The Good Old Days

Victor Garber, as the Noel Coward manqué Garry Essendine in Coward’s Present Laughter, is giving exactly the performance one imagined when his casting was announced last summer. Which is not to say that his sparkling performance is a bad one, just unsurprising. The element of suspense is instead focused on Brooks Ashmanskas as a deranged “young” playwright (the script says 25; Ashmanskas’ face says otherwise), and whether or not Ashmanskas will be able to digest all of that elaborate Art Deco scenery he’s so wildly gnawing on.

A screwball comedy about the entourage surrounding an aging matinee idol, Present Laughter is a very funny play, but this production seems oddly intent on style over substance. The first act is a stately yawn, as if director Nicholas Martin chalked it up as an expository bore and ordered his cast to speak as clearly as possible to avoid confusion in the audience when things heat up in the second act. Luckily, everyone on stage (including Harriet Harris as Garry’s sharp-tongued secretary and Lisa Banes as Garry’s bemused wife) lets loose as the plot turns farcical, only to recede into the background for the final act, which begs for swiftness instead of the self-denying spotlight Garber’s costars shine on him. Still, Coward is always welcome on Broadway, even if Martin has saddled his production with an infuriatingly arbitrary Coward song, sung by the entire cast post-curtain call. To quote another Coward song, “Why must the show go on?”

Also receiving an oddly stately revival is Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, about the undoing of Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Liev Schreiber, adding more gloss to his reputation as the finest stage actor of his generation). The set, costumes and accents are all appropriately gritty, but either due to an odd directorial tic or budgetary cuts, the play seems to take place in a vacuum, rather than in bustling Red Hook.

Maybe director Gregory Mosher simply wanted no distractions from Schreiber’s startling, ultra-naturalistic performance (Tony prognosticators, take note). Married to the sweet natured Bea (Jessica Hecht, thriftily rescuing her doomed Brighton Beach Memoirs performance), Eddie is secretly—even to himself—in love with Bea’s niece Catherine. As played by Scarlett Johansson, making an assured Broadway debut that makes one yearn for her to abandon Hollywood for the Great White Way, it’s easy to understand why Eddie would fall for her. But when Bea’s illegal immigrant cousin Rodolpho (Morgan Spector, taking over for injured actor Santino Fontana) and Catherine fall in love, Eddie comes undone.

There’s an unpolluted emotional intensity to this production that restores some of Miller’s luster, after that ungainly All My Sons revival last season. Eddie is hardly the stuff of mythology, but his gradual destruction at the hands of forces he doesn’t understand has the force of genuine tragedy. And Schreiber, with his anti-actor stage presence, nonetheless evokes a classical hero, brought down by his own fatal flaw.

Present Laughter

Open run, 227 W. 42nd St. (betw. B’way & 8th Ave.), 212-719-1300; $66.50–$116.50.

A View From the Bridge

Open run, 138 W. 48th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-239-6200; $42.50–$126.50.