Money Changes Everything

by Toby Zinman

Moonstruck author John Patrick Shanley is the playwright of the moment, with three (!) plays on in New York this season. Where's My Money?, written in 2001 and produced here by Intrepid Theatre Company, has many of the recognizable Shanley trademarks: weird sources of humor, debates between characters about the uses of truth and the dangers of justice, aphoristic dialogue ("monogamy is like a 40-watt bulb: It works, but it's not enough") and a kind of Bronx violence, even when his characters are, as they are here, Upper West Side lawyers and accountants.

This production begins well: Two women who used to work together and haven't seen each other in two years, accidentally meet. Celeste (Megan Hoke), a wannabe actress with a loser boyfriend and a strong inclination to self-delusion and self-destruction, bumps into Natalie (Janice Rowland), now respectable, uptight and married, a "truth-teller" with a strong sense of the bottom line. Soon Celeste confesses to Natalie that she's deeply into a sadomasochistic affair with a married man who has given her a gun. Natalie, meanwhile, runs into her own troubles, when the ghost of her ex-lover, the sexy and dangerous Tommy (Nicholas J. Ventrola III), shows up. "Where's my money?" he asks.

The play answers that question and many more, although it gradually becomes sillier and more and more repetitious and pretentious. We meet Natalie's husband (Matt LeCompte) and his partner (Tom Hawe)—both divorce lawyers, both professionally and personally soured on marital love—as well as the partner's wife (Mary Lee Bednarek). Yet another ghost turns up, and there's much speechifying about Love and Money and Marriage instead of what should be a witty tug-of-war between a womanizing Casanova and a guilt-ridden Raskolnikov.

In the hands and mouths of highly skilled actors, the script can be great fun; when I reviewed this play in New York in November 2001, I called it a "hilarious cartoon noir (Mickey Spillane meets Roy Lichtenstein)." But that was then and that was them: This cast, with the exception of the women in the first scene, is simply not up to the edgy, subtle task. The actors—especially the men—are embarrassingly awkward onstage, miss the nifty rhythm of Shanley's dialogue and generally make what should be jaw-droppingly bizarre merely yeah-yeah-yeah.

WHERE'S MY MONEY? Through Dec. 12, Intrepid Theatre Company at Walnut Street Studio 5, Ninth and Walnut sts., 800-595-4TIX