Get ready for the unexpected when Norm and his wife Corky invite another couple to their Ojai backyard to watch a meteor shower in the night sky. As the stars come out and the conversation gets rolling, cocktails flow, tempers flare, and sparks fly-literally. Steve Martin's surprising new comedy takes an offbeat and absurdist look at the comic anxiety lurking just beneath the surface of modern marriage.
What ensues is one of the funniest, and wildest, games of social and sexual one-upsmanship since, well maybe since John Avildsen's 1981 film Neighbors, which starred Martin's former Saturday Night Live pals John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Martin has a strong stylistic kinship with the late genius Thomas Berger, author of the novel on which that film was based. Both are specialists in the exacting style of genre parody (Berger also wrote Little Big Man and Meeting Evil).
The laughter is definitely more raucous on Broadway than it was in San Diego. The daffy non-sequiturs are delivered with lunatic aplomb. Everything is crisper, including the modern Californian home in Ojai (designed by Beowulf Boritt to tickle Broadway theatergoers' fetish for flashy real estate). The blasts of Beethoven and the jaunty celestial displays between scenes accentuate the briskness of Zaks' staging. But the play is still the play, which is to say it's barely a play at all. 'Meteor Shower' is really a collection of funny (in both senses of the word) lines, packaged together with a few conceptual ideas tossed about in a manner that can seem random even if there's an all-too-tidy explanation written into this new version of the script.
2016 | San Diego, CA (Regional) |
The Old Globe World Premiere Production San Diego, CA (Regional) |
2017 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2018 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Laura Benanti |
2018 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Amy Schumer |
2018 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Steve Martin |
2018 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Amy Schumer |
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