If you’re fan of comedian/actress/writer Rita Rudner, check out her latest stand-up special, A Tale of Two Dresses. Do yourself a favor and read—or reread—any of her books, such as I Still Have It…I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It: Confessions of a Fiftysomething. (Her essay on catalog addiction is classic: “I blame Victoria’s Secret. My friend ordered a blouse for me as a birthday present, and the company’s first final clearance catalogue made its way into my clutches three houses ago. It doesn’t matter how often I move; the catalogue knows where I’m living. If I’m ever kidnapped, I’m certain it would find me before the police.”) And Peter’s Friends—the 1992 Big Chill–esque movie that she wrote with her husband, Martin Bergman (it stars Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, and Rudner)—is an absolute must-see.
However, her off-Broadway musical Two’s a Crowd—Rudner wrote the book with Bergman, who also directs; the music is by U.K.-born, California-dwelling singer-songwriter/DJ Jason Feddy—is almost as embarrassing as going out first in a 12,000-plus-player poker tournament (to borrow an event from the show). Almost.
Rudnick got her start in Broadway musicals: Promises, Promises; Follies; The Magic Show; Mack & Mabel; So Long, 174th Street; and Annie, in which she played the dim-bulb Lily St. Regis. And she’s still got it (even if she can’t remember where she put it). But she deserves so much better than this Las Vegas–set schmaltz-fest.
The setup is straight out of a Hallmark movie: uptight wedding planner Wendy (Rudner) and laidback poker player Tom (Robert Yacko) have been double-booked into the same Vegas hotel room thanks to a computer glitch. (I’ve seen at least two Hallmark movies that start this way, and I’m sure there are more.) But thanks to the poker tournament, every one of the 150,000 hotel rooms in Vegas is apparently booked, and the two strangers are stuck sharing a room. Throw in room service, a couple of New York strips, Champagne, and a bottle of Duckhorn merlot (excellent choice on the wine, incidentally) and…do I even need to tell you what happens?
Rudner could get a giggle from a pile of peanuts, so she litters the script with laugh lines—most of them Wendy’s (hey, she knows her audience). Ordering her steak: “Medium to medium well. It’s medium, it’s on its way to medium well, but it stops before it gets there.” Asking Tom about poker: “Why do the people who play it look so unhealthy? What’s the difference between a straight and a full house, and when do you flush?” Giving the audience a glimpse into her personality: “Once I wore night cream during the day, but it was an honest mistake.” On being 60-ish: “Women my age don’t know where they fit in today’s world. I’m afraid to watch a television show I like. If they find out my demographic watches it, they’ll cancel it.”
The best songs, strangely, are the ones sung by Feddy, who strums guitar with a three-man band and periodically pops down a staircase to croon like a troubadour between scenes. It’s fun to hear Rudner sing, but does Two’s a Crowd—which premiered last year at California’s Laguna Playhouse with Rudner and longtime Phantom of the Opera star Davis Gaines—even need to be a musical?
It didn’t start that way. More than a decade ago, Bergman and Rudner’s straight play Room 776 premiered at the Las Vegas Little Theatre. It sounds an awful lot like Two’s a Crowd. But it didn’t end with a number called, ahem, “Shit Happens.”
Two’s a Crowd opened July 21, 2019, at 59E59 and runs through Aug. 25. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
