I’ll admit that I harbored serious doubts about the appeal and entertainment value of “All In: Comedy About Love,” an ensemble reading of comic short stories by Simon Rich featuring a rotating cast of four celeb performers, direction by Alex Timbers (“Here Lies Love,” “Moulin Rouge!”), and live musical accompaniment by husband and wife duo The Bengsons. Note how the title describes the show as consisting of “Comedy About Love,” as in pieces of comedy, rather than as “A Comedy About Love,” which would imply a single play.
Would this merely be a glorified, overpriced reading better suited to a Barnes and Noble or something to download from Audible and listen to on your cell phone? Then again, some shows have achieved critical and commercial success in such an informal format, including Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” the late A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,” and Nora and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss and What I Wore.”
The initial cast includes comics John Mulaney (who previously appeared on Broadway in “Oh Hello”), Fred Armisen, and Richard Kind, along with Tony Award-winning actress Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton”). During the show’s limited run, they will be replaced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Aidy Bryant, David Cross, Jimmy Fallon, Chloe Fineman, Nick Kroll, Tim Meadows and Andrew Rannells. In other words, the production team is not lacking in well-known, talented performers.
Before attending, I was not familiar with Simon Rich, who has written sketches for “Saturday Night Live,” short stories for “The New Yorker” and the screenplay for the 2020 Seth Rogen film “An American Pickle.” He is also the son of Frank Rich, who served as the New York Times theater critic in the 1980s and went on to become a political columnist and, most recently, an executive producer of hit HBO series such as “Veep” and “Succession.”
The stories, which mix together absurdity and feel-good comedy with a fresh millennial perspective, depict a genie in the bathroom of a bar who mishears wishes (“Guy Walks Into a Bar”), a two-year-old hardboiled detective (“The Big Nap”), a pirate who adopts a young girl (“Learning the Ropes”), and an elementary school presentation about early 21st-century college dating rituals (“History Report”).
While the 90-minute presentation probably would have worked better in an intimate and informal setting such as a bar or coffeehouse, the show is surprisingly enjoyable. The actors (seated in chairs upstage and relying on scripts in black binders) enthusiastically narrate the stories, delve into characters, and work together as an ensemble. Background animation and musical scoring are also used to bring the stories to life, making it feel more like a polished production than a no-frills, unrehearsed reading.
However, considering how one can easily download an audiobook of Mulaney narrating Simon’s new short story collection “Glory Days” (and listen to it at no cost with a trial membership to Audible), it is hard to justify a Broadway ticket price of (according to the show’s website for the Dec. 23 performance) between $188 and $297.
