'So Help Me God!' and 'This'
It appears that "Chicago" was no fluke. This is fun. Maurine Dallas Watkins, whom most of us never heard of until Bob Fosse turned her 1926 play into a 1974 musical, actually wrote lots of plays and screenplays in the '20s - that is, when she wasn't a crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
So here is "So Help Me God!" which was derailed on its way to Broadway by the 1929 crash. The backstage farce, which predates "All About Eve" by decades, is a knowing, snappy, tough little show-biz trifle. The Mint Theatre, that Off-Broadway haven of lost-play archaeology, has achieved a vivacious resuscitation, and given Kristen Johnston the chance to discover her inner egomaniacal glamour-puss.
All the now-familiar archetypes are here and lovingly outrageous. Anna Chlumsky (grown up from her "My Girl" movies) has just the right killer sweetness as the ruthless Midwest girl who wants to be a star. The big cast includes the wisecracking second-banana actress, the pathetically earnest playwright and two identifiable types of directors with a show out of town. As usual, director Jonathan Bank does a lot with a little, and plays it for real.
WHAT "So Help Me God!"
WHERE Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St.
INFO $55; 212-279-4200; minttheatre.org
BOTTOM LINE Kirsten Johnston and undiscovered diva-dom
Four friends share 'This'
"This," the latest urban-relationship drama by Melissa James Gibson, is less verbally unconventional and less compelling than her earlier "Suitcase" and "sic." Four old friends from college (and one French doctor-without-borders) drink and banter in various artistically funky apartments, facing the loss of a husband, the disruption by a baby and the what-does-it-all-mean questions about careers, monogamy, faith and the pronunciation of the Brita water filter.
The play, tenderly directed by Daniel Aukin, does provide Julianna Nicholson ("Law & Order: Criminal Intent") with a complicated character, a floppy, choppy, widowed poet who manages to be warm and distant without ever making eye contact with intimates. These people apologize constantly and are always complaining about being sleep deprived. The friends include a gay Jewish sardonic sidekick, a stock character we haven't seen in weeks, and a black woman who stops the action twice to sing plaintive pseudo-Laura Nyro songs. Gibson still writes articulate people, but, this time, her story and its emotional content feel both scattered and slick.
