7 Non-Portuguese Things About 'The Portuguese Kid'

HERE'S YOUR DAMNED COAT!  In "The Portuguese Kid" at City Center, the character played by Sherie Rene Scott and her lawyer's mother (Mary Testa) are not the best of friends.

11-04-17

I DON’T THINK I should review “The Portuguese Kid,” because John Patrick Shanley is a terribly close friend of mine. Well, on Facebook. But I caught a matinee at City Center last weekend, and I wanted to share some positive thoughts.

(1) The set is a joke.

I mean that as a compliment. The scenic design gets the play’s first laugh, when the curtain rises, because after the very specific opening music, it isn’t what you expect to see. We are in the wood-paneled office of Barry Dragonetti (Jason Alexander), a schlubby, second-rate Rhode Island lawyer who is reluctantly meeting with an old friend, Atalanta Lagana (Sherie Rene Scott), to discuss her recently deceased second husband’s estate. The sets are by John Lee Beatty, the Tony- and Drama Desk Award-winning grand old man of Broadway scenic design

(2) The widow’s outfit is to die for. (Sorry.)

Ms. Scott is dressed in the first scene like a 1961 black-and-white-TV version of a glamorous widow. She’s in a skin-tight black sheath, enormous black sunglasses, long white gloves and too much jewelry. The costume designer is William Ivey Long, who has six Tonys himself (“The Producers,” “Hairspray,” “Grey Gardens” and others).

(3) The premise is sublimely ridiculous.

Barry doesn’t want to take Atalanta’s case. He’s not sure he even wants to handle the sale of the house, and it’s not because she wants $5.5 million (even though, as he keeps reminding her, deadpan, because “it’s in Providence”).  The real reason is a secret she reveals in the first scene: Although the two have never had a romantic relationship, she’s been calling out his name during sex with her husband for years. Also, she’s a huge cheapskate.

(4) Shanley wrote it, and it shows.

This is the playwright, for the few of you who don’t know, who won the Tony Award for his 2005 play “Doubt” but is best known to moviegoers for his Oscar-winning 1987 screenplay, for “Moonstruck.” You can hear his voice throughout “The Portuguese Kid,” beginning with Barry’s question “What kind of remark is that?” after Atalanta says something nasty and her answer (“Pithy.”) If I read Jesse Green’s review in The New York Times correctly, his complaint was that there were too many laughs.

(5) Mary Testa gives a performance for the ages.

Alexander and Scott are in fine form and are definitely the stars here, but I lived for the moments when Testa strode onstage. She plays Barry’s crabby, intensely opinionated mother in a performance so over-the-top that the effort would crush most actors, but it just makes Testa (a Tony nominee for “42nd Street” and “On the Town”) stronger. The character finds faults in others in terms of big things and small. “Nice girls don’t use hot sauce, gold-digger,” the mom brays at her sexy young daughter-in-law, Patty (Aimee Carrero), during an elegant brunch.

(6) Aimee Carrero chokes on a meatball.

For most of the play, Patty is just arm candy. She struts and frets in skimpy costumes, looking and behaving far too young for Barry, and that’s about it. Then, in the last scene, Ms. Scott’s Atalanta offers her a spicy meatball on a toothpick, and Ms. Carrero has her chance to shine at physical comedy. Multiple laughs from a single hors d’oeuvre.

(7) Pico Alexander looks great in hats.

Alexander (no known relation to Jason) plays Freddie, Atalanta’s new 29-year-old love interest. His comedy is generally low-key; in fact, his finest moment is absolutely silent. He had been asking his lady friend to buy him a new suit, and he makes quite an entrance in it, topped with a bowler hat, looking like something out of “A Clockwork Orange.”

And there’s a running joke about voting for Donald Trump.

City Center Stage 1, 131 West 55th Street; manhattantheatreclub.com. 1 hour 40 minutes (no intermission). Limited run, extended through Dec. 10.