Off-Broadway Theater Review: Shows for Days

Patti LuPone and Michael Urie. Photo: Joan Marcus

If You’re Not a Theater Insider, You Might Feel Left Out

By Lauren Yarger
It’s got star power (Broadway diva Patti LuPone and Off-Broadway darling Michael Urie). It’s even got heavy weights on the design team like Costume genius William Ivey Long and Lighting Designer Natasha Katz. But just like the community theater it depicts, Shows for Days doesn’t quite live up to what it could be.

The play is Douglas Carter Beane’s fond remembrance of his beginnings in the theater, as The Prometheus, a community theater in Reading, PA. His alter ego (and the play’s narrator, Car (Urie), introduces his fellow thespians, led by the overbearing director, producer, actress Irene (LuPone). There is Clive (Lance Coadie Williams ), the afro-wearing homosexual who keeps his relationship with a closeted Republican under wraps, Marie (Zoë Winters), the main actress with lots of needs, Damien (Jordan Dean) who helps Car discover his sexual orientation with a backstage encounter,  and Sid, the very masculine, blunt-talking  stage manager (Dale Soules) who is  the glue that holds the troupe together. Long dresses them all in the horrible late 1960s fashion styles popular when the action is taking place (despite the fact that Beatty’s backstage set reminds us that such drama could be taking place in any theater today).

LuPone is skilled in keeping Irene from being too over-the-top, despite the fact that she herself is known for not being too  unlike force-of-nature Irene. Just days earlier, LuPone had made headlines by snatching away the phone of an audience member who had been using it during the performance. HUGE flyers are inserted in the programs reminding patrons to turn their cell phones off in the hopes that the stars’ wrath would not be summoned. And despite LuPone’s  additional, humorous recorded curtain speech reminding us to turn them off, a woman two seats away from me rummaged through her bag to find her ringing phone in the middle of Act One….. It wouldn’t have been out of character for Irene to throw her out….

But a bigger force than Irene threatens the theater group – the wrecking ball, and she is forced to come up with a plan, including blackmailing Clive and putting Sid in a dress to save the theater (Soules’ appealing performance is one of the highlights of the production).

Urie is as engaging as ever, having enchanted in Off-Broadway’s Buyer and Cellar. He’s able to get laughs, with a fall or with a look, but there just isn’t enough for him to do here and the talent which might have brought some excitement to this show appears almost reined in by Director Jerry Zaks.

Beane’s script takes a turn into the melodramatic and drags on too long, but even before the two hours and 10 minutes with intermission was over, I was wondering whether someone not connected with the theater would remain interested in a personal memoir that doesn’t contain much action. Shows for Days doesn’t come close to being the homage to the theater that Moss Hart’s Act One is, or the anyone-can-enjoy comedy of a Noises Off., for example.

Sort of like community theater. You hope they’ll pull it off, but usually are left wanted more.

Shows for Days plays through Aug. 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center. 150 West 65th St., NYC. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8 pm; Wednesday and Saturday at 2 pm; Sunday at 3 pm. Tickets $77 - $87: lct.org/shows/shows-days; 800-432-7250.