Sorry—the 89-year-old board game of cards and chance—is intended for two to four players, age 6 and up. But in Theresa Rebeck’s new Broadway comedy I Need That, all it takes is one: the irascible Sam, played by the inimitable 78-year-old dynamo Danny DeVito.
He’s alone, in the dark, and he’s playing all the colors—red, blue, green, and yellow—moving the plastic pawns around the board, and gleefully trash-talking the other (invisible) players.
“Eight. Screw you, eight. I can’t do anything with an eight.… Red. Oh yeah red! Sorry! You see that, yellow! Fuck you. Sooooorrrrry.… Blue, I got nothing to say.… Yellow. SORRY. SORRY.… This isn’t about what’s fair, it’s about winning. Winning. I’M LOSING.”
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
It’s a—I hesitate to use such an overused term, but here it is—tour-de-force scene, which allows DeVito to flex his ample comic muscles as well as to plumb his character’s dramatic depths. (One suspects Rebeck tailored the monologue for her star’s talents.) At that moment, Sam is playing a losing game. He’s in his living room, which is packed with enough stuff to fill seven living rooms, and he needs to clean up his act—fast. A nosy neighbor surreptitiously snapped photos through the window and filed a complaint.
Where to even begin? Piles of decades-old magazines; stacks of hardcover books; a leaning tower of luggage; pillows and cushions; crates, baskets, and boxes filled with memorabilia such as a 67-year-old bottlecap and a bag of chips from days as a kid working bingo night at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. “I’d come home smelling like a chimney. Everybody smoked like two to three packs a night. The place was like a giant diseased lung,” he remembers fondly. “It was a wild time.” (Also in the bingo box: an engagement ring left behind by one of the bingo ladies. Sam saw no need to hand it over to the priest. “He’s going to put it in the collection plate. Because the Pope needs another ring.” But he kept it, to this day.) Somewhere under there is a sofa, weighed down by blankets and a closet’s worth of clothes. Most of us would call it junk, but as Sam is quick to note, “Everything here is worth something.” It’s a lifetime of memories.
“You can’t just throw out everything. You have to figure out what you want to keep, and what you can let go. It’s like Sophie’s Choice,” Sam tells his daughter, Amelia (Lucy DeVito, playing opposite her real-life father). She does not appreciate the comparison. “This is not like SOPHIE’S CHOICE! This is like: The fire department is coming and they’re going to condemn the place and tell the health department to throw you out if you don’t do something.” Sam’s friend, Foster (Ray Anthony Thomas), tries looking on the bright side: “It’s not like that show,” he offers, referring to Hoarders. And it’s not. The house is clean; it’s just cluttered to the max.
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel—who helmed Rebeck’s 2018 backstage drama Bernhardt/Hamlet, also at the Roundabout—I Need That runs only 100 intermission-free minutes, but somehow feels padded. Perhaps in an effort to avoid turning the play into The Danny DeVito Show, Rebeck gives Foster and Amelia a few crises and obstacles, most of which feel contrived. Foster going to Cleveland to live right near his son and grandkids, however, does make sense, and it gives rise to Sam’s brilliant one-liner: “Ohio is the source of all disappointment and grief in America.” (If that had been on a T-shirt in the lobby, I would have bought three of them.) There’s so much substance on stage, literally—Alexander Dodge’s set is a brilliant testament to the pure emotional power of material goods; less so in the script. Sorry!
I Need That opened Nov. 2, 2023, at the American Airlines Theatre. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
