Marisa Tomei, nearing 60, retains much of the same intelligently feisty girlishness that blasted her to stardom in 1992’s My Cousin Vinny, making her an appealing draw no matter in what she appears. Her latest New York stage venture isn’t on Broadway, though, where she’s done five plays, but Off Broadway at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre. Here, The New Group, celebrating its 30th anniversary, is offering Jessica Goldberg’s Babe, a wobbly, behind-the-record-label drama about the music industry, originally done by the Echo Theatre Company, Los Angeles.
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| Arliss Howard, Gracie McGraw. All photos: Monique Carboni. |
Tomei plays Abby (Abigail), a middle-aged executive who works in the A&R (Artists and Repertoire) division of an unnamed record company. Her dominating, macho boss, for whom she’s worked for 32 years, is the hugely successful Gus (Arliss Howard), in his 60s. A misogynistic, profane martinet who speaks to his female subordinates in rude bro language (his sensitivity sessions be damned!), Gus cares (if not romantically) for Abby; however, he barely gives her credit for her invaluable contributions to their mutual success at finding talent with whom to create grunge and punk hits.
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| Arliss Howard, Marisa Tomei. |
A third character is Katherine (Gracie McGraw), a ruthlessly ambitious new employee anxious to make her mark but whose suggestions meet with bitingly coarse
rejections by Gus, whose tastes Katherine considers outdated. A fourth person
is Kat Wonder (also played by McGraw), a deceased, self-destructive, punk
rocker, discovered by Abby in the 1990s, whose fame stemmed from her take-no-prisoners
brand of musical nihilism. Kat appears when Katherine morphs into her in Abby’s
memory. These vaguely presented transformations serve more to fog than clarify the narrative.
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| Gracie McGraw, Arliss Howard, Marisa Tomei. |
The play, whose occasional time shifting is equally
confusing, explores the working relationships of the three prime characters,
beginning with Katherine’s uncomfortable interview by Gus for a job in A&R. It’s an encounter
that reveals Katherine’s #metoo touchiness about Gus’s defiantly non-apologetic,
politically incorrect personality, including his calling women “girls,” or the
word that presumably inspired the title, “babe.” The playwright might have done
more with this issue, but she has too many other things that need attending to.
We get lots of impassionedly pompous blah-blah-blah about what Gus is seeking in
potential recording artists. And, if we’re checking off clichés, we can include
Goldberg’s preoccupations with potential lesbianism in Abby and Katherine’s personal
connection.
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| Marisa Tomei, Gracie McGraw. |
This is the kind of play about artistic production where it’s
necessary to reveal some semblance of the art with which the characters are
dealing. Usually, the result, depicted in words or images, assumes an ersatz
quality we’re forced to overlook. Here, for example, we’re asked to accept the
characters’ opinions on things like the quality of song lyrics, as when Gus and
Abby reject a pairing like “drowning” and “frowning” but swoon over replacing
it with “drowning” and “fucking.” Not precisely Sondheim-esque.
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| Arliss Howard, Gracie McGraw. |
It takes some time during the 85-minute, intermission-less play, directed with a minimum of dramatic impact by Scott Elliott, before its chief
issue emerges. This happens when Katherine, whose Gen-Z disgust with the toxic,
sexist environment Gus represents, makes a full-frontal attack on him reflective
of the slash and burn ferocity of Kat Wonder. And, if we’re looking for another
dramaturgic box to check off, we need only look at Abby, whose own suppressed ambitions
for industry recognition have become apparent. She suffers not only the indignity
of being professionally ignored but the curse of breast cancer, a tired device seemingly
present to underline her worries about the loss of her womanly assets. We thus
have yet another play requiring hospital scenes, here indicated simply by having
Abby slouch in a leather, living room chair listening to music through headphones
worn over a wool cap. (A few moments pass before you realize the scene has
moved to a hospital.)
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| Marisa Tomei, Gracie McGraw. |
Derek McLane’s set shows what’s supposed to be a sharp difference between Gus’s ostentatious apartment and Abby’s nice but less extravagant one. But both rooms use exactly the same furniture, only their rear walls being different. Gus’s is filled with industry awards, Abby’s with countless LP albums, both lit at moody, low intensity by Cha See. Jeff Mashie’s costumes, which, boringly, never change, capably identify their wearers, although a sharper distinction would be helpful for distinguishing between Katherine and Kat.
The actors do their best to shore up the play’s rocky structure, but their characters
are not very likable and their performances remain
this side of memorable. Under Elliott’s direction, the temperature rises a bit whenever the characters shout at each other, a regular occurrence. For the most
part, though, the emotional heat fluttering across the footlights is rarely more than tepid.
It’s a pleasure to see Marisa Tomei on stage (her mom was my college classmate), but I hope she
chooses something more affecting her next time out.
Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre/Pershing Square Signature Center
480 W. 42nd Street, NYC
Through December 22