Sitting through Act One was very, very trying, but it also provided me with one of the most meta experiences I've had in the theater.
The play ran 3 hours and 10 minutes, which I believe makes it the longest show of the season so far, surpassing both All the Way and Les Miserables.
Now stick with me here, but act one of Act One reminded me of A Free Man of Color. The writing style wasn't similar, but they were each overstuffed with too many characters and plotlines and basically were too ambitious for their own good. Both were lovely to look at, and the MASSIVE turntable set is a stunner here.
Three actors play Moss Hart, and Tony Shalhoub is takes with playing Moss, his father Bernard AND Kaufman!!
Act one meanders and rambles while telling the story of the early years of Hart's life. You could honestly condense the entire first 90 minutes into a 15 minute prologue and get all the information you needed. There's a ton of narration right to the audience that reminded me of lazy voiceover in a film. Act one ends with Hart finally meeting Kaufman, and trust me I couldn't have cared less about what was going to happen in act two.
Act two began more promisingly because Kaufman was 100% more interesting of a character than Hart ever was going to be. Shalhoub played him very well and it was fun (at first) to see the two of them try to fix the first draft of Once In a Lifetime. But here's where the meta crept in...during one scene Kaufman took a pen and began crossing out entire pages of the play claiming this character didn't need a backstory and this joke goes on for too long AFTER WE HAD JUST PUT UP WITH UNNECESSARY BACKSTORY AND JOKES THAT WENT ON TOO LONG!!!
Then we went from out of town tryout to out of town tryout with the characters yammering on and on about how troubled the play was and how it was falling about in the second half of the show, just as Lapine was unraveling this play as each line was spoken.
The evil trick was as Once In a Lifetime got better with revisions and changes, Act One only proceeded to get worse. After four scenes belaboring the third act trouble that was all too ironic to handle, we were treated to false ending after false ending after false ending.
I've got to hand it to the actors for sticking with it and get us to the end, but just as the actors in Once In a Lifetime kept complaining about having to learn new lines every night, I suspect this group will be doing the same thing.
Marie: Don't be in such a hurry about that pretty little chippy in Frisco.
Tony: Eh, she's a no chip!
