Oscar Wilde, who knew a thing or two about this stuff, wrote that “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”
That was nearly 140 years ago and is, arguably and perhaps even hopefully, less true today than in the 14 decades since. So it often takes me a little by surprise that comedy travels rather better across the broad Atlantic Ocean than it does across the narrow English Channel. If the writing is good enough, it can even survive multiple references to American culture that I (who has never seen an episode of Friends) barely recognise. But you might want brush up your NBA and condiments knowledge before taking your seat for this one.
The best example I have seen in years of how American comedy transcends its specificities is Table 17, Douglas Lyons’ award-winning two-and-a-half hander, enjoying its London premiere two years after it wowed audiences in NYC and LA. And, listen buddy, there’s no funnier show uptown or downtown right now.
Jada - an incandescent Marisha Wallace - is seeking our affirmation that she looks just right for a date (or is it?) with very high stakes attached. We’re not quite sure why as yet, but we soon find out.
Dallas walks in, corduroy trousers and a louche ambivalence that we clock straight away is hiding his own nervousness. But the man can talk, Jamael Westman finding the sweet spot between the unsophisticated aspiring music producer (those cords) and the man with the emotional intelligence to, effortlessly, find exactly what Jada wants, well, needs, to hear. As he well might, having had four years practice before the two years long break-up.
River, their waiter who always has high camp on his personal menu, serves posh cocktails and verbal barbs in equal measure as a kind of Greek Chorus bearing gifts in a glass. He’s played by Michael Rishawn (pictured right), who has the most enormous fun in the role he originated. He plays another couple of characters too, seamlessly shifting along the sexuality spectrum from lonely vituperative gay to near predatory straight barman to the smooth talking Eric (there’s lots of smooth talking in this show) who prised Jada from Dallas those 24 months ago. If the leads were not so dazzlingly brilliant, I’d suggest that Rishawn was stealing the show!
The audience is also very much involved, all but an auxiliary character in the production. I winced a little when we were told at the start that we were expected to answer questions throughout the tight all-through runtime, but this is a play with a very porous fourth wall, all five characters speaking directly to us. It works far better than ever I expected because, within minutes, we feel like we know these flawed, vulnerable but very attractive people. That’s in the writing of course, but it’s also in the performances.
Let nobody doubt just how skilled they are. Awards and accolades on stage and screen tend to go to actors who emote, close to tears or actually in tears, as their character’s trauma becomes too much to bear. I’ve always felt such scenes could be approximated in a drama school audition, so well trodden are the beats, so expected our response. Ho hum.
Light comedy just must be harder to write and to play - else more people would do it. These three actors time every putdown, every revelation, every physical response with precision, in dialogue often charged with emotion, but producing more laughter in 95 minutes than I have heard in the previous 95 days. I’m not sure what changes Zhailon Levingston, directing here as he did in New York, has made, but he conjures sensational comedy from his cast and we love them for it.
It’s not all jokey stuff of course, good comedy is never merely a succession of rib ticklers. Wallace finds a real poignancy in Jada’s fate, without the show ever toppling over into a Murakami-like examination of alienation in The Big City. She has so much going for her, but she’s stuck, partly because she’s the kind of woman who agrees to meet her ex for dinner and partly because women approaching their late-30s are often searching for their real self, for too long subsumed below an expectation to please men and the disillusionment that inevitably provokes.
Westman’s Dallas has regrets, and is still torn between his dream job and his dream woman. He’s not a bad man, but he’s thoughtless, too keen to explain away his bad behaviour and he’s taking a long time to grow up - men do, if at all. He’s still a bit of a bastard at the end, but we love Jada and we don’t know Alisha - so it’s kinda okay.
Rishawn beams charisma sufficient to light up Kilburn High Road if they opened the door and must be as relaxed as any actor I’ve seen on a press night - a crucial and much overlooked element of comedy work. If the awards committees can find it in them to recognise that tears of laughter are just as worthy as tears of trauma, he should get plenty of best supporting actor nominations come the end of the year.
The final ingredient in this heady mix is the house itself, not just in the occasional interventions licensed by that early permission, but in filling the auditorium with the atavistic sound of collective laughter. I recall the rush of endorphins that sound provoked when theatres opened after lockdown and you just don’t hear it often enough.
Table 17 then? With all that rich fare on the menu, book me in again as soon as possible!
