The intimate auditorium of the Seven Dials Playhouse turns into the Manhattan department of the theatre-crowd hangout Joe Allen, full with viewers members seated at tables on stage, for Mark Gerrard’s ode to the lives and loves of Broadway fanatics. Steve shall be catnip for anybody who ever used present tunes to deal with – or distract from – a disaster. “What kind of God might enable the film model of Mame?” calls for Steven (David Ames), over-the-hill at 47 as he downs vodka stingers à la The Women Who Lunch.
Namesakes abound, from his presumably untrue accomplice, Stephen (Joe Aaron Reid), with whom he has a baby, to the waiter Esteban (Nico Conde), who materialises to dispense knowledge and twinkle charmingly. A framed image of one other Stephen – the late Sondheim – watches over them like a guardian angel; this manufacturing is devoted to him, and his lyrics are the lingua franca of a bunch that extends to Carrie (Jenna Russell), who's delighted to seek out that her most cancers weblog has been optioned by Hollywood.
The six-strong ensemble hit convincing notes of pressure and battle as the chums doing what they will to fake they're nonetheless younger: sleeping round, sexting, conducting an experiment in throuple-dom. Except for one clunky scene exhibiting Stephen juggling a number of texts and cellphone calls, the staging and writing zing properly. It’s only a pity that Gerrard by no means fairly breaches his characters’ defences as, say, Terrence McNally might need accomplished. Andrew Keates’s manufacturing is easy: a rotating disc throughout the stage offers views of the motion from each angle throughout Steven’s fraught birthday dinner. Just like the play, it goes round in circles entertainingly even when it by no means fairly arrives wherever new.
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