REVIEW: The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall

Today, I saw a new production at Washington DC’s Theatre J called The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall. Perhaps the best part of my experience today was the dinner and cocktails with friends that followed at a local restaurant called Logan Tavern – the Buffalo shrimp appetizer was absolutely amazing. The show at Theatre J, on the other hand, was perfectly adequate, but not outstanding.

Logan Tavern’s Buffalo shrimp were tender, spicy, and delicious. The show was a little bland and somewhat flavorless.

The modern comedy focuses on a would-be Broadway musical book writer (Josh Lefkowitz) and his gay, stoner composer friend (Matt Anderson) who set their sights on securing the rights to write the musical version of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. The humor in the script is lacking and the characters in the show become more stereotype than interesting.

One of the funniest moments in the show was unscripted, and involved an elderly couple in the front row of the audience who dropped their box-office issued hearing devices. They both took turns standing up, fishing around under their seats, complaining in full voice that they couldn’t find their hearing aids. Meanwhile, the actors were struggling to continue the action onstage. Just at that moment, the narrator of the story has a line where he says something like, “Maybe I’m just being an asshole.” When he delivered that line, he broke the magical fourth wall of the stage, and said it DIRECTLY to the disruptive couple. It didn’t help, but it was entertaining, and it warranted a good round of the giggles from me and my fellow theatre-goers.

The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall is not a bad play. This is an average production, with an average cast, an average design, and average direction. I just wish it could borrow some of the spice and intensity of the wonderful Buffalo shrimp at Logan Tavern. We would all have been a little more satisfied.