Shows for Days

starring Patti Lupone
written by Douglas Carter Beanie
directed by Jerry Zaks
Lincoln Center Theatre at the Mitzie E. Newhouse
June 21, 2015
Production website     💉💉 out of five.

Patti LuPone is the matriarch to a community theatre in the midwest. Does it get any betting then this?! Well perhaps. Shows for Days is all to familiar for any theatre geek. Don’t we all remember that first community theatre when we walked in totally in awe of the place and the beyond-over-the-top personalities and all of their sins of drinking, smoking and post-IHOP sleeping around. I so remember my first days in these broken down store front theatres! Also, remember that one matriarch that all worshiped and who gave her entire world to keep a troupe together and push out show after show after show fighting to keep money, personalities, and even the law at bay long enough to get the show on the boards.

Michael Urie, as the totally sweet narrator, was simple, winning and engaging as the 14 year old narrator taking us on this journey of the rehearsal rooms of his youth. Patti LuPone was Patti Lupone and enough said here – – but please, honest to God, give this woman some lines that she can work. Too often I found myself cringing as she would wind up a story to produce that wonderful theatre/Jewish zinger and then it would just fall flat – – and it wasn’t Patti – – it was those damned old cliches that no one could bring life into. I hated to see the look on Patti’s face when the rim shot happened and the audience set dead. It pained me. The story has little weight – – a woman trying to hold on to her space and her dwindling company in the face of an difficult mayor and the notorious Civic Players that seem to be ourtplaying them step by step. And – – if I have to watch one more gay man playing more nelly than I have ever seen nelly, I am simply going to scream. Come on THEATRE people, GAY people are your bread and butter, and we are tired of the cheap jokes. Fun to see community theatre again, always a privilege to see Patti, loving Michael Urie as a narrator, but then the play . . .