Short's incredible likeness of me-ness

BY LINDA WINER | Newsday Staff Writer

August 18, 2006

The title of Martin Short's amiably anarchic Broadway showcase, "Fame Becomes Me," can be read in two ways. Pay attention, class. Does the comic personality mean that fame - that once elusive, increasingly tawdry goddess of reflected recognition - looks especially good on him? Or are we meant to make the more challenging leap, imagining an ego so magnetic that fame cannot help but become him and lose itself in the allure of his irresistible me-ness?

We wouldn't bother you with this, really, except that Short, who opened last night at the Jacobs Theatre, is sending up (but not too high) the role of the one-person confessional in our "love-me-I've-suffered" celebrity culture. Unlike autobiographical solos by Billy Crystal or Elaine Stritch - whose names are dropped in the jaunty opening number - this one is fiction. Also, it's not a solo. Also, it isn't as important.

This is an uneven, mostly good-natured, handsomely produced evening of sketches, vaudeville bits and "Forbidden Broadway"-type spoofs that saves its freshest material for late in the nonstop 105-minute show. Short and his collaborators (mainly the creators of "Hairspray") have contrived the fake memoir as a frame to hold many of the characters from Short's heyday in the '80s at "SCTV Comedy Network" and "Saturday Night Live."

You see, Marty - as he is called here - is allegedly as desperate for love as the next performer is. Alas, he has been happily married for 25 years, has three "gorgeous" kids and a house on a hill, so he has to lie about demons, drugs and rehab to make for a decent public accumulation of spilled guts.

Into this structure, director Scott Wittman and Marty attempt to shoehorn cameos by Short's proto-nerd Ed Grimley, show-biz veteran Irwin Cohen, albino singer Jackie Rogers Jr., and the apocryphally abusive Irish-Canadian father Shim O'Short. The star plays himself as a baby in an aptly juvenile number about the nurse's breasts, as in "big melons like Mount St. Helens."

The targets are easy and familiar - Billy Joel's driving, John Goodman's appetite. But the rhythm is quick, and Short's a pro whose singing has more suavity and power than the mockery suggests. Every so often, behind those crazy eyes and gotta-dance smile, a serious face makes a surprisingly effective guest appearance.

Composer Marc Shaiman plays his savvy new songs on a pastel upright, looking so delighted to be onstage and involved that we can't help feeling good along with him, except when he holds up that stupid applause sign. Short is remarkably generous to his four ace supporting players. Their impersonations - including Nicole Parker's eerily uncomfortable Renée Zellwegger and Brooks Ashmanskas' unctuously manipulative Tommy Tune on stilts - make Short's Katharine Hepburn and Richard Burton seem antique.

The company sets the stage as people in a theater box, belting "Another curtain goes up on a one-man show/Another chance for an ego to say hello." The star descends the winding stairs of the stage with his monographed crests on the wallpaper (the inventively simple scenery is by Scott Pask). Jess Goldstein's witty costumes put Mary Birdsong, as Judy Garland, in sapphire heels instead of ruby slippers. Marty's fake downfall with Andy Warhol and Studio 54 is revisited. Since the scene is being invented, couldn't someone have made up something less cliche?

Things pick up when Jiminy Glick - Short's explosively obnoxious celebrity-interviewer - brings up someone from the audience to abuse. At one press preview, the victim was Nathan Lane. When celebrities are not in the house, Glick reportedly brings infamy on the not-famous. Finally, Capathia Jenkins delivers much-appreciated commentary on how Broadway's white guys always bring in a "big black lady to stop the show." And she does.