Not Ready for Prime Time
That's the play's title...and its fate
A Critwink* from the Intelligent Showmosexual
*In case you missed it: “critwinks” are mini-reviews turned out in a single draft
Not Ready for Prime Time, Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sother’s play about the early years of Saturday Night Live, takes its title from the moniker famously assigned to the SNL cast (the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”), but its first two words hang over the piece like a damning prophecy and sad diagnosis: it is the latest in a frustratingly long string of plays I’ve seen in major New York City venues that are, quite simply, NOT READY for the full productions they’ve received.
The better works in this bunch, like Eliya Smith’s Grief Camp at the Atlantic Theater Company, show enough glimmers of promise that you can understand why producers agreed to sign on, even if it still feels like you’re watching a workshop rather than a finished product. The worst, like House of McQueen, are so bad that it’s not only confounding how such disasters were allowed to occur, it’s also angering because they’ve mangled subject matter that’s actually worthy of dramatization. Not Ready wastes away somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.
Occasionally, there are interesting flickers of potential. It’s clever to have characters directly address the audience like they’re hosts delivering the opening monologue on an episode of SNL. It’s ambitious and thought-provoking to play the scene where Gilda Radner (Evan Rubin) receives her cancer diagnosis as if it’s a comic sketch.
More often than not, though, the story is told so conventionally and with such a lack of depth that the action unfolds like a living Wikipedia entry. Part of the problem is that Rodriguez and Sother—in depicting five years of making SNL, plus some pseudo-epilogue addressing the original cast’s lives after they departed the series—have chosen to tell too much story. Perhaps if they’d narrowed their focus, they could have explored their subjects more meaningfully. Or perhaps they could have covered the same period impactfully if they’d chosen to focus on one person’s story rather than endeavoring to tell everyone’s. Instead, the lives of the performers who got short-shrift on SNL are explored with comparably callous half-heartedness.
They also make the crowd-pleasing but dramaturgically misbegotten decision to incorporate bits of certain iconic sketches and characters. In a bizarre way, the experience reminded me of seeing Mamma Mia! during its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. When that now inescapable jukebox musical was new to audiences, you could feel the excitement as folks anticipated how “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me” would figure into the action, and the delight of recognition when a familiar song began. Similarly, once Not Ready works in its first reference to a famous SNL bit, you can sense the audience eagerly awaiting the next one. Gradually, it starts to feel like the audience is more invested in spotting the birth of, say, the Coneheads than the lives of the artists behind them. If there’s any doubt that the creators of Not Ready are pandering, it’s fully eradicated by the time their cast goes full Mamma Mia! with a post-curtain-call musical number.
For the most part, the cast handles the unenviable task of embodying some of the world’s most distinctive and recognizable comedians credibly but not triumphantly. Two of the more memorable performances come from Taylor Richardson, who painfully captures Laraine Newman’s vulnerability (despite having one of the most underwritten roles), and Ryan Crout, who nails the endearing mix of anarchist and teddy bear that was John Belushi. However, only Jared Grimes, as Garrett Morris, successfully summons both his real-life counterpart’s indelible comic persona and the pathos behind it. It’s a fantastic showcase that proves Grimes, whose virtuosic tapping was a highlight of the recent Funny Girl revival, does not need to dance to deliver a true star-turn.
The production has an impressive set design by Justin and Christopher Swader; delightful period costumes by Sarita P. Fellows; and a kick-ass live band. It’s a little like watching a sketch from an off-season of SNL: there are great production values and talented actors, but neither can make up for the lack of effective writing. Not Ready adds nothing to the vast canon of (often fascinating) behind-the-scenes accounts of life at SNL…except a tedious sense of “Mamma mia, here we go again.”
the not-a-bottom line
🌈 (out of five)
a guide to ticket-buying
I paid a $5 service fee for a comped ticket through a papering service to which I subscribe. I’m not sure it was worth it.
If you really, really, REALLY want to see this show, do not sit in the first three rows. It’s difficult to see action on the far sides of the wide stage, and when performers step into the “monologue” space, they will literally be behind you.