Review of The Portuguese Kid starring Jason Alexander and Sherie Rene Scott at New York City Center

Buy the ticket. The Portuguese Kid has it all: idiosyncratic characters you cannot help but champion, rambunctious dialogue that leaves you occasionally breathless, and a director's deft massage of the actors' already polished gifts for comic timing.

The plot's not much — Attorney Barry Dragonetti (Jason Alexander) and recent widow Atalanta Lagana (Sherry Rene Scott) set up the story in the opening scene, firing off arch one-liners that tell you most of what you need to know.

They have known each other — and the deceased — from childhood. They remember the same events but each has a personal spin. As a boy, Barry was attacked, yes, by a Portuguese kid, and Atalanta either saved him or "stole his moment." Who they are and what they feel proceeds from that.

What's most engaging here, is that John Patrick Shanley has written a series of pas de deux, binary battles between and among his characters that enchant even as they resonate. We, all of us, have been in some of these skirmishes.

Shanley knows about women. The most interesting pas de deux are between the mother and the actual and would be daughters-in-law. Shanley, who also directs, enlivens the screeches, the Valkyries thrust at one another with a fierce physicality. They stare one another out of the room. Sherie Rene Scott, the widow, is especially enthusiastic thrusting her trim and nimble body into the confrontations. She is a miracle to watch.

The biggest and loudest combatant comes barreling through Barry's office door — his mother; Mrs. Dragonetti (Mary Testa) answers the phones in Barry's office. She is a malevolent, if comic, piledriver of insult, flinging abuse at Atalanta and castrating Barry into the bargain. (I know that sounds dreadful, but she is tremendous fun.) Shanley relies on all the punishing mother and mother-in-law myths to create a true monster on the page; then Testa takes her to a new level of gleeful awfulness.

While two of the five member cast are male characters — Barry, of course, and the slithery, young gigolo, Freddie Imbrossi (Pico Alexander) — it's a woman's play. Atalanta runs the show. Scott plays Atalanta — named for the Greek goddess known to be fleet of foot and disinclined to marry — with a divine litheness, as she cavorts across the stage, climbing the furniture. This Atalanta has been a reluctant wife, though a less-reluctant widow, twice. She fears, at fifty, significant love will not come, and her life will, therefore, have been pointless. She tells us confessionally that she likes to be in charge — and she is, from the moment she sets foot on the stage.

The dragon, Mrs. Dragonnetti, when asked what happened to her to make her so disagreeable, replies without pause: "Men happened to me!" Among the harshest things she says to Atalanta is - "...don't kid yourself; you are me!" The third woman is Patty Dragonetti (Aimee Carrero), Barry's too-young wife whom he captured on the rebound. She waits for a man to define her.

The two fifty-somethings, Barry and Atalanta, are involved with the two "kids" but actually circling one another...and yes, of course, you see it coming. The re-pairing is played mostly for laughs, except perhaps for some unexpected pathos from Barry. Alexander makes him, just briefly, vulnerable and therefore compelling. Briefly, he banishes George Constanza, who walked into the theater with most of the audience. (Of course, Alexander's history on a Broadway stage predates his visits to Monk's Cafe. Among other credits he was Joe in Merrily We Roll Along, a short-lived and under-appreciated Sondheim musical of 1981.)

In The Portuguese Kid, Alexander serves up his character's struggle: Barry wants to be a man, but he is stuck with this tenderness inside.

It's a funny play. Wet your panties funny? No, much better...right from the get go, you laugh and you remain tickled, in the mood to keep laughing...through all 100 minutes.

(Photo by Richard Termine)

What the popular press said...

"Though I laughed when poked to do so, or when Ms. Scott hurled off a terrific line reading, it was not the laughter of pleasure or recognition. It was the kind sitcom characters sometimes cough up at a mortifying wedding — or funeral."
Jesse Green for New York Times

"Snap out of it, writers! The Donald Trump references are so tired it's not funny. That goes for all 12 of them in "The Portuguese Kid," a cartoonish and surprise-free rom-com starring "Seinfeld" alum Jason Alexander written and directed by John Patrick Shanley."
Joe Dziemianowicz for New York Daily News

"The Portuguese Kid's ideas about passion and gender are shot through with retrograde banality. "I'm a paradox," says Atalanta. "I'm a woman." It's 2017. Whom does a play like this think it's kidding?"
Adam Feldman for Time Out New York

"An underdeveloped doodle that tosses around allusions to Greek mythology as weightlessly as it takes inorganic jabs at Donald Trump, the play squanders the talents of a gifted cast of comedic actors, in which Jason Alexander, making a rare New York stage appearance, is flanked by beloved theater regulars Sherie Rene Scott and human cannon Mary Testa. Under Shanley's pedestrian direction, the ensemble is required to labor so hard breathing life into the material that it could almost be classified as employee abuse."
David Rooney for Hollywood Reporter

"Jason Alexander and Sherie Rene Scott put up their dukes for a battle of the sexes that never heats up in John Patrick Shanely's shapeless, wordy romantic comedy."
Marilyn Stasio for Variety

External links to full reviews from popular press...

New York Times - New York Daily News - Time Out - Hollywood Reporter - Variety