I Need That
Opening Night: November 2, 2023
Theater: American Airlines
Website: www.roundabouttheatre.org
Sam doesn’t get out much. Actually, he doesn’t get out at all, opting instead for the safety of his house in the company of his things—his many, many things. But when a notice from the government arrives alerting Sam that he must clean up his property or face eviction, he’s forced to reckon with what’s trash, what’s treasure, and whether we can ever know the difference between the two.
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November 2, 2023
Making the point even sharper is the entrance of the star, Danny DeVito, as Sam, the impish, 80-ish widower who lives there. Well, it’s not so much an entrance as a disclosure. Only after a series of knocks at the door wakes him up do we realize that amid the clutter submerging almost every surface of this once-handsome living room is Sam himself, indistinguishable from the trash.
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November 3, 2023
It’s not that the production is terrible by any means. It remains humorous and heartwarming at the right times, but with all the thrill of TV dinner meatloaf: low effort, over quickly and indistinguishable on the inside.
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November 2, 2023
DeVito is a star for a reason: His vulnerable, hilarious performance is a certifiable gem. If only this treasure weren’t so often lost in the piles that surround it.
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November 2, 2023
Clutter – physical, emotional – is the subject of Theresa Rebeck’s new Broadway play I Need That, a comedy-drama that star Danny DeVito works mightily and with increasing futility to stuff with laughs and meaning.
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November 2, 2023
Theresa Rebeck’s new play, which opened Thursday night on Broadway in a production starring Danny DeVito, is not like “that show” either. Not at all. It’s nowhere near as compelling, focused or human.
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November 2, 2023
Danny DeVito on Broadway: some welcome razzle-dazzle for the New York fall and winter, perhaps? Bluntly, sadly, no. In Theresa Rebeck’s play, I Need That (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre, to Dec. 30), DeVito plays Sam, a widower who lives surrounded by clutter—his living room more a submarine of tottering piles of objects. Furniture is hidden, blanketed, and camouflaged under bric-a-brac.
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November 2, 2023
Do you need to see I Need That? Not really. But you’ll have a nice time if you do, even if it does leave you hungry for something a little more substantial.
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Otherwise, Theresa Rebeck’s wispy comedy about love, loss, and coping with the aftermath, is all too expected. It seeks to say something significant and memorable but doesn’t quite get there.
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November 2, 2023
Sam’s realization isn’t the only moment that recalls TV fare. Rebeck’s play, which opened Thursday at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater, would be better titled “Sanford and Daughter,” even though Rebeck’s attempts at writing one-liners rarely rises to the level of the 1970s sitcom starring Redd Foxx.
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Overall, this piece doesn’t land at the top of Rebeck’s impressively diverse oeuvre, and I’d wager you’ll see some things coming far faster than any fire department. But I’m partial to plays that deal with experiences almost everyone shares and throwing stuff out is far higher on the list of life traumas than you might think.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 2, 2023
The national pastime—I refer not to baseball, but to the acquisition of too much stuff and the refusal to get rid of a single dog-eared book, worn pair of shoes or old Playbill, as if life weren’t worth living without each—comes under sympathetic scrutiny in “I Need That,” a modest but likable, sentiment-spritzed comedy by Theresa Rebeck, on Broadway in a Roundabout Theatre Company production.
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November 2, 2023
But after that initial bait-and-switch, not much in Rebeck’s dramatically inert play, or Moritz von Stuelpnagel hands-thrown-up direction, inspired a need to lean in for closer inspection.
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