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Review: Rudnick's 'Regrets Only' at Broadhollow

BY STEVE PARKS | steve.parks@newsday.com

3:50 PM EST, February 14, 2008

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"Regrets Only" author Paul Rudnick is known for his one-liners. But he couldn't top the ad lib of box office assistant Arlene Meli, who beseeched the audience to "turn on your vibrators" before last Friday's curtain.

In fact, Rudnick's serio-comedy, making its Long Island premiere at Studio Theatre following an Off-Broadway debut in another election year (2006), is not the laugh riot it pretends to be.

"Regrets Only," all dressed up for a night on the town, is a message play. Regardless of what you think of gay marriage, any person with a pulse can empathize with a man who's barred from seeing his dying, hospitalized companion of 38 years because he's not "family."

We meet fashion designer Hank Hadley six months after the love of his life died of cancer. He's been asked by his best straight friends to design a wedding gown for their daughter, Spencer, who, like her father, is an attorney. But Jack McCullough is not just any attorney, any more than his wife, Tibby, is just another Park Avenue socialite. They're boldface names on the party-for-a-cause circuit. Tibby wouldn't think of going out in public without wrapping herself in a Hank Hadley.

Just as wedding plans are jelling, Jack gets a call from the White House seeking legal cover for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Spencer is recruited by Daddy to clerk the enterprise. Now Hank's not sure he wants to design her wedding gown.

Meanwhile, Myra, billing herself as the "only Jewish maid in Manhattan," interrupts with myriad accents and headgear to match - from French beret to German maypole bonnet - embroidering a C-Span debate with sitcom outtakes. Only in the middle act of what's essentially a three-act comedy (with one intermission) does farce rule.

I can say no more without spoiling the joke. But as directed by Tom Wallace on Tim David and Doug Lillie's crystal-and-silver set, it's worth your patience, whether you're a constitutional scholar or not.

Karen Rowan, as Tibby, bears the weight of social opulence on strapless shoulders as if she were born bejeweled and begowned. She looks Fabulous, which bespeaks her designer's important distinction between fashion and style. Megan Lanzarone manages to make a spoiled-brat bride likable, while Stephen Germano, as daddy-hubby-Bush supplicant, strikes a human pose. Sue Anne Dennehy as Myra, the comic interlocutor, diverts our attention with impertinent grace, while Sonya Tannenbaum, as Tibby's mom, nearly steals Act II in her Dumpster-chic frock.

More problematic is the fashion statement made by Ed Dennehy, as the designer. We're not talking about his tuxedo. When Dennehy pontificates that it's too easy to bash the Bushies, it's a playwright's self-critique. Dennehy underlines the politesse with ponderous italics. So much space is added between his words that the running time has been expanded 20 minutes from its Off-Broadway briskness.

Not that these aren't weighty social issues.

REGRETS ONLY. Comedy by Paul Rudnick. At BroadHollow's Studio Theatre, 141 S. Wellwood Ave., Lindenhurst, through Feb. 24. Tickets $22, 631-581-2700, broadhollow .org. Seen last Friday.