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Social Security, now playing at South Park Theatre, is a hack job. Andrew Bergman’s script is one of the crummiest farces ever to scroll out of a typewriter. This play doesn’t cater to the lowest common denominator; it is the lowest common denominator. Bergman’s story is basically an anxious Jewish Frasier episode, with a surprise ending so predictable, you may be surprised you predicted it.
But hey, it makes people laugh. Judging by last Sunday’s sold-out matinee, it makes a lot of people laugh. As in, tears were dabbed from eyes. So who’s to judge?
David and Barbara Kahn are trendy art dealers. Trudy and Martin Heyman are boring traditionalists. Barbara and Trudy are sisters, and their mother is old and crabby. Meanwhile, Trudy’s daughter is having international threesomes at college, and she blames Barbara. Eventually, a famous artist named Maurice Koenig shows up. It’s 1986 in New York, and the characters machine-gun the audience with one-liners and sex jokes.
The best part of South Park’s Social Security is director Rick Campbell’s set, which combines bourgeois elegance with ’80s kitsch. (I imagine Keith Haring’s first loft looking exactly like this.) The second-best part of the show is Cindy Swanson, who is funny, emotive and charismatic as Barbara. If the play “belongs” to anyone, it’s Barbara, who must juggle her mother, sister and husband all at once, so Swanson’s performance is a relief. It’s also nice to see a sharp, professional woman as a character in a screwball farce, usually the stomping ground of talking blowup dolls.
Otherwise, Social Security is a clunky snoozer, played as if the actors memorized their lines just that afternoon. If you’ve never watched prime-time television, I’m sure the jokes are very funny, but the actors don’t seem to get their punch lines. Bergman’s slipshod humor is hardly worth the effort, which makes the experience stranger still — you are hoping that, at some point, the show will attain mediocrity.
Yet the audience laughed, heartily, and that’s all a comic can hope for. You might say that Social Security is the opposite of a tree falling in the forest: If a hack writes a play, and everybody enjoys it, isn’t that enough?
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2012.
I attended the sold out Friday night (8/17) performance of “Social Security” and I must say that the performance was very entertaining. The play is quite funny and even though it’s set in the 80s, could very well have taken place in modern day. The main couple Barbara and David both were hysterical, and the mother was perfectly cast. The only downside to the show was the small theater. The performance could have easily sold out a bigger house, as I overheard a few patrons mentioning that they were planning on returning to see the show again Saturday night. On the other hand, the small theater was nice as it allowed the audience to connect to the characters in a very intimate setting.
Unfortunately, this play was reviewed by a “hack job” of a writer, Mr. Robert Isenberg. Instead of focusing on the production, it seems that Mr Isenberg has a personal vendetta against the writer. What did the writer do to Mr Isenberg to make him so bitter? It’s extremely sad that Mr. Isenberg reviewed this play, as it did not deserve the bashing this pretentious snob dished out.
I would hope that in the future, the City Paper would allow more talented writers to review shows instead of a whiny writer who obviously had better things to do then to give an honest review of a pretty good local show with a talented cast.
Please understand , Mr. Isenberg, the readers of the city paper are more sophisticated than you think. Referring to a play as a “Jewish Fraiser” shows your lack of consideration for your readers religions as well as their intelligence.
One more thing to ponder, Mr. Isenberg,”Fraiser” has not been on the air in over eight years. A competent writer may have compared the play to a more current show then a fairly old spinoff, but it’s very obvious from your review that you are not in touch with your readers and figure you can crank out any old review in twenty minutes. I will be awaiting your next unintelligible review with your current references to “Where’s the Beef” and Sam and Diane.