Playwright Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews, Significant Other) is back at the Geffen with the uproariously funny, unexpectedly touching Skintight, a star vehicle if there ever was one for its wickedly talented leading lady.

Tony winner Idina Menzel burns up the Gil Cates stage as divorced 40something lawyer Jodi, who’s flown in from L.A. to surprise her fashion design mogul father Elliot Isaac (Harry Groener) with a 70th birthday fête.

Not that it’s daughterly love alone that’s prompted Jodi to darken Daddy’s plush, ultramodern Greenwich Village doorstep.

It takes Elliot’s outspoken spawn no more than a few seconds to let it slip that not only was last night her former husband’s engagement party, the bastard had the nerve to hold it at their favorite restaurant surrounded by their kids and their friends (who are really her friends since Brad could never be bothered to make friends of her own).

Worse still, her 50-year-old ex is marrying a 24-year-old “spinner” named Misti who was quite literally a toddler incapable of wiping her own ass when Jodi and Brad first got together. (“What do they even talk about? I want to see the transcripts.”)

There’s just one problem in seeking sympathy from dear old Dad.

The quarter-century gap separating Brad and his nubile, breast-implant-enhanced young fiancée pales in comparison to the age difference between Elliot and his 20-year-old hunk of an Oklahoma boy toy (Will Brittain as Trey), though hunk seems an understatement given the body-of-David physique Trey is only too willing to show off at the drop of a shirt.

Worse still, Elliot’s latest trophy stud has the nerve to refer to himself as the designer’s “partner” as if the Ozark hick were anything other than the latest in a string of young bucks Jodi’s father has banged in the years since his divorce.

In any case Jodi is here and whether Daddy likes it or not they will be celebrating his seventieth together tonight along with her perpetually whining son Benji (Eli Gelb), who’s flying in tonight from Budapest where he’s been busy discovering the Isaacs’ roots while studying queer theory … and who is exactly Grandpa’s partner’s age give or take a month or two.

Oh, and as far as Jodi is concerned, Trey is most definitely not welcome to this family affair, no matter that he’s now calling Isaac’s house his own.

Can you spot the fireworks about to explode?

Anyone familiar with playwright Harmon’s oeuvre will find it no surprise that Skintight is filled with some of the most obnoxiously self-absorbed Bad Jews And Gentiles ever to kvetch their way into an audience’s heart with unexpected layers of pain and humanity.

Skintight’s West Coast Premiere reunites its original off-Broadway director Daniel Aukin (who knows just what he’s doing) with three of its original New York stars beginning with the absolutely spectacular Menzel, who doesn’t need to sing a note to command the stage as the torrential force of nature that is Jodi.

Fellow East-to-West-Coast transfers Gelb (a mop-headed sad-sack delight as Benji) and Brittain (who makes Trey a whole lot more than the actor’s personal-trainer physique would suggest) are fabulous too as is Antaeus Company treasure Groener, who gives Elliot more than enough grizzly charisma to make it not inconceivable that Trey might actually have feelings for Gramps.

SoCal musical-theater superstar Jeff Skowron (as a still buff Elliot ex now serving as his houseboy to Trey’s dismissive dismay) and Kimberly Jürgen (as Elliot’s hilariously harrumphing Hungarian housekeeper) aren’t given a lot to do, but what they do they do very well.

Skintight’s original NYC scenic designer Lauren Helpern and the Roundabout Theatre production’s lighting designer Pat Collins give us precisely the ultra-ritzy, ultramodern two story digs you’d expect a multimillionaire designer to call home, with design team additions China Lee (costumes) and Vincent Olivieri (sound) matching them every step of the way.

Ross Jackson is production stage manager and Lizzie Thompson is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Phyllis Schuringa, CSA.

As laugh-and-star-power-packed a West Coast Premiere as any comedy lover could wish for, Skintight makes it three winners in a row for Joshua Harmon and the Geffen.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
September 13, 2019
Photos: Chris Whitaker

Tags: Geffen Playhouse, Joshua Harmon, Los Angeles Theater Review