If you can't be original, at least be amusing. Zach Braff takes the hint and scores with "All New People," a morbidly funny play about the trendy new existential condition of being young, adorable, and miserable.
If you can’t be original, at least be amusing. Zach Braff takes the hint and scores with “All New People,” a morbidly funny play about the trendy new existential condition of being young, adorable, and miserable. The four winsome specimens here — who meet cute at the empty Long Island beach house where one of them has gone in the dead of winter to kill himself — have been cast with a keen eye and directed with a firm hand by Peter DuBois, who grasps both the mordant humor and the narcissistic hook of the play’s premise.
Related Stories
VIP+What Film Fund From AI Startup Runway Means for Content’s Future
Christopher Ciccone, Artist and Brother of Madonna, Dies at 63
Braff is one of those multi-hyphenate creatives who can’t sit still, with credits ranging from his starring gig in longrunning NBC skein “Scrubs” to writing, directing and toplining 2004 feature “Garden State.” The strong visual sense that comes from working in movies and TV kicks in here with the play’s morbidly funny opening image of a guy named Charlie (Justin Bartha) standing on a chair with a noose around his neck, smoking one last cigarette. But instead of stepping off when he’s smoked out, this incompetent suicide candidate thrashes around, looking for an ashtray so he can put out the butt.
Popular on Variety
Bartha (“The Hangover”) milks this priceless sight gag for all it’s worth, adroitly establishing the lovable character of the woebegone hero and setting the comic tone for the entire play. The “new people” in Braff’s world may be clinically depressed, but, being consummate egotists, they are also acutely aware of how clinically depressed is supposed to look these days.
In a society that places a high value on its own superficiality, looks count for a lot, and the physical world of this dark comedy looks fabulous. Alexander Dodge (Tony-nommed for “Present Laughter”) gives us a decorator’s sterile vision of a chic Long Island beach “cottage,” with sliding screens opening onto a spacious front room fitted with a huge white sofa and decorated with expensive if meaningless pieces of modern art.
The other folk who gravitate to this desolate beach house resemble modernist art forms themselves — attractive, amusing diversions with no depth. Like Charlie, they all have secret sorrows that account for their colorful eccentricities, and the eventual disclosure of these personal secrets (in screened projections featuring well-known thesps like S. Epatha Merkerson) glibly passes for drama in the event-lite plot.
Arriving just in time to rescue Charlie, the next person on the scene is Emma (Krysten Ritter), a motormouth real-estate agent desperate to make a big sale so she can buy herself a phony visa and avoid being sent back home to England. With her glass-cutting voice and waif-like appearance, Ritter (“Confessions of a Shopaholic,” the upcoming “Vamps”) turns the desperately needy and perpetually stoned Emma into an endearing oddity.
Hot on Emma’s wobbly heels is Myron (David Wilson Barnes), all suited up in his professional capacity as the island’s fire chief and dope dealer. Barnes (“Becky Shaw”) is one fine actor, and it’s easy to miss the shadow that periodically passes over Myron’s goofy face, undoing his image as a muy macho guy who is just too tough to cry.
The final visitor is Kim (Anna Camp), a high-end hooker sent up from New York to cheer Charlie on his 35th birthday. Although this adorably dumb blonde is the hoariest stereotype of them all, Camp (“True Blood,” Second Stage’s “The Scene”) looks fine in the role (with a stylish assist from costumer Bobby Frederick Tilley II) and plays it with sweet abandon.
The truth is that none of these “new people” is a particularly novel character invention. But they sure are cute, and Braff knows how to write funny lines of dialogue for them to express (or hide) the profound alienation that governs their aimless lives.
The best thing about the voices of these contemporary Ancient Mariners is that they come in their own distinctive idioms: bitter-funny for Charlie; oddball-funny for Emma; cynical-funny for Myron; and stupid-funny for Kim. Braff’s obvious point is that the only way people can survive in an age of social alienation is to make their own connections. But at least he doesn’t force them to speak the same boring language.
Read More About:
Jump to CommentsAll New People
Second Stage; 296 seats; $75 top
More from Variety
Nicholas Pryor, ‘Risky Business’ and ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ Actor, Dies at 89
Generative AI Fueling ‘Exponential’ Rise in Celebrity NIL Rip-Offs: Exclusive Data
Ken Page, Voice of Oogie Boogie and Original Cast Member of Broadway’s ‘Cats,’ Dies at 70
Chad McQueen, ‘The Karate Kid’ Star and Steve McQueen’s Son, Dies at 63
What Lionsgate’s Partnership Deal With Runway Means
JD Souther, Singer Who Co-Wrote Eagles Classics Like ‘New Kid in Town,’ Dies at 78
Most Popular
Inside the 'Joker: Folie à Deux' Debacle: Todd Phillips ‘Wanted Nothing to Do’ With DC on the $200 Million Misfire
‘Menendez Brothers’ Netflix Doc Reveals Erik’s Drawings of His Abuse and Lyle Saying ‘I Would Much Rather Lose the Murder Trial Than Talk About Our…
‘Kaos’ Canceled After One Season at Netflix
‘Joker 2’ Axed Scene of Lady Gaga’s Lee Kissing a Woman at the Courthouse Because ‘It Had Dialogue in It’ and ‘Got in the Way’ of a Music…
Saoirse Ronan Says Losing Luna Lovegood Role in ‘Harry Potter’ Has ‘Stayed With Me Over the Years’: ‘I Was Too Young’ and ‘Knew I Wasn't Going to Get…
Kamala Harris Cracks Open a Miller High Life With Stephen Colbert on ‘The Late Show’
Kathy Bates Won an Oscar and Her Mom Told Her: ‘You Didn't Discover the Cure for Cancer,’ So ‘I Don't Know What All the Excitement Is About…
Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried to Star in ‘The Housemaid’ Adaptation From Director Paul Feig, Lionsgate
‘Skyfall’ Director Sam Mendes Says James Bond Studio Prefers Filmmakers ‘Who Are More Controllable’: ‘I Would Doubt’ I’d…
Kamala Harris Watches Maya Rudolph’s ‘SNL’ Impression, Praises the Mannerisms: ‘She’s So Good!’
Must Read
- Film
COVER | Sebastian Stan Tells All: Becoming Donald Trump and Starring in 2024’s Most Controversial Movie
By Andrew Wallenstein 3 weeks
- TV
Menendez Family Slams Netflix’s ‘Monsters’ as ‘Grotesque’ and ‘Riddled With Mistruths’: ‘The Character Assassination of Erik and Lyke Is Repulsive…
- TV
‘Yellowstone’ Season 5 Part 2 to Air on CBS After Paramount Network Debut
- TV
50 Cent Sets Diddy Abuse Allegations Docuseries at Netflix: ‘It’s a Complex Narrative Spanning Decades’ (EXCLUSIVE)
- Shopping
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Sets Digital and Blu-ray/DVD Release Dates
Sign Up for Variety Newsletters
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. // This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Variety Confidential
ncG1vNJzZmiukae2psDYZ5qopV9nfXJ9jqWcoKGkZL%2BmwsierqxnkaG5brrEsGSpnZ%2BluaZ5kGpocHFkaoRyhI4%3D