Last spring, we saw the Broadway run of It’s Only A Play, Terrence McNally’s satire/love letter to the theater and its sacré monstres. While it was dense with inside baseball written to delight theater nerds like us, we predicted it would not have a shelf life 30 miles outside of Times Square for just that reason.
Wrong.
GableStage’s Joseph Adler and a merry band of actors have produced a version that is funnier and has far more heart than the Broadway edition.
By the time we caught it late in the New York run, Nathan Lane was still doing his peerless best playing an actor who deserted theater for a television series. Thank goodness for him, because Matthew Broderick playing his best friend the playwright and Stockard Channing playing a washed up movie star retreating to the theater were sleepwalking through their crucial parts.
Instead, here, we have the wonderful Michael McKeever, as fine a light comic actor as we have, giving a performance far different than Lane; the winning Antonio Amadeo as the playwright, and the inestimable Lourelene Snedeker as the movie star. Add in a first-class supporting cast with fine-tuned comic timing, Adler’s gentle but indefatigable pacing, and McNally’s arch self-skewering humor to produce a thoroughly entertaining night out for people who love theater.
By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Feb. 2, 2016
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