STAGE REVIEW : Updated ‘Play’ Skewers a Life in the Theater

The history of theater is punctuated by plays about the theater. The impulse to write them is an itch some playwrights have to scratch. The self-inflicted wounds have ranged from Shakespeare’s Pyramus and Thisbe to Sheridan’s “The Critic” to Moss Hart’s “Light Up the Sky,” in varying permutations of funny.

Clever and cannibalistic are the words that come to mind watching the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson’s revival of “It’s Only a Play.” This 1985 Terrence McNally comedy, seen at a press preview Wednesday at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, spares no one, even if it doesn’t touch the sophistication of his extraordinary “The Lisbon Traviata” (at the Mark Taper Forum two years ago). McNally started to write “Play” as far back as 1978 and it is more in line with his bathhouse farce “The Ritz,” which, like “It’s Only a Play,” was intended for (though, in the end, not performed by) the late, great James Coco.

But . . . comedies about the theater are also inbred and limited by a topicality that demands regular updating. “Play” is no exception and McNally has done the work. Many of the names brandished in the 1985 edition have been replaced with names like Joan Rivers and Macaulay Culkin, fresh from today’s entertainment pages.

A great number of the Act II jokes at the Doolittle are at the expense of Charles Nelson Reilly. Reilly was not in the 1985 Manhattan Theatre Club production, but his name was subjected to a fair amount of ribbing in it. At the Doolittle, he plays the pivotal role of James Wicker and the ribbing, not only at his expense but frequently out of his own mouth, has, if anything, intensified.

It is to this no-holds-barred mentality that “It’s Only a Play” owes its large measure of success. No one is spared, living or dead, so no one can be offended by the sandpapering--not actors, producers or writers, and certainly not critics, landlords and dogs who should be used to it by now.

The elements of the plot are otherwise not too different from those of “Light Up the Sky,” but “It’s Only a Play’s” manners and mores are much more immediate. It plays in the neurotic present, at a Broadway opening-night party, and is replete with newly injected jabs at the construction of the Marriott Marquis, the conversion of Broadway theaters into churches and courthouses, the paucity of new American plays and the chokehold of the New York Times review.

While the party rages downstairs, the real action is in rookie producer Julia Budder’s bedroom. Wicker (Reilly), a friend of the playwright and an actor “gone Hollywood” who turned this play down to stick to his TV series, vents his cattiness behind the back of naive, super-wealthy Julia (Dana Ivey).

Parading in and out of the room, waiting for the reviews, fretting and fawning all over themselves, are stereotypes: the director Frank Finger, a self-styled enfant terrible a la Peter Sellars, complete with kimono (David Pierce); the superannuated leading lady, Virginia Noyes (Eileen Brennan), with a nose for controlled substances; the overwrought playwright, Peter Austin (Zeljko Ivanek); the star-struck party helper Gus (Sean O’Bryan); the salt-of-the-earth cabdriver, Emma (Doris Roberts), and, inevitably, the critic, Ira Drew (Paul Benedict), who draws everyone’s ire as a Hitler look-alike seemingly formulated from a toxic mix of John Simon, Clive Barnes and the late Ted Kalem.

And there’s the rub. For all of its equal-opportunity decimation, “Play’s” characters are ultimately too broad and overdrawn to hold our undivided attention. When McNally has one of them state that “every second act needs work,” the barb is surely aimed at himself. Having built up his audience’s expectations to a pitch of frenzy by the end of Act I, McNally doesn’t come up with the goods in Act II.

Even with the skillful “Lisbon” director John Tillinger at the helm, Act II’s climactic reading of the newspaper reviews sags under the sledgehammer approach. The attempt is not to emulate critic Frank Rich’s style while invoking his name, but merely to deliver a heavy-handed slam at everyone in the room.

Having done that, McNally doesn’t leave himself a lot of options. The play, which starts out strong, begins to buckle under its own weight, petering out and losing pace despite some admittedly touching moments and a revivifying second wind at the end.

It’s a problem somewhat built into any piece so exclusively devoted to a closed fraternity. While the acting and production values are generally first-rate, the material itself gets repetitious.

Outsiders won’t miss what they don’t know, but they may tire of it quicker. Those “in the know” will derive a good deal of fun and pleasure from the numerous inside jokes in “It’s Only a Play,” including the re-creation of a now-famous incident wherein actress Sylvia Miles once publicly dumped a plate of spaghetti over the head of New York magazine critic John Simon.

Here it’s lasagna on the head of Ira Drew, and to make sure the killing field is level, there’s even a joke about theater in Los Angeles (“That’s not theater; that’s a hiatus”). Above all, “It’s Only a Play” is good-natured fun and games--light, airy, catty, salty and, ultimately, shallow. Not exactly what you’d call a rave for this bag full of chuckles but, hey, it’s only a review.

“It’s Only a Play,” Doolittle Theatre, 1615 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.; April 19, 26, May 3, 10, 31, 7 p.m.; May 14, 21, June 4, 11, 18, 25, 2 p.m. Ends June 28. $33-$42; (213) 365-3500, (714) 740-2000. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

‘It’s Only a Play’

Charles Nelson Reilly: James Wicker

Eileen Brennan: Virginia Noyes

David Pierce: Frank Finger

Dana Ivey: Julia Budder

Paul Benedict: Ira Drew

Sean O’Bryan: Gus

Zeljko Ivanek: Peter Austin

Doris Roberts: Emma

A Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre presentation. Director John Tillinger. Playwright Terrence McNally. Set John Lee Beatty. Lights Paulie Jenkins. Costumes Tom Rand. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Fight direction Randy Kovitz. Production stage manager Mark Wright. Stage manager James T. McDermott.