Bialystock and Bloom are coming back to Broadway.
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who helped make “The Producers” one of the best musical comedies of all time, are reuniting in the fall, this time in “It’s Only a Play,” Terrence McNally’s 1986 comedy about life in the theater.
Contracts have yet to be signed — which is why everybody was nervous about my announcing the show (sorry, boys!) — but Jack O’Brien is on board to direct.
I read “It’s Only a Play” the other day. It’s no “Noises Off,” Michael Frayn’s brilliant backstage farce, but it does have its charms and some extremely funny lines. The only trouble is, you have to be a theater insider of a certain age to get the most out of them.
Sample gag: The show is set in the elegant apartment of a producer on the opening night of his new play, “The Golden Egg.” Everybody involved in the play is praying for a good review from the New York Times. Everybody else, of course, is secretly hoping they’ll fail. The doorman keeps ringing to say there’s an actress downstairs who wants to come up. But nobody can get her name right. Finally somebody says, “Oh, you mean Tovah!”
Now if you laughed at that line (and I did, out loud), you are the insider’s insider. It’s a reference to actress Tovah Feldshuh, whom you may remember from “Golda’s Balcony” a few years back.
McNally has been revising the play, so I suspect he’s changed the punch line, though I hope not to Adele Dazeem, because that joke has really run its course.
The great James Coco played a bitchy sitcom star named James Wicker in the original production. McNally tailored the part for him. In his review, Frank Rich described Coco as a “dyspeptic Humpty Dumpty in a crimson-trimmed tuxedo.”
If that’s not a role for Nathan Lane, I don’t know what is.
And he’s as good with the zingers as Coco was.
Broderick’s appearing as the playwright — an OK part, but not nearly as funny as Lane’s.
Broderick has fewer lines than Lane, but that’s probably for the best. The last time they appeared together, in a tepid revival of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” in 2005, it took Broderick forever to get off script.
This caused some tension between him and Lane, since Lane always arrives at the first day of rehearsal with his part already memorized.
But Broderick has all summer to learn his part, so that shouldn’t be a problem this time around.
“It’s Only a Play” will be produced by Tom Kirdahy, McNally’s husband.
He produced McNally’s “Mothers and Sons,” which received a Tony nomination this week for Best Play.
I’m looking forward to “It’s Only a Play.”
It’s good, bitchy fun, and with Lane and Broderick heading the cast, we’re off to a good start.