Off the Marx

Roy Smiles' Schmucks

by David Anthony Fox

Jim Roese TWO-BIT: Bruce (Erik Jensen, left) and Marx (Ron Crawford) spend much of Schmucks musing on the purpose of comedy. Only it isn't funny. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. What better proof than Schmucks, where every one of playwright Roy Smiles' imagined punch lines is crushingly stillborn. If laughs are what you're looking for, this is not the show for you. To be fair, the play attempts more than that — a little biography, and a lot of musings about the role of humor in a shifting world. But Smiles' script is even less deep than it is funny.

Three guys wander into a diner. One is Lenny Bruce at the end of his life — angry, broke, strung out (and as seen here, beyond annoying). Another is Groucho Marx, elderly and morose. Then there's Joe Klein, a nebbishy little guy who, preposterously, is about to debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Bruce and Marx are, of course, fictionalized versions of their very famous selves. Joe Klein is — in this production, at least — all too obviously modeled on Woody Allen.)

Eureka — Klein can ask two great comics to help him with his act! But Marx and Bruce, at each other's throats for much of the evening, spend their time arguing about the purpose of comedy. Marx champions clean language, one-liners and easy, good fun. Bruce, naturally, is angry and political — and full of criticism of Groucho. (This meeting never really happened, though you surely don't need me to tell you that.) Schmucks also features a waitress who serves as a compendium of stereotypes and an awkward catalyst for exposition. For reasons that can only have to do with heavy-handed symbolism, the action is set during the New York blackout of 1965.

What Smiles tries to do here is what he attempted, equally unsuccessfully, in last year's ghastly Ying Tong — recalling celebrated entertainers and re-creating their routines, while revealing (groan) the tears behind the laughter. But neither the material nor (as seen at the Wilma) the delivery begin to capture three of America's legendary comics. And the serious parts of Schmucks are a clichéd, maudlin, rambling mess.

However, the second act has an absolutely marvelous interlude, staged with verve by Jiri Zizka, whose skillful direction here, for a happy change, doesn't call attention to itself. The Wilma audience, myself included, could scarcely contain our admiration and delight.

But does it justify going to Schmucks? Ask yourself if seven minutes of terrific sex are worth an agonizingly dreary date. It's your call.

(d_fox@citypaper.net)

Schmucks | Through Jan. 4, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org