Bullets Over Broadway

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Zach Braff and Marin Mazzie in a scene

from Bullets Over Broadway

(Photo credit: Paul Kolnik)

 

Okay, it’s got everything: Woody Allen’s book, Susan Stroman’s choreography and directing, Santo Loquasto’s sets, William Ivey Long’s costumes, Paul Huntley’s wigs, Peter Hylenski’s sound – and you hear every word sung or spoken and you hear every bullet go bang and they’s a lotta lotta bangs. And there’s a cast, chorus, singers, dancers, orchestra plunging into every one of the twenty-some vintage songs –-yeahhh, no royalties!!! – to showstopping effect again and again. So what if you’ve heard it all before and seen it all before? But not like this. Not with this particular brand of buzz. Because there’s “hit” buzz all over, even word of mouth. Any other year it would be a blockbuster. This year, there’s so much quality outshining Bullets that just to keep up puts this a bit low on the list. It’s a genuine waffle.

 

Were you to put aside all the national crapola over guns and take this show for a comic period piece as intended, you’d be in a better place, and more power to you. But let’s say you start from that better place: you still have to put up with the television whiz kid Zach (Scrubs) Braff starring among the nine stars of the show as the central character stand-in for a nerdish, nebbish Woody Allen-type playwright David Shayne fiercely defending his masterpiece play from being spoiled by the commercial compromises foisted upon his willing producer Julian Marx (Lenny Wolpe) to get the show on. Money, that is. And where is the money that is? Is in the mitts of gang boss Nick Valenti (Vincent Pastore). Who has a hot patooty among the chorines in his night club, Olive (Heléne Yorke) that pushes all his buttons. Who wants to be a Star. On Broadway. And is a practicing disaster in spite of her incredibly delectable physical attributes.

Nick Cordero, Heléne Yorke and Vincent

Pastore (center) in Bullet Over Broadway

(Photo credit: Paul Kolnik)

 

You see the problems already, don’t you. Each one is laden with baggage that does not project constant delight, to put it mildly. And the one who is laden with constant delight, the playwright’s girlfriend, Ellen (Betsy Wolfe) is so laden you wonder why in the dad burned dickens that dimwit David, her fiancé, the playwright of no return, falls like a ton of roadkill for the over-the-top glamorous, outrageously egocentric, faded star Helen Sinclair (Marin Mazzie) who isn’t faded one bit and belts number after number to roars of approval but what is she doing in his play?

 

Which is going ahead because the gangster has put up the necessary loot, his screech of a girlfriend is in the play and fouling it up, and they all are stymied as what to do to make things better? (As am I.) Well, this is the original bit: a gangster named Cheech (Nick Cordero) ain’t as dim as he looks. He has other skills besides bumping off mugs. He makes play suggestions. (You are laughing? Go ahead, it is good for you.) Which get adopted. And improve the play. Trouble is they make Olive’s role smaller and smaller. And she screeches. But everybody else is happier.

Vincent Pastore and Heléne Yorke in

a scene from Bullets Over Broadway

(Photo credit: Paul Kolnik)

 

Well, not exactly. Playwright David has more and more wounds to his tinier and tinier ego, until he finally admits things are really swell. Except for the gangster girlfriend. With which Cheech cannot agree more. Cheech has been planted in the rehearsals to see that Olive does not get up to extra-curricular hanky-panky which Olive is kind of prone to do. Even upright. Cheech tells David that that Olive is lousing up his play. Whattttt? Cheech’s play? Okay, their play. David gulps and agrees it is their play but not to tell anybody. But – what to do? I suppose you remember that Cheech has other skills besides playwriting. So you know where this is going.

 

So. All in fun. Big numbers. Wildly successful dance routines especially tap-dancing gangsters. The barest of chorine costumes. Everyday normal lewdness. Well, not quite: there’s “The Hot Dog Song” which is so not subtle you die laughing because what else can you do, cringe? And that is far from all. To list all is indeed a spoiler. Suffice it to say, author and director have put together a show which does not have a wink and a nod in it. Only the broadest of reactions will do. Which can sometimes be funny. If you know how to do it. Marin Mazzie does and is a knockout. Zach Braff does not and is not a knockout. And everybody else is somewhere in between. Except for one puzzlement: Karen Ziemba, a marvelous performer, one of the nine stars, what is she doing in this show? Her role makes no sense. Is that an inside joke? Nobody, but nobody gets it. Everybody is overdoing so much – and some of them are famous for overdoing – that it seems as if Susan Stroman’s directing skills are playing very second fiddle to her choreographic skills.

 

But the “buzz” is in. And nobody fights the “buzz.” It’s what makes the world go round. Oh, you’ve heard different?

 

Bullets Over Broadway (open run)

St. James Theatre, 246 West 44^th Street, between Broadway and 8^th Avenue, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.bulletsoverbroadway.com

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including one intermission