John Patrick Shanley's caustic divorce comedy, Where's My Money?, embraced in its summer Off-Broadway run by LAByrinth Theatre Company, gets revived Oct. 16 by Manhattan Theatre Club at its Stage II in City Center.
The new comedy, under the direction of the Academy Award- winning author (who helmed at LAByrinth), opens Nov. 7, following previews. The dark-humored piece about two smalltime Brooklyn divorce lawyers and the women in their lives will feature holdovers from the summer staging: David Deblinger, Yetta Gottesman, Florencia Lozano, Chris McGarry and Paula Pizzi, with newcomer Eric Laray Harvey (who takes the role created by John Ortiz).
Harvey and Deblinger play two self-assured divorce attorneys possessed of rather aggressive and skewed attitudes toward their own marriages. Both were cuckolded by their first wives and are a little guarded, to say the least, concerning their current spouses. Harvey's character's wife, meanwhile, has her own problems — the ghost of an old boyfriend. He reappears to demand repayment of the money she once borrowed from him to buy the wedding dress she used to marry her hubby. Another ghost haunts Deblinger, who is poring through "Crime and Punishment." Knives, guns and joint checking accounts all play their part in the production, which, as was the case this summer, will make good use of the actors' lungs.
Shanley was recently represented Off-Broadway directing his own play, Cellini, at Second Stage. His other plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Italian-American Reconciliation, Beggars in the House of Plenty, Psychopathia Sexualis, Savage in Limbo and Four Dogs and a Bone, among others.
Designers are Michelle Malavet (set), Mimi O'Donnell (costume), Sarah Sidman (lighting) and Eric DeArmon (sound). The extended LAByrinth staging began previews at the Center Stage space Off-Broadway June 19 and wrapped up July 29.
Where's My Money? tickets are $45. MTC's Stage II is located at City Center, 131 W. 55th Street in Manhattan. For tickets, call (212) 581-1212. Visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.
— By Kenneth Jones
and Robert Simonson
