BWW Reviews: FISH IN THE DARK a Blatantly Commercial Broadway Star Vehicle, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Take heart, struggling young playwrights, because it really is possible for your very first play, with you starring in it, to open directly on Broadway and be a big, sold-out smash even before the reviews come out. Just make sure you've first co-created a landmark sitcom and then wrote and starred in a wildly successful cable series.

Yes, Larry David's Fish In The Dark is closer in spirit to a rock star's live appearance than anything resembling the emergence of an important new voice in American theatre, but once you accept it for what it is, the kind of well-oiled joke machine that put plenty of fannies in Broadway seats during the 1960s, it's a really fun night out.

And even if you only know Larry David as one of those guys who used to break stacks of matzoh to pieces on Fridays, there's only one moment that plays to his TV fans. The rest is perfectly agreeable once you catch on that worlds created by Larry David are filled with obnoxious, overly-analytical people who obsess over life's trivial foibles while remaining emotionally aloof to their fellow human beings.

For example, when Norman Drexel (Norman Drexel? C'mon, it's Larry David) is called by a hospital and told his father has been admitted, he's less concerned for the man's health than he's irritated that they woke him up in the middle of the night, long before visiting hours, instead of waiting until the morning. The method by which he decides to help himself get back to sleep is one that makes you grateful the scene is done with just voice-overs.

The plot, about trying to get his widowed mother to live with his brother instead of with him, is glued together by various sidetracks, included a dirty paraphrase of Woody Allen, a scene where Norman is jealous of his young niece after everyone raves about her eulogy, discussions on whether or not you're supposed to tip a doctor and, of course, embarrassingly pathetic lust after an unattainable woman.

Directed by the overqualified Anna D. Shapiro, the evening runs briskly, despite the star being a "low-talker" with an aversion to cheating his body out so the audience can see his face clearly. While Rita Wilson is relegated to feeding him straight lines as "the wife" and Ben Shenkman is pretty much a Jerry Seinfeld stand-in as his brother, it's the stage-savvy veterans who strike comic gold.

Jayne Houdyshell is terrific as the passive-aggressive mom who gets seduced by a young man (Jake Cannavale, son of Bobby), who's a dead ringer for her dead husband, not knowing he was fathered by her mate when he was cheating on her with the maid (Rosie Perez, doing her Rosie Perez thing). Lewis J. Stadlin is a riot as the Catskills-mouthed uncle ("The only time I feel truly alive is at funerals. It's like life's an elimination tournament and I've moved on to the next round.") and Marylouise Burke has her lovely quirkiness on display in a small role.

Composer David Yazbek provides a bouncy theme between scenes and designer Todd Rosenthal's clever set is a death certificate with interior cut-outs.

"It's real, and it's spectacular" may be stretching it a bit, but Fish In The Dark is, at the very least, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Click here to follow Michael Dale on Twitter.

To post a comment, you must register and login.