BROADWAY: 'It's Only a Play' at the Schoenfeld Theatre
7 / 10
Part sentimental confessional, part caustic farce rooted in bitterness and wholly insider theatrical baseball, this intermittently amusing, celebrity-juiced Terrence McNally comedy from 1982 has been updated, often painfully, for an age of gossip, annoying media personalities and an all-powerful critic likely to eat your precious creative baby as his late-night sushi on the train home...Fine, so this is a comedy. As directed by Jack O'Brien, it is also a depressingly uneven production. The first scene, which takes place between the immaculate Lane, who is superb, and the one no-name in the cast, Micah Stock -- having a career-making moment playing a newbie to Broadway and thus the guy serving the drinks -- sparkles with pleasures...But then Grint...enters...And then the otherworldly Broderick shows up...and, well, the air goes out of the whole affair because Grint is about six sizes too large and Broderick's performance is, with a few funny exceptions, just too creepy to be funny.
