/Mel Brooks style “boulevard comedy,” stamped with David’s inappropriate imprimatur. Norman Drexel (David) is a manufacturer of urinals in California. His father has just died, and he and his young brother Arthur (Ben Shenkman) are fighting over who doesn’t want to take in Mom (Jayne Houdyshell). The plot thickens — as do the laughs — when their late father’s housekeeper (Rosie Perez) reveals that her son is Norman and Arthur’s half brother.

Larry David’s comedic fame comes, essentially, from going where angels fear to tread. Predictably, there’s plenty of inappropriateness going on in Fish. The show’s crudeness notwithstanding, you can’t help but laugh at David’s vaudevillian style of line delivery and the ridiculousness of his physical comedy (he and Perez have a hilarious moment when they discover the outlandish faux pas that her son commits with David’s mother).

Ultimately, these two comedies are “insider” plays: if you know the New York and LA showbiz scene, you’ll laugh harder at the one-liners in It’s Only A Play. Similarly, if you’re a Curb Your Enthusiasm aficionado, you’ll appreciate Fish in the Dark’s twisted humor. You might choose to stay in Philadelphia and wait for another terrific comedy by Bruce Graham or Michael Hollinger. As the playwright says in It’s Only a Play: “God punishes people who do plays on Broadway. That’s why they invented regional theater.”

Above right: Praying for a good review. (It’s Only a Play)

Above left: David and Shenkman in Fish in the Dark. (Photo by Joan Marcus)