Two new Off-Broadway productions on the smaller stages of two major theater companies have large ambitions but offer only tired tropes we’ve seen too many times before: the Roundabout’s The Wanderers and Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s musical Cornelia Street, about a struggling Greenwich Village eatery. The latter piece, at Atlantic Theater Company’s basement studio space, wants to be hip and compassionate but winds up serving us a warmed-over, unsatisfying meal.
While The Wanderers renders half of its story in truthful fashion, Cornelia Street is entirely a retread of tired, familiar topics. Here we go again with the scrappy underdogs fighting the faceless forces of corporate greed. British playwright Simon Stephens mashes together Jonathan Larsen’s Rent and Theresa Rebeck’s Seared. The action is punctuated by tangential, simplistic songs loaded with off-rhymes by Mark Eitzel of the group American Music Club. (Sample lyrics: “In life you must act/There’s no turning back” and “If there a chance/I’m gonna take it/If there’s a chance/I’m gonna make it.”)
We’re in Marty’s Cafe, where struggling chef Jacob (the reliable, double Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz) strives to craft newsworthy meals to save the friendly neighborhood joint from encroaching gentrification. In addition to his employment woes, single dad Jacob is juggling parent duties with daughter Patti (played by director Neil Pepe’s own offspring Lena Pepe) and step-daughter Misty (an impressive and expressive Gizel Jimenez) who just returned to Jacob’s life after her mom passed away in upstate New York.
There’s the usual group of lovable but troubled staff and patrons, each with their own hang-ups and conflicts including always harried owner Marty (Kevyn Morrow), wisecracking gay waiter-actor Philip (Esteban Andres Cruz), shy, nerdy tech guy John (Ben Rosenfield) who has a crush on Misty; wise but alcoholic Sarah (Mary Beth Peil doing the best she can), and sleazy cab driver-drug dealer William (George Abud, appropriately loathsome). The restaurant’s only hope of salvation is a major investment from former party-loving patron Daniel (Jordan Lage vastly underplaying his one scene), now a real-estate big deal.
Stephens’s book is shallow and predictable, Eitzel’s songs fail to soar, and Pepe’s direction is so slow and laid-back that nothing seems to be at stake for these people. Butz, Peil, and especially Jimenez strive to inject vitality into this tired material, but Cornelia Street is less than a four-star attraction. Scott Pask’s detailed, warm and cozy barroom set is the most authentic element of the show.
