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NEW YORK -- There's something quaintly endearing about Corie Bratter, the eager young wife in the new Broadway revival of Barefoot in the Park (** out of four). Until she opens her mouth, that is.
Forty-three years after Neil Simon's comedy about newlyweds settling into their first apartment made its debut, it should be refreshing to meet a grown woman who acts inappropriately girlish by instinct rather than affectation. Certainly, a twentysomething, pre-feminist child-woman whose only concerns are her husband and home seems less objectionable in theory than a thirty- or fortysomething, post-feminist career woman whose only concerns are designers and dating.
Alas, time has not been kind to Mrs. Bratter or to the other moth-eaten creatures trotted out in this restaging of Simon's pre-cultural revolution chestnut, which opened Thursday at the Cort Theatre. Director Scott Elliott and his starry, supple cast try admirably, but they can't quite breathe life into a period piece that must have struck some people as dated even four decades ago.
One feels especially for the lovely and talented Amanda Peet. Like Elizabeth Ashley and Jane Fonda, who respectively introduced Corie on stage and screen, Peet has proved her mettle playing more sophisticated and substantial women. But having come of age in a time when gals like Corie no longer roamed the earth -- or at least the Upper West Side -- the younger actress seems to have no reference point for this needy, nattering baby doll who can't understand why her lawyer spouse would have to work the night before his first court appearance.
Other characters evoke suburban and urban stereotypes as they might be drawn by an old Catskills comedian. Corie's recently widowed mother, played by Jill Clayburgh with a brave face and redeeming wit, pops in from New Jersey and is forever swallowing pink pills. One of the neighbors, played by Tony Roberts with similar pluck, is the sort of exotic city dweller who wears an ascot and eats in Albanian restaurants -- in Staten Island, yet!
Corie's husband, Paul, is the squarest peg in the bunch, and the winning Patrick Wilson brings the right self-effacing charm. A number of his jokes, and everyone else's, allude to the five-flight climb to the Bratters' love nest. "You should have rested," Paul tells his mother-in-law after one trek. "I did," she counters, "but there were always more stairs."
If you find such lines hilarious, Barefoot in the Park might be worth your time. Otherwise, you're better off watching an old sitcom. Might I suggest The Odd Couple? It's considerably funnier.
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