Trying to pay as close attention as I could muster for All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich as its four-member cast jollied along (more of those hearties later), I started thinking about the differences between the adjectives “humorous,” “amusing,” and “funny.” I was also thinking about the beloved noun “comedy.” I contend that though the words may be considered synonyms for each other, there are meaningful disparities.
But first you need to know that All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich is exactly that, no more, no less. Purveyor Rich deals in the comic and is known as a Thurber Prize-winning humorist, an accomplished Saturday Night Live writer, and a New Yorker contributor. His books, collections of humorous pieces, include Ant Farm, New Teeth, and Glory Days.
Now with wider exposure to the Rich pieces for this revue, I can report that they are clearly intended to be humorous and thereby often succeed as amusing. But—and this is a big but—they don’t often rise to the level of funny, if “funny” connotes, as it does in my mind, laughing. Many of those around me were laughing, yes, though never guffawing, never delivering the sorts of belly laughs that often elicit yet increased communal laughter.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
The pressing question here becomes: Did I laugh during the intermissionless 90 minutes? Yes, twice. Without giving the context—too much of a spoiler—I got a big kick out of this line: “Should I change my name? Is ‘Death’ too Jewish?” I also laughed aloud at, “What is your relationship to Jesus Christ?” Therefore, I can tally two big laughs. That’s not so bad, is it? Maybe it is.
What topics does Rich get around to? They mostly run long—often too long in the instance of “Learning the Ropes”—a sendup of pirate life and lost treasure. In it a running gag features two focal pirates beginning each sentence with a guttural “Arr.” Amusing for a while but not, arr, for that long.
“Case Study” is Rich’s spin on Joseph Merrick, better recognized as the Elephant Man. The comic point of this item missed me pretty much entirely, perhaps went over my head. I merely waited quietly until it ended. The next, “The Big Nap,” is Rich’s take on that old chestnut, the hard-boiled 1940s private eye’s caustic prose. Happily, Rich enlivens his go at Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep by introducing the main figures as a two-going-on-three-year-old and an even younger infant female called Zoe. Rich manages to amuse almost from beginning to finish.
Then comes “New Client,” in which a failing talent agent visited by that too-familiar old man with the menacing hooked blade figures out how to get around him. This’un is Rich’s most amusingly sustained inclusion. Closing out is “History Report,” with Rich imagining his great-granddaughter writing about him in 2074.
I’ve saved the introductory would-be amuser, “Guy Walks Into a Bar,” for mentioning last because it’s the weakest: a long penis joke involving a heard-of-hearing genie and the three wishes he allows, one having to do with a 12-inch pianist. I’ve left out “Dog Misses Connections” about doggy-style love. ’Nuff said?
And now, at last, welcome to the wowie-zowie All In cast—John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Richard Kind, giving, as the show’s title implicitly requires, their all, under Alex Timbers’ direction. Enlivening each of Rich’s scribblings beyond their mild heft, they’re supplied one chair each by set designer David Korins in which they hold manuscripts as New Yorker illustrator Emily Flake’s witty drawings are projected behind them.
Mulany—loved by many for his SNL years (he’s hosted numerous editions) and his stand-up career—consults his black binder less often than the others, but they all bite into their segments with comic ferocity, making as much as they can of the vacillating material. For instance, Kind—lives there a more idolized character actor around these days?—is so kinetic throughout that he practically cannonades from his upholstered perch.
(BTW, the original cast is scheduled to be replaced by a revolving group including, among others, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Jimmy Fallon, and Andrew Rannells. Check dates.)
It could be that the most head-on love odes in this billed love property are the passionate songs by the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, as musical-directed by Russ Kukul at the piano. “Absolute Cuckoo,” “The Book of Love”, “I Think I Need a New Heart,” and “100,000 Fireflies” are rendered by Abigail and Shaun Bergson, with the same fervor they bring to their own songs.
Through All In, Rich seems only to have tweaked one of his selections significantly. In “History Report,” he has his own great-granddaughter mention her great-grandfather Simon’s presenting a revue in the last-ever Broadway season. If by some unforeseen disaster the current season were to become that last Broadway season, All In, for its many drawbacks, still wouldn’t quite be the entire reason.
All In: Comedy About Love opened December 22, 2024, at the Hudson Theatre and runs through February 16, 2025. Tickets and information: allinbroadway.com
