Burleigh Grime$

Burleigh Grime$
Sunday, July 16th, 7pm
New York City

Burleigh Grimes was playing at the New World Theater on 50th in NYC. The performance that I saw was the final one for this off-Broadway production. Kelly Sullivan was in for Nancy Anderson as the Wife/Coffee Girl/Dancer.
The cast includes Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me), Mark Moses (Desperate Housewives), James Badge Dale (The Departed), and Ashley Williams (How I Met Your Mother). I thought that since all these stars were on television that the show had a good chance of being fairly decent. Oh well, I suppose the fact that they're all supporting players in their various roles should've tipped me off.

Wendie was essentially the same person she was on Just Shoot Me. A selfish, cold, bitchy business-woman trying to get ahead. In this production she is a TV news reporter with her own Stock Market show. Her character is in cahoots with Mark Moses' character (Burleigh Grimes) and they wheel and deal and manipulate the stock market to their advantage on a daily basis. Mark did a great job as the cold-hearted Wall Street tycoon who throws dead sardines off the coast of some far-off country in order to make people think that it's an El Nino year...thus making the cost of fish go down and chicken go up.
Ashley and James were fine, but they weren't on stage enough. I could've taken a lot more of these two. More of their back grounds. More of their conflicts.
John LaVelle and Jason Antoon played Burleigh Grimes' flunkies Buck and Hap. John had a great Jim Carey impression going for pretty much the whole show. It was hilarious and a little freaky. Jason was great as the calm, cool, collected guy with no morals to mess up what he needs to get done. The two of them were really funny as they improv-ed through a few places. Whether or not it was actually improvisation, it felt like it, so that was refreshing.
The music was fantastic. The composer was another reason that I thought this show might have a chance. David Yazbek has done some great work, most recently composing the music for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. His addition to this production was wonderful. Extremely percussive, the music gave the show a heart-beat.
I suppose that Wall Street just isn't an excellent back-drop for a play. When all was said and done there was just too much business and not enough connection. There wasn't anyone on stage that you were rooting for. As one character began to become enduring they turned around and conformed to the back-stabbing ways of the rest of them.