Theater review: 'Living on Love'

The Asolo Rep’s production of Joe DiPietro’s “Living on Love” pokes a pin in the pretensions of the opera world. Not the most original satiric target, eh? Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny poked it years ago. But evidently, Renée Fleming wanted a comic vehicle. She asked. And who can say no to Renée Fleming?

It seems redundant to summarize the plot. Savvy theatergoers will suss out exactly where the play is going in the first five minutes. (Theatergoers with a pulse will, too.) Redundant or not, here goes …

The action unfolds in a swanky apartment in New York City in 1957. An opera maestro and a diva reside therein, attended by two Tweedledum and Tweedledee-like manservants (Roland Rusinek and Matthew McGee). Vito DeAngelis (Karl Hamilton) is a high-energy conductor who grinds his teeth when he hears the name Leonard Bernstein. Raquel DeAngelis (Rebecca Caine) is a diva (aka “La Diva”) who detests Maria Callas. Vito is writing his autobiography with the help of Robert Samson (Josh James), a twenty-something ghostwriter. But the young amanuensis doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance. It’s taken Samson over a month to extract two pages from the wine-swilling, late-rising, procrastinating maestro. When Samson spies La Diva gliding down the stairway, you realize that she’s his true idol. Before long, she persuades him to remove his shirt and anoints his chest with olive oil. This outrages the maestro, eliciting cries of “I kill you! You fired!” and so on. At this point, Iris Peabody (Ally Farzetta) appears—a junior assistant from the publishing company demanding either a manuscript or a royalty check. Vito turns on the Italian charm and a recording of Bolero. (Hey, it worked in “10.”) It works here, too. Iris swoons and agrees to be Vito’s new ghost writer. La Diva witnesses all and announces she’s hiring Samson as her ghost writer. As Bugs Bunny once said, “Of course you know, this means war.”

Peter Amster directs this material like the screwball comedy it wants to be. The result? Broad comedy + larger-than-life characters = big laughs. Judging by the standing ovation, the equation works. With the exception of critics who could see the jokes coming a mile away, of course.

It’s a great cast. But Hamilton carries the production. The whole thing could’ve fallen flat if he hadn’t been on his A-game. But the squinty-eyed verve, brio, charm, sleaziness and drunken physical comedy he brings to Vito keep you laughing, even in the more predictable scenes. (And the man can sing too.) The same can be said for Caine, who controls the lesser mortals around her by dispensing snippets of arias like Dr. Pavlov handing out doggie treats. Farzetta’s Iris initially comes on like a prim Miss Hathaway—and of course lets her hair down, sending a shout-out to the women’s movement in the process. James hits the right Jimmy Stewart-esque tone as the struggling writer wrestling with the great American novel (titled “The Great American Novel”) and doing a hack-writing assignment to pay the bills. McGee and Rusinek are funny (and occasionally creepy) as the seemingly synchronized butlers—and close the show with a fine rendition of “Always.” Kudos also to Robert Perdziola for the swell set and swanky period costumes. Evidently, they knew how to live in 1957.

It adds up to a lot of heavyweight talent delivering lightweight material. DiPietro gets in some good one-liners to be sure. But his rhythms feel sit-comy and his characters are caricatures. Vito talks like Chico Marx, OK? The playwright lampshades this in the dialog. Ha-ha. That doesn’t change the fact. So what went wrong?

If you ask me, there’s one big problem.

Basically, DiPietro updated Garson Kanin’s “Peccadillo”—removing a few dated and sexist elements and injecting more laughs. The core premise is comedy gold: Two aging egomaniacs create a private world—and two normal people get trapped inside. It’s a classic Alice in Wonderland situation. Except that Alice wasn’t crazy—and Samson and Iris are as mad as hatters. Their irrational attraction to the maestro and La Diva is a comic misstep. If they’d simply been humoring two amorous, narcissistic nuts and trying to get their books written, the play would’ve been far funnier.

That’s my advice. For some reason, the Tony Award-winning playwright never asked me for it.