Sad-sack Charlie (Tony Shalhoub), once of middling success as an actor, now finds himself reduced to schmoozing for bit parts in dim sitcoms while living in New York off the wages of wife Stella (Patricia Heaton), a frumpy, frustrated but successful booking agent for a television talk show. Hardly Hollywood royalty. There was a time, after all, when Charlie attracted the suck-ups at the party rather than being one himself. So when he and his pal Lewis (Christopher Evan Welch) meet a vacuous, worshipful and seemingly fresh-off-the-Buckeye-truck Clea (Anna Camp) at one of those parties, it's obvious from the start that the poor schlub doesn't stand a chance.
Comparisons will be inevitable between "The Scene" and Second Stage's last Hollywood cautionary tale, the now-on-Broadway "The Little Dog Laughed." While the latter has had moderate critical success as an engaging cartoon anchored by the tour de force of Julie White as the deliciously soulless agent Diane, "The Scene" benefits by a much smarter book and a stronger ensemble of performances. Besides, Diane wouldn't wouldn't notice people this far down the entertainment totem pole if they were on fire.
Camp, Heaton and Shalhoub all are superb. Although best known as television's Monk, Shalhoub boasts an impressive resume of New York credits, and he perfectly captures Charlie's descent as he loses, as he describes it, his final shreds of dignity. Even though the character is utterly unlikeable, he manages to still elicit empathy in his ultimate destruction. No doubt thanks to her own sitcom experience, Heaton has great comic timing as Stella, who seems initially to have made peace with her mediocre lot. She also proves her acting chops in later scenes after discovering her husband's infidelity.
Camp, most recently part of the stellar ensemble of Off-Broadway's "columbinus," makes her mark on the New York theatre scene here. A Lady MacBeth for the "Mean Girls" set, Clea is, as Stella observes, "a fucking nightmare of a human being," detestable to the core. Camp masters the typical Clea speech pattern: a loosely tied strand of thoughts that says nothing and everything at the same time. Vapid and evil is a killer combination. One can't help but think this could be how Diane got her start.
Welch is mostly effective but problematic in a few spots. As the one who initially has his eye on Clea, he needs to, as my theatre companion put it, butch it up in a few spots. His character also is a bit muddily written compared to others, as it wasn't clear to me by the end whether his character was a noble hero or a calculator giving Clea a run for her money.
Rebeck's dialogue is excellent for most of the show and is aided by great pacing by the actors. Like Clea's thought pattern, characters often wander off and never really get to the point, even when attempting to make grandiose pronouncements. But somehow, this makes the overlapping dialogue clearer.
A weak ending, however, hampers the entire show. During the final glimpse at the shell of what is left of Charlie, he mutters what could be one of the most predictable final lines this season. Still, it's just one final bad taste in what otherwise was quite a satisfying evening.
The performance I attended featured a talkback with director Rebecca Bayla Taichman. The audience response overall was largely positive toward the acting and dialogue, although they also had problems with the ending. One man put it nicely: It seems like a lot of good parts that don't quite add up to as good as a whole. They also had problems with the upbeat rock music choices, which my companion and I thought were quite appropriate.
A final note: A lot is being made of Heaton's recent conservative political stances and how they won't jibe with the average New York theatregoers. Barring any Anita Bryant-style campaigns, I have to say good acting is good acting, and I think it would be rather hypocritical of me to criticize her for her stances in this context, seeing as it had no effect on her performance (especially considering my earlier post about Barbra Streisand). I thought she was fantastic, and I have no problem with saying it.
I couldn't help but notice, however, that one of the books on Charlie and Stella's bookcase was one by conservative commentator Larry Elder. I wonder if that was a compromise over the considerable number of F-bombs Heaton had to deliver.
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