November 29, 2017

Comic plays on Broadway these days are generally either knockabout farces like “The Play That Goes Wrong” or repurposed stand-up routines like “Latin History for Morons.” Comedy of the type that sustained the commercial theater for decades — verbal and domestic, often involving Jews — has petered out as a genre. Not even Neil Simon can get a decent revival.

So it’s a pleasure to have Steve Martin’s “Meteor Shower” at the Booth Theater, where it opened Wednesday night in a slick production directed by Jerry Zaks and starring Amy Schumer. It’s definitely funny.

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November 29, 2017

Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, Laura Benanti and Jeremy Shamos square off in Steve Martin’s absurdist comedy about the collision of the id and the super-ego in the treacherous marital cosmos.

“If you don’t deal with your subconscious, it will deal with you,” cautions Corky, the upwardly mobile California housewife played by Amy Schumer, as she prepares to receive guests from hell in Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower. We witness that warning go unheeded, wreaking havoc on Corky’s painstakingly maintained marriage, before the tables are turned, and predators become prey in the most radical of several variations on the evening’s events. Schumer is one of four terrific performers who juice the entertainment of this high-sheen production, honed to within an inch of its life by Jerry Zaks. But neither director nor cast can disguise the lack of substance in the padded sketch material.

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November 29, 2017

Meteor Shower is a very funny play. Keening-like-a-howler-monkey funny. Design-a-new-cry-laughing-emoji funny. What it is not, however, is a substantial play. At 80 minutes with no intermission, this two-couples-one-weird-evening show is shorter than an episode of Saturday Night Live, with which it shares a familiar sketch comedy sensibility. You can imagine the SNL writers-room pitch for a version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but with four of modern-day America’s most hilariously loathsome people.

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November 29, 2017

I could tell you that Amy Schumer is sensational in Meteor Shower and let the box office do the rest, but that would be a disservice to Steve Martin, whose comedy it is, and to the three actors joining Schumer in this 80-minute killer sketch. And to director Jerry Zaks, who now will have three hits running on Broadway simultaneously.

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November 29, 2017

Steve Martin has a flair for surreal comedy — a style that suits “Meteor Shower,” his new play about the existential mischief caused one night in 1993 when a deluge of meteors rains down on the boutique city of Ojai, Calif.  Before this singular night is through, two married couples will have gotten under each other’s skins, so to speak, and undergone major character transformations. Corky (Amy Schumer, in an exuberant performance) and Norm (Jeremy Shamos, Mr. Reliable) are young marrieds who have been working on their relationship with alarming dedication. Should either of them speak out of line, they have a litany of face-to-face rituals for restoring marital harmony. “I love you and I know you love me,” says Corky, going into robotic “talking mode.” “I understand you probably didn’t know you hurt me. I’m asking you to be more careful with my feelings.”

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