Meteor Shower is Comedic Comet – Luminous and Lovely, then Over

Meteor Shower is hilarious. It is one of the funniest shows I have seen on Broadway and one that fully utilizes the medium. It isn’t a transfer or remake or reimaginering of some other piece. It is a wholly unique show.

Writer Steve Martin has produced sympathetic roles that are stereotypical, somehow both over the top and completely believable. Director Jerry Zaks has let this perfect cast loose on these roles, letting them play broad without dissolving into farce.

Amy Schumer and Jeremy Shamos play married couple Corky and Norm, a married couple from Ojai (a small spa town in the foothills of the California Coast). Corky and Norm are aggressively normal, neurotic South Californians, complete with moments of confessional discussions of marital and personal aggressions. They even start the evening with a pre-wine, you know, the wine before the guests arrive - so it doesn’t count. They both play the “straight man” to the high wire act of craziness provided by Keegan-Michael Key and Laura Benanti.

Keegan-Michael Key, Jeremy Shamos, Amy Schumber & Laura Benanti (photo: Michael Murphy)

Key and Benanti play Gerald and Laura, the supersaturated ids of competitive marriage. Gerald and Laura have been invited up to Ojai to watch a coming meteor shower, the darkness in the country more conducive than the city lights of Santa Barbara. They arrive with mayhem on their minds. There is pure joy watching Keegan-Michael Key pontificate on the relationship of the cosmos to his own self-worth. You are swept up in the pure, uncomfortable oddness of the moment.

Meteor Shower provides a bountiful accounting of how far very normal and nice people are willing to go to accommodate the unexpected. Then, after the first third or so, the play tilts your expectations and reruns some of the previous interaction from a slightly different angle, with slightly different results. The replay signals that the audience is in for an multilayered experience rather than a singular narrative.

Gerald and Laura enter again, with more exposition, but different results. The confusion of both Corky and Norm is now reflected by the audience. Here the play spins off into ever more dubious realities, which Schumer and Shamos struggle to cope with. The audience has no problem following, because each moment is funnier than the last.

Go see Meteor Shower to watch fantastic comedic acting. Amy Schumer is simply hilarious as Corky, but is matched by the cast. Everyone involved seems to bring out the best in each other. The laughs will stay with you a long time, the memory of the show might not.

Meteor Shower | Playwright: Steve Martin | Director: Jerry Zacks | Cast: Laura Benanti, Keegan-Michael Key, Amy Schumer, Jeremy Shamos | website

Bette Pulls Off Hello Dolly in Top Form

Hello Dolly is an old school musical. You can either try to update it somehow, or hire a star and revel in the revival. Director Jeffery Zaks decided to go full on traditional, using Gower Champion’s staging and turning the full wattage of Bette Midler on to a willing audience. And it works marvelously.

Bette Midler charms as Dolly Levi in Hello Dolly

Hello Dolly is a star vehicle, a Bette Midler is a star that carries it with ease. The audience loves every minute she is onstage, and she loves it as well. As times when her smile is turned up to 12, you see the happiness under the character, this is a showman that loves to connect with the audience.

For those few that don’t know the story, Bette Midler plays Dolly Levi, a matchmaker and more. She has set her eyes on Horace Vandergelder, the famous Yonkers’ half a millionaire. Horace is played by an always fun David Hyde Pierce, who is too pleasurable in the role to complain about his in and out accent. Dolly has been hired to find him a wife and has procured one Irene Molloy, haberdasher and widow from New York City.

Horace sets out to New York, without realizing he has a house full of trouble. He has a niece that wants to marry an artist. Two store clerks that want an adventure and Dolly Levi who wants Horace for her own. Songs, laughs and mayhem ensue.

The clerks (the always excellent Gavin Creel* and the perfectly cast Taylor Trensch) meet Mrs. Molloy and her assistant, Minnie Fay at the hat shop. Dolly and Horace enter at the same time and tales are spun as to Cornelius’ wealth. Horace leaves, determined to find a more suitable new wife, and Cornelius and Barnaby find their New York adventure by escorting Irene and Minnie to dinner. Kate Burton plays the lovely Irene and Beanie Feldstein is great fun as the bubbly and charming Minnie Fay. The couples have a nice and light chemistry.

The show really revs up in the second half, where all parties converge on the Harmonia Gardens, a swank restaurant that Dolly hasn’t entered in 10 years, since her husband passed. The most famous dance numbers and songs play out here. Personally, I am not a fan of the song as a rule, but the raucous and wonderful delivery and energy sold it to me. It is a showstopper in the true sense of the word.

The show wraps up tidily – and you except nothing else.   

Bette Midler and David Hyde Pierce

Hello Dolly delivers exactly what you expect, but delivers it so perfectly you end up getting swept away. Bette Midler’s performance is excellent, and on the rare moments when she falters she easily moves back into her persona that also fits the play. Her years in Las Vegas playing The Showgirl Must Go On have taught her well.

The show has a large cast and many moving parts, both figuratively and literally in terms of staging. Director Jerry Zaks and Choreographer Warren Carlyle have done great work. I never saw the Gower Champion version, so I don’t know how much was changed, but did I love this show.

* I also attended one performance where Mr. Creel's understudy, Christian Dante White, performed fantastically in the role.

 Hello Dolly | Book: Michael Stewart, Music and Lyrics: Jerry Herman | Director: Jerry Zaks | Cast: Bette Midler, David Hyde Pierce, Gavin Creel, Kate Baldwin, Taylor Trensch, Beanie Feldstein, Will Burton, Melanie Moore, Jennifer Simard, Kevin Ligon