Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m using the template from the “Literary Society of Broadway” series to share some brief thoughts on Fish In The Dark, the stage comedy that Larry David wrote and in which he starred on Broadway — during the extended six-year hiatus between Seasons Eight and Nine of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like most of David’s works, this play teems with his unique voice and is therefore reminiscent of both Seinfeld and Curb…

FISH IN THE DARK (2015)

Logline: The death of the patriarch ignites conflicts within a Jewish family.

Author: Larry David | Original Broadway Director: Anna D. Shapiro

Original Broadway Cast: Larry David, Rita Wilson, Jayne Houdyshell, Rosie Perez, Ben Shenkman, Lewis J. Stadlen, Jake Cannavale, Marylouise Burke, Jerry Adler, Jenn Lyon, Jonny Orsini, Molly Ranson, and more

Thoughts: Fish In The Dark is basically a long episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Larry David portraying a version of himself inside constructs that are artificial but rooted in the trivial, everyday observations that he exacerbates into conflicts via a characterization lacking normal tact and social grace. The text also reflects the sensibilities of Seinfeld and Curb, as tangential laugh-craving riffs on minutia bracket the story beats necessary to progress a plot. In fact, like Curb, David seems to use Fish mostly as a vessel to cram in as many funny ideas as possible — most of them related to the common (but exaggeratable) dysfunction that occurs in the wake of a death, with badly behaving relatives offering TV’s favorite misanthrope much comic hay, particularly through universal familial relationships — brother vs. brother, mother vs. son, mother vs. daughter-in-law, etc. This yields a thematic cohesion that further casts everything in the prism of David’s ethos — it all reads in one voice, and the characters, while, sure, are decently defined as distinct from each other (with the benefit of stage directions and descriptions to provide clarity of intent), they similarly feel rendered under a broad, singular brush: as stock clichés or functional satellites to the centralized Larry-proxy (also played by Jason Alexander later in the Broadway run). That is, there’s little here of value in the characters or the exploration of humanity through them. I suppose that’s to be expected — again, this is just like an extended episode of a Larry David sitcom: an idea-driven endeavor solely focused on the comedic opportunities within its funny notions (and their arrangement). As for those notions, they’re all comedically valid — and in terms of story, death is always a taboo — but none of this is novel in the context of 2015. We’ve seen it before in some fashion. Heck, a lot of it, specifically, sounds like something right out of the 1960s or ’70s, when Neil Simon’s plays brought a sense of situation comedy to the Broadway stage. In that regard, if this is Curb, it’s Curb after its long hiatus — a self-conscious self-imitation of a type now too conventional to excite… lacking the spark of inspiration or authenticity that once defined the excellence it hopes to replicate. Accordingly, Fish In The Dark is ultimately mediocre — Larry David is doing Larry David, but without the freshness of ideas that Larry David’s reputation demands.

Jackson’s Rating: 6/10

Come back next week for a new Wildcard! And stay tuned Tuesday for more Curb!