John Patrick Shanley directs his new play, Where's My Money?
This murderous parable about the battle of the genders centers
around two Brooklyn divorce lawyers and the women in their lives.
This battle of the genders, seesaws between what women will do
for money and what men will do for sex.
Preview: June 19, 2001
Opening: July 9, 2001
Closing: July 29, 2001
Center Stage Theater, NYC
"She's a bag of shit and I have to hold my nose to fuck her," says Sidney (David Deblinger) about his wife, Marcia Marie (Florencia Lozano), in one of the more tender moments from John Patrick Shaley's uproarious insult comedy, Where's My Money? Its tightly wound structure is a masochist's version of a game of tag. Scene one: Natalie (Paula Pizzi) calls Celeste (Yetta Gottesman) a "loser" and a "stupid whore." Scene two: Henry (John Ortiz) tells Natalie she's "boring" and "a fucking child." Scene three: Sidney informs Henry, "You poor bastard, they've got you by the balls." Scene four: the main event--an operatic war between the Darwinian divorce lawyer Sidney and his emotional screwdriver of a wife, Marcia Marie. It makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? seem like the picture of marital bliss.
The Labyrinth Theater Company made its name as the hippest new producing outfit of the past few years by presenting gritty, heightened realism about the Disneyfication of New York, the corruption of the justice system and other politically righteous causes. Its surprising new show features the same fierceness and conviction, but applied to a much more surreal, self-conscious and aggressively comic world. Using fairy-tale and B-movie tropes, Shanley tells a modern ghost story where the terror and humor are located in the neuroses of dysfunctional relationships. The vitriolic characters are a miserable lot that includes divorce lawyers and divorced lawyers (Sidney is a double threat)--all of whom search for and philosophize about the right way to love. Shanley (who also directs) knows more than just how to make a howlingly funny joke: He carefully establishes a boiling situation and teases it out, escalating the tension with Hitchcockian skill, and then, most impressively, he ends each scene with a theatrical jolt. No playwright this summer has had me as firmly in the palm of his hand.
As usual, it's impossible to keep your eyes off of the frighteningly intense and deadpan Ortiz, but this time, he's trumped by another ragingly frenzied madman, Deblinger, who ping-pongs from Nietzchaen amoral diatribes to weepy pangs of despair with the fearless abandon of the Tasmanian Devil. Playing his martyr wife, Lozano gives as good as she gets, swinging a broom and a butcher knife with equally jarring expertise.
Michelle Malavet's lopsided Alice in Wonderland set establishes the perfect nightmarish mood. The stage is small, but actors can seem far away from each other while standing at certain corners of the distorted room. Shanley's only major misstep is the patly hopeful last scene between Henry and Natalie, which gives away the play's dark secret: It's not that deep. Mostly obscured by the dazzling storytelling and knowing directorial gimmickry, Money's central themes about morality, gender difference and the search for fulfilling relationships are actually pretty banal. But in this slow summer season, a play that makes you laugh, shout and think might be too much to ask for.
"Where’s my money?" a dead man asks, and this weird moment is just one small facet of the witty and ultimately moving new play from John Patrick Shanley and the LAByrinth Theater Company. This piece of superlative theater about two New York divorce lawyers and their relationships with the women in their lives blends dark comedy and poignant drama with a dash of the surreal. Where’s My Money? begins simply enough at a café with office temp-cum-actress Celeste (Yetta Gottesman) and straightforward accountant Natalie (Paula Pizzi). They discuss their views on life and love, sardonic repartee that soon turns heated. Gottesman is simply phenomenal as the overly emotional and slightly naive Celeste. Her performance hits a range from lost romantic innocence to a staunch defense of abusive prurience. Gottesman’s conveyance of Celeste is completely fleshed-out and heartbreakingly real.
John Ortiz (seen on ABC’s The Job with Denis Leary) is Henry, a struggling divorce lawyer with marital woes. Ortiz is tightly wound, ready to explode one minute and gently contemplative the next. When Henry seeks the advice of gregarious colleague Sidney (David Deblinger), the results are engrossing and amusing. Sidney has skewed advice to spare, and Deblinger is a force to be reckoned with as he feasts on Shanley’s superb dialogue. Deblinger governs the stage with a controlled and consuming energy.
Sidney’s bitter but not hopeless wife Marcia Marie (Florencia Lozano) is overwrought but deft and strong in dealing with her husband and his callousness and indiscretions. Lozano shows touches of brilliance in her performance. The chemistry between Lozano and Deblinger is palpable, whether they are screaming at one another or during those quiet moments in between when a facial expression says everything.
Shanley (Moonstruck, Savage in Limbo) has again shown a masterful touch in his writing. The relationships are often raw, but emotionally gripping, vital and honest. Where’s My Money? provides both genuine laugh-out-loud material as well as profound revelations. The performances are all exceptional and smartly played. Shanley holds a tight rein over the cast with his sharp direction. However, he never stifles the actors, allowing them to run with his subject matter.
Humorous and stirring, Where’s My Money seeks the answers between finding where true love lies, the consistency of love and where love begins and ends. And like life, the answers are not always easy to find.
Where's My Money?
Review by William Stevenson
John Patrick Shanley, best known as the screenwriter of the lighthearted film Moonstruck, appears to be doing his best Neil LaBute impression in this play about the battle of the sexes. Although there are some sharp observations and lively performances, the tone waffles frequently between comedy and drama. As a result, the audience often isn't sure how to respond during the alternately funny and heated scenes.
Performed on a tiny stage by the LAByrinth Theater Company, Where's My Money? opens with an amusing scene between old friends Celeste (Yetta Gottesman) and Natalie (Paula Pizzi). As the two catch up, it becomes clear that actress/temp Celeste is a failure and Natalie is a cocky success. Natalie also happens to be a "truth teller," meaning that she doesn't hesitate to point out Celeste's poor life decisions and various shortcomings (including a limp). She points out that Celeste is"depreciating in value. That's what it means to
be a woman." As Celeste, Gottesman gets to deliver a few zingers herself. Speaking of her stoned boyfriend, she says, "Kenny blows so much weed, he may think I'm something on TV."
Things heat up in the next scene, when Natalie has an argument about money with her lawyer husband, Henry (John Ortiz). Shanley's tone becomes harsher as Henry insists that he should control the couple's checkbook. The seriousness is undercut, however, by both the occasional bursts of humor and a supernatural element the playwright introduces. Natalie says she saw a ghost--a man she owed money to--and she needs money from Henry to pay off this ghost. Okay……
A bit later, another ghost pops up unexpectedly, with Shanley borrowing from the late Charles Ludlum's theatrical bag of tricks. It would ruin the surprise to reveal what happens, but it's a comically jolting moment. On the other hand, it doesn't really fit in with the dramatic scenes about male-female relations. Shanley seems to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this play, and while one has to admire his daring, one also has to admit that it doesn't all gel together smoothly.
As the play progresses, Henry ends up looking like a nice guy compared to his divorce lawyer friend Sidney (David Deblinger). Proclaiming that it's the man's job to fool around, Sidney is a real prick. He also bears more than a passing resemblance to the misogynistic male characters in Neil LaBute's movies (In the Company of Men) and plays (bash). When he refers to his wife as "a bag of shit," one begins to understand why audience members have sent Shanley hate mail.
One of the best scenes is a fight between Sidney and his wife Marcia Marie (Florencia Lozano). As in the opening scene, Shanley shows his gift for dialogue as the two go at it in their kitchen. "What are we doing?" Sidney asks. "We've been killing each other," Marcia Marie responds. And that pretty much sums up Shanley's view of male-female dueling in this dark play.
Shanley serves as director, and he does a better job than he did staging his Cellini at Second Stage recently. The action moves along briskly, and Shanley seems to have encouraged the actors to go all out. Unfortunately, this means that the yelling and screaming often become shrill. But besides being loud, the actors do make their not-so-likable characters believable. Deblinger dominates his scenes, making Sidney repellent yet compelling. In the smaller role of his wife, Lozano holds her own with him. And as obnoxiously overconfident Natalie, Pizzi has fun telling the awful truth: "You're going down in flames!" she brays at Celeste, who is nicely played by Gottesman. Michelle Malavet's stylized set is intriguing, though it's perhaps too "Dr. Caligari"-esque. Like the angular set, Where's My Money? is extreme and unsettling. The comedy/drama may not have a consistent tone, but at least it doesn't lack energy.
Where''s My Money?
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley
LAByrinth Theater Company
Center Stage/NY
"Backstage"
There are the shows that are fun to watch and then there are the shows that are not so pleasurable as they
are devastatingly insightful and are shelved in the arsenal of affective theatre. The Labyrinth Theater, a company that has long been a source for both aesthetics, provides pleasure and complexity with its latest
effort, Where's My Money. Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, Money combines absurdist humor with a sharp cinematic quality, featuring exceptional performances and just enough of that outright fury that
leaves the audience both uncomfortable, and profoundly satisfied.
Money is repped as a dark comedy about two divorce lawyers (David Deblinger and John Ortiz) struggling with spousal injuries. In essence, however, the show revolves around the women these men have affected.
Matrimonial betrayal is secondary to the issue of whoredom. All three female characters are grappling with their own self-worth: Celsete (Yetta Gottesman) is an actress who thrives on direction and will compromise
herself sexually in exchange for guidance; Natalie (Paula Pizzi)is an accountant haunted by a financial debt to her former and now deceased lover (Chris McGarry); and Marsha Marie (Florencia Lozano) is a housewife
self-confined within a frigid marriage, maintained only for convenience. Each woman evaluates her worth through her respective lovers, conspiring what it is they can get rather than what it is they really want.
Money is a study of whoredom, wrestling to find where the love begins and where the desire to have ends.
Each scene is intentionally choppy, as if previously spliced in an editing room, yet the actual transitions are surprisingly smooth and natural. Michelle Malavet's set design is precise: a razed, angled stage with deep reds, blacks and whites, as blunt as a checkerboard. Eric DeArmon's sound completes the cinematic tone, combining
brassy blues with the punchy Dragnet theme song, and a thumping overwrought impression of a woman's limp. Shanley's direction is just conscious of its media enough to play with the foibles of audience awareness,
without becoming redundant or contrite.
Money is superbly acted by a top-of-the-line ensemble cast. So sexually provocative, the actors invoke
moments of startling, almost embarrassing honesty, without saying a word. Shanley has written solid
characters, but has left plenty of room for creative, often hilarious interpretation from the actors. With a
running time just over an hour, Money is theatre pressing back the walls of convention, parlaying the common
crutches of risk-taking, and refiguring the stage into something wholly new and invaluable.
July 11, 2001
Theater Review - "WHERE'S MY MONEY?'
A Woman With Everything, or Maybe Nothing
by Anita Gates
For anyone who's ever run into an old friend on the street, caught up over a cup of coffee and left feeling suicidal because the friend's life was obviously turning out so much better, there is solace in John Patrick Shanley's new play, "Where's My Money?," which opened on Monday night at Center Stage/NY.
Celeste (Yetta Gottesman), an actor who rarely gets acting jobs and is cheating on her boyfriend with a married man, is on her cell phone outside a SoHo coffee place when she spots Natalie, whom she hasn't seen in two years. She tells Natalie (Paula Pizzi), "You look really put together." Natalie, who has perfect teeth, a perpetual smile, great sunglasses and that hateful smug self-confidence that Wendie Malick has perfected in television roles, answers, "I sort of am together." She's an accountant married to a lawyer with an apartment on the Upper West Side.
Celeste lives with Kenny, a musician, in a single room and isn't sure that he pays enough attention to her to know she's having an affair. "Kenny blows so much weed," she explains, "he may think I'm something on TV." Natalie is a little hard on her friend. She tells Celeste she'll never get roles if she doesn't have her limp corrected by surgery. She warns her that she's getting old (31) and undesirable: "It's the truth of what it is to be a woman." ("Not in France," says Celeste.) Natalie says, among other things, "We're different because I got on with my life, and you didn't." She adds: "I don't know any other way to put this. Celeste, you're a whore." Before they part, a strange man (Chris McGarry) demands the money he says Natalie owes him.
What Celeste doesn't stick around to see (in more ways than one) is just how not together Natalie's life really is. Her husband, Henry (John Ortiz), doesn't trust her enough to establish a joint checking account. Accountant or no accountant, Natalie has had some problems with personal money management. And she has just seen a ghost. When Henry, who just wants to be left alone to read "Crime and Punishment" ("People are boring. Books and movies are fake because fake is better"), finds out about Natalie's debt to her ex-lover, he storms out and goes to visit his friend and legal idol, Sidney (David Deblinger). And let's just say that Sidney — who is obviously on loan from a Neil LaBute play — has his own quirks. His pet theory is that one partner in every marriage will be unfaithful, so you owe it to yourself to claim the cheating role first. His wife, Marcia Marie (Florencia Lozano), is equally deranged.
Mr. Shanley has directed this Labyrinth Theater production with expert pacing and with such a sure comic hand that all the actors shine. Then in the last 10 minutes everything falls apart. Imagine that you're watching the last scenes of "Moonstruck," for which Mr. Shanley won the Oscar for best screenplay, and that Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis, Vincent Gardenia and Danny Aiello are in the kitchen, giving and receiving news about who's getting married and who's not. But instead of ending with the heartwarming group toast "A la familia," the film ends with a team of terrorists bursting into the house and mowing everybody down. That's roughly how jolting the change of mood is.
But the first 80 minutes or so of "Where's My Money?" are lively, smart, occasionally scary and rich in reverse wisdom. When Mr. Shanley finds the right ending for this play, which runs through July 21, it's sure to be a winner.
WHERE'S MY MONEY?
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley; sets by Michelle Malavet; lighting by Sarah Sidman; costumes by Mimi O'Donnell; sound by Eric DeArmon; fight choreography by Blaise Corrigan; stage manager, Dawn Wagner. Producers, Jinn S. Kim and David Zayas. Associate producers, Carla Nakatani and Justin Reinsilber. Presented by the Labyrinth Theater Company. At Center Stage/NY, 48 West 21st Street, fourth floor, Manhattan.
WITH: David Deblinger, Yetta Gottesman,
Florencia Lozano, Chris McGarry, John Ortiz
and Paula Pizzi.
July 13, 2001
Melodrama, Marriage and Morality
All this and a ghost story, too, in a new play from Shanley
by Gordon Cox. Gordon Cox is a regular contributor to Newsday.
OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW - WHERE'S MY MONEY?
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. With David Deblinger, Yetta Gottesman, Florencia Lozano, Chris McGarry, John Ortiz, Paula Pizzi. Set by Michelle Malavet, costumes by Mimi O'Donnell, lights by Sarah Sidman, sound by Eric DeArmon. Labyrinth Theater Company, Center Stage/NY, 48 W. 21st St., fourth floor, Manhattan. Seen at Thursday's preview.
JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY is back, and it seems like the playwright-director was just here. He was, with a very different kind of script: This spring he directed a production of his play "Cellini" at Second Stage. "Cellini," a historical drama about the life of the 16th century artist, was a big, difficult, ambitious undertaking for Shanley. His latest is a smaller, more modest proposal. And that's a good thing.
"Where's My Money?" is also about some big-picture ideas - this time it's marriage and morality. But the play, which opened last night, is also an occasionally cheeky ghost story with some touches of noirish melodrama. It's refreshing to see a playwright grapple with some thorny issues without, for the most part, taking himself too seriously.
The tone is set early on with a goofy, heavily shadowed montage of the play's characters gasping in exaggerated shock at some unseen horror. And even when the script at last tumbles into unconvincing angst, the show's winking self-awareness persists in Michelle Malavet's skewed set, whose lopsided floor and out-of-whack proportions suggest a funhouse nightmare.
The story kicks off with a fast and funny exchange between two women in a coffee shop, and then zooms out to encompass the two men, one woman and one ghost all linked to those women by chains of attraction, revulsion and revenge.
Questions of trust and fidelity hang over every character, and each one, speaking in Shanley's jauntily outrageous dialogue, gives us a different answer.
The dependable cast, led by Paula Pizzi as a brittle accountant and John Ortiz as her ambitious husband, has a strong sense of humor that aids and abets the proceedings. Yetta Gottesman brings a disarming girlishness to her role as an underconfident actress-S&M enthusiast, while Florencia Lozano finds real, needy emotion behind her character's anal-retentive sniping. It's no surprise that Shanley gets a little overrun by his actors, because he directs like a writer - he doesn't know when to play against his own words.
He also doesn't pay much attention to the specifics of place in staging a scene (although he manages one astonishing coup de theatre that's worth the price of admission).
And the script still has wrinkles that need some ironing. The
maudlin ending feels tacked on, and there's a kind of tit-for-tat pop
psychology at work that seems oversimplified. But even as a work
in progress, "Where's My Money?" is surprising, entertaining and
funny enough that we'll happily go along for the ride.
NEW YORK (AP) - There's nothing like a good argument to set theatrical juices flowing. And ``Where's My Money?'' is a verbal slugfest put together by an expert at comic and not-so-comic mayhem, John Patrick Shanley.
The play, which the Labyrinth Theater Company has opened at Center Stage/NY, revels in over-the-top combat, the kind of intense outbursts that can only be committed by people who know each other all too well.
Shanley has done this sort of thing before: on stage in ``Danny and the Deep Blue Sea'' and on film in ``Moonstruck,'' for which he won a best screenplay Oscar. He writes acidic, often very funny dialogue that ping-pongs somewhere near the speed of light between actors.
Fortunately, Shanley, who also directed (a mite too indulgently), has put together a cast nimble enough to handle the high velocity. For much of the time, ``Where's My Money?'' deals with a pair of married couples, each with unraveling relationships.
Sidney is a divorce lawyer, cheating on his wife, Marcia Marie, with Celeste, a would-be actress who has a limp. This slight disproportion between her left and right hip certainly hinders her marketability, according to best friend Natalie.
Natalie is one of those close companions whose obnoxious good intentions always have bad results. She advises Celeste about her affair. To complicate matters, Natalie is married to Henry, Sidney's colleague, so things get a little close. Natalie and Henry have hit a rocky patch, too, with the woman haunted by what appears to be the ghost of her ex-lover.
Are you following all this? The various plot permutations are not as important as what is being said. Shanley's fierce martial conversations don't allow for much character development.
Yet David Deblinger and Florencia Lozano, as the squabbling Sidney and Marcia Marie, are astonishing in their gladiatorial skills as well as in their decibel level.
Yetta Gottelsman brings a rare moment of sweetness to the used and abused Celeste, while John Ortiz and Paula Pizzi spar effectively as couple number two.
The evening is short, less than 90 minutes, but it's relentless - at least until the final moment when the play fizzles in an unexpectedaccommodation that is as unsatisfying as it is unlikely.
Maybe by then, the characters, not to mention the actors, are exhausted and in serious need of quiet. So is the audience.