Sharon (Sarah Lemp) takes aim at Uncle Jim (Mark Roberts) in Roberts’s sharpshooting dark comedy (photo by Clay Anderson)
Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 27, $35
212-989-2020
www.rattlestick.org
www.cherrylanetheatre.org
As you enter the small, intimate Cherry Lane Studio Theatre to see New Country, a flat-screen in the hotel-room set is playing climactic clips from such classic Westerns as High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, Pale Rider, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as well as the recent needless remake of 3:10 to Yuma. About two-thirds of the way through the viciously funny seventy-five-minute play, Uncle Jim (Roberts) says, “See, I like old country. Everything new is shit,” which just about sums up the world view of television veteran Roberts, a former stand-up comic who created, executive-produced, and wrote Mike and Molly for three seasons, was the head writer and executive producer for Two and a Half Men for seven years, was an executive consultant for The Big Bang Theory for three seasons, and has appeared on such shows as Friends and Seinfeld. He is now carving out quite a career for himself on the stage as a playwright and actor. Employing a sharp cynicism and wicked sense of humor from his years in Hollywood, Roberts went behind the scenes at a television network in The Gyre: Enter at Forest Lawn and examined the darker side of human nature in the brilliant black comedy Rantoul and Die, both for the adventurous Amoralists company and featuring the ultra-talented Sarah Lemp, who appeared in each of those productions, opposite Roberts in the former. In New Country, David Lind plays the aptly named Justin Spears, a self-obsessed country music superstar partying in Nashville on the eve of his wedding. He is being watched closely by his longtime handlers, the all-business Paul (Malcolm Madera) and his sidekick, the roly-poly Chuck (Jared Culverhouse), who are also dealing with the jealous and nervous fiancée via cell phone. Justin has let his fame go to his head, ordering around everyone, making them cater to his every whim, including Uncle Jim, a grizzled old coot who is the only relative Justin claims to care about. Meanwhile, Ollie (Stephen Sheffer), the hotel bellboy and wannabe country singer, is trying to get his demo to Justin. Things really kick into high gear when Sharon, Justin’s former fiancée, arrives like a house on fire, metaphorical six-guns blazing as she attempts to claim her just deserts. Evoking a screwball drawing-room comedy, albeit with quite a cynical bite, New Country skewers such high-falutin’ concepts as love, loyalty, and creativity as everyone states their case for why they matter — or why they don’t.
The price of fame and fortune in skewered in NEW COUNTRY (photo by Clay Anderson)
The centerpiece of New Country is a marvelous scene between Sharon, a bitter, leather-clad, motorcycle-riding cop, and Uncle Jim, a hippie Walter Brennan who mumbles hysterical asides while guzzling alcohol and hanging out with his companion, a blow-up doll named Wanda June Whitmore who “is up for anything and everything.” Lemp gives what might be her best performance yet as Sharon, a whirlwind of energy and bile, while Roberts has a ball as Uncle Jim, who’s never met a vice he isn’t willing to try. But neither of them is happy with the hands they’ve been dealt. “Live in your own little world, don’t you, pal?” Sharon says to him at one point. “Well. Beats the one they give us,” he responds, to which she adds, “True enough. Everything sure looked better in the catalogue.” Madera and Culverhouse are like a modern-day Abbott and Costello as Paul and Chuck, who are not about to let their golden goose flit away. Lind is excellent as the smug, oily Justin, hiding more than a few secrets that could ruin him, while Sheffer is sweetly likable as Ollie, who is no mere swishy bellboy. Director and set designer David Harwell sustains the craziness with just the right balance of anarchy and order, giving plenty of room for Roberts’s acidic, incisive dialogue to shine. There might not be a violent shootout à la Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper at the end, but the sharpshooting Roberts hits his many targets over and over, leaving behind a metaphorical, and hilarious, bloodbath of winners and losers.