Although Idina Menzel looks fabulous in \u201cSkintight,\u201d the new play by Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews,\u201d \u201cSignificant Other\u201d), her character, Jodi Isaac, is a total wreck when she flies into New York for her father\u2019s 70th birthday. Jodi\u2019s middle-aged husband has left her for a 24-year-old, and all her friends have deserted her for the happy couple. Furthermore, she\u2019s approaching her sell-by date of 50. (She\u2019s only in her mid-40s, but who\u2019s counting? She is, that\u2019s who!)<\/p>\n
Not that Jodi gets much sympathy from her dear old dad, Elliot Isaac (Jack Wetherall, the soul of sophistication), who is himself in a fulfilling relationship with 20-year-old Trey (Will Brittain, beauty on the hoof). That makes Elliott\u2019s paramour exactly the same age as his grandson, Benjamin Cullen (Eli Gelb, an endearing klutz). But, again, who\u2019s counting? Jodi is.<\/p>\n
Harmon has written Jodi a delicious opening aria of unabashed self-pity, which Menzel delivers like the diva she is. Raging about her husband\u2019s new love interest, she erupts in outraged scorn. Wondering out loud what a 50-year-old man and a 24-year-old gym bunny can even talk about, she demands: \u201cI want to see the transcripts!\u201d There\u2019s truth in her outburst, which makes it as painful as it is funny.<\/p>\n
The playwright takes a sardonic view of age and all its phony virtues. When Jodi congratulations her father on achieving a milestone birthday, his wry retort \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s not an achievement, to not die\u201d \u2014 sends a frisson of painful laughter throughout the house. Age-appropriate relationships obviously don\u2019t count much with Elliott, who is old enough to take pleasure where he finds it. But they certainly matter a lot to Jodi, who is hilariously vile to Trey.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo me a favor?\u201d she asks him, pointedly explaining that she and Benjamin will be having \u201ca family weekend\u201d with Elliott. \u201cSo, it\u2019d be good if you stayed at your place this weekend, ok?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trey, who calls Elliott \u201cBabes\u201d and takes him for motorcycle lessons, is more or less a ditz. (\u201cI want you to be my good boy tonight, ok?\u201d Elliott asks him, a bit wistfully.) But Trey gives as good as he gets, and really sticks it to Jodi by pointing out that, as Elliott\u2019s partner, he lives with him here in his West Village townhouse (classy digs, in Lauren Helpern\u2019s cool design). But Jodi doesn\u2019t surrender so fast. \u201cThen go stay with friends,\u201d she orders him.<\/p>\n
Funny as it is, this kind of one-upmanship banter gets tiresome after a while. Besides, it\u2019s perfectly obvious that Jodi\u2019s pathetic attempts to wring some paternal affection out of her emotionally withholding dad doesn\u2019t stand a chance against Trey\u2019s youth and beauty. (\u201cI\u2019d like to sleep on sheets made from your skin,\u201d Elliott says to Trey, and probably means it.) Because this is what it\u2019s all about, anyway \u2014 the formidable power of youth and beauty over age, intellect, compatibility, shared history, and even familial feelings.<\/p>\n
Harmon hits that point home in a snappy exchange between Jodi and Benjamin that pretty much demolishes the notion that there are still some things that matter more than youth and beauty. \u201cWhat matters is who somebody is on the inside,\u201d Jodi tells her son. \u201cThat\u2019s what matters. Not looks.\u201d To which Benjamin replies: \u201cI think that message got lost like somewhere around the war over Helen of Troy.\u201d Typical of Harmon\u2019s takedown humor, Jodi is \u201cdazzled\u201d that Benjamin knows who Helen of Troy was.<\/p>\n
Funny enough, birdbrain Trey absolutely gets the idealistic notion that beauty is only skin deep. \u201cI just care about the person inside,\u201d he says of his relationship with Elliott, whom he pronounces \u201ca good person.\u201d It\u2019s Benjamin, the 20-year-old cynic, who says, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but no one cares about the person inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a play with serious matters on its mind, \u201cSkintight\u201d is packed with jokes \u2014 droll ones, smart ones, silly ones, and some that are quite moving. The men may have all the laugh lines, but Menzel is marvelous at giving Jodi\u2019s annoying smothering-mother the plaintive air of someone who feels completely at a loss in a world she never dreamed of, back in the day when she, too, was young and beautiful \u2014 and who now feels compelled to keep playing her nurturing role, even though she knows she\u2019s despised for it.<\/p>\n
The play has no plot, in a conventional sense, which makes it feel loose and baggy. But it does have movement, as the characters begin to relate to one another, opening themselves up to change \u2014 and to feelings they\u2019ve almost forgotten they had. But let\u2019s not take all the fun out of this smart play. At the end of the day, given the choice of spending his birthday with a beefy birdbrain who eats Kellogg\u2019s Frosted Flakes while sprawled on the sofa in his underwear, or with his own needy flesh and blood, age and decrepitude will pick youth and beauty any day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although Idina Menzel looks fabulous in \u201cSkintight,\u201d the new play by Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews,\u201d \u201cSignificant Other\u201d), her character, Jodi Isaac, is a total wreck when she flies into New York for her father\u2019s 70th birthday. Jodi\u2019s middle-aged husband has left her for a 24-year-old, and all her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[46,48],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-46","tag-skintight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/f6804779-6d49-40ac-9779-d2a6dddbe8cd.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-et","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}