Another play about a dysfunctional Jewish family, but this one has a wrinkle: the family is mostly queer. The patriarch, Elliot Isaac (the always-solid Harry Groener), is a billionaire who lives in a lavish, ultra-modern house in Greenwich Village (towering set by Lauren Helpern) and has made his money in the shmatta trade: underwear, shirts, etc. Born to Hungarian immigrant parents, he looks and lives like an English lord, attended to by two full-time servants (Kimberly Jurgen and Jeff Skowron). A cold, unemotional man, he barely cracks a smile when his daughter Jodi (Idina Menzel) arrives from California to help him celebrate his 70th birthday. Jodi is his opposite: garrulous, excitable, motor-mouthed. She is also on the verge of a nervous breakdown, having just been ditched by her husband in favor of a 20-year-old bimbo. Jodi, especially in the hands of a crackerjack actor like Menzel, is the play’s catalytic agent, the force that drives its very thin story. She’s the one who is shocked to learn, for example, that her once-hetero father is now sharing his bed with Trey (Will Brittain), a swaggering young stud who once acted in gay porn. It’s hard to believe the sophisticated Elliot could fall for a boy-toy like that, but that’s what the playwright sets out to prove. It’s Trey’s beauty, his smooth, satiny skin (hence the play’s title) and perfect ass, that fills Elliot with love, joy and contentment…and who is Jodi or anyone else to contradict him? Notions of beauty also torment poor Jodi, who can’t stop obsessing over her ex’s attraction to youthful female flesh. A smart, successful lawyer, she concludes that physical appearance is everything in this life, which is what moves her to ask for a shot of botox when an unseen nurse shows up to give Elliot his monthly injection. Much bemused by all this is Benjamin (Eli Gelb), Jodi’s son, just returned from Budapest where took a summer course in Jewish studies. Benjamin is fey, self-deprecating, campy…and oh so gay. He is also witty and funny, like his mother, only not as vicious and caustic. Humor is what makes this play work. Menzel and Gelb were in the original New York production; their experience and expertise jump out at you, dazzle you. They get laughs from just about every line they utter; the same goes for Brittain, who breaks the audience up in a scene in which he struts around the stage clad in nothing but a jockstrap. The splendid acting and Harmon’s deft way with comedy keep Skintight from being dismissed as trivial.
