Review: Larry David's 'Fish' light and flaky

NEW YORK — What, you were expecting Chekhov?

Surely, even Larry David's most ardent fans weren't hoping to have their lives changed by Fish In the Dark (*** out of four), the new Broadway entry that marks David's professional debut as both a playwright and a stage actor. A man who has found his greatest inspiration in minutiae — first as co-creator of Seinfeld, then as creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm — was not likely to try to bowl us over with depth.

Not that Fish, which opened Thursday at the Cort Theatre, doesn't pose difficult questions. For starters: Is it necessary to wake a person in the middle of the night to alert him that his father is dying, if there's nothing the guy can do?

Cut to a hospital waiting room, where close kin of the elderly but deceptively frisky Sidney Drexel stand by. Sadly, Sidney, whose final breaths are captured to comic perfection by the marvelous Jerry Adler, passes before resolving a key issue concerning his loud, fussy wife, Gloria — an equally fabulous, and inexhaustible, Jayne Houdyshell -- and their two sons: Norman, a schlep, and Arthur, a jerk.

David is cast as Norman; Arthur is played by an excellent (that is, thoroughly obnoxious) Ben Shenkman. A few more likable types get involved, among them Arthur's wife, Brenda (a smart, earthy Rita Wilson) and their housekeeper, Fabiana (a charming Rosie Perez), who previously worked for his parents. Other characters range from bellowing seniors to clueless millennials, and at times seem to have wandered in from different sitcoms.

But the jokes do keep coming, and usually stick. If its humor can be predictably caustic, Fish's tone is pleasingly light and flaky. Director Anna D. Shapiro keeps the pace brisk but also knows how to milk a visual — such as the towering spread of challah and unidentifiable sandwiches that greet Sidney's mourners, laid out with garish splendor by set designer Todd Rosenthal.

The leading man is something of a spectacle in himself. David has said that he didn't plan to play Norman when he wrote Fish, but he rises to the task by, basically, upping his shtick for the back rows. Waving his arms about and sounding increasingly shrill, David can make Norman's social awkwardness rather too convincing.

There's also the minor detail that, at 67, David is, and looks, older than the actress cast as his mother. And Shenkman could clearly be his son.

But maybe that's all part of the joke. Though not as curmudgeonly as the Larry David presented on Curb, Norman shares with that TV character a prickly self-absorption that suggests permanent adolescence.

It's worth noting, though, that in the end — semi-spoiler alert — Fish doesn't leave an entirely bad taste about humanity in your mouth. Perhaps the ultimate message, to the extent that there is one, is not to take life — or death — too seriously.