Langella makes 'Match' sizzle with laughter
NEW YORK -- As you watch Frank Langella's hysterical performance as an aging bisexual dancer in Stephen Belber's "Match," it is all but impossible to tell where Langella's acting leaves off and Nicholas Martin's direction begins.
It isn't that Langella needs anyone's help. He has been Broadway's most consistently excellent actor of the past 10 years, in plays ranging from August Strindberg's "The Father" to Noel Coward's "Present Laughter." And while the general public knows him best from "Dracula" and as a spate of Hollywood bad guys, Langella is one amazingly funny fellow.
On the other hand, "Match" is filled with the infectious humor that Martin has brought to any number of Huntington Theatre Company productions, in plays as diverse as Christopher Durang's "Betty's Summer Vacation" and Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler."
Suffice it to say that Langella chews James Noone's "dingy but cozy" Manhattan-apartment scenery with such a sense of glee that you'll probably be laughing too hard to care. Like most
actors in Martin-directed productions, he looks as if he's having the time of his life onstage. Most but not all. Ray Liotta -- speaking of bad boys -- deserves credit for making his Broadway debut in a role that would've been second banana even if the young Marlon Brando were doing the honors. Liotta cuts a fine figure of an angry young man onstage, though it's obvious he doesn't have the poise and confidence of Langella or Jane Adams, who plays his wife in the play.
Oh, the play. Belber attracted a fair amount of attention a few years ago with the play "Tape," which was quickly followed by a feature film. He certainly proves himself to be a writer with a facility with language, though that facility could be both a boon and hindrance in terms of establishing himself as a first-rate playwright.
"Match" melds the aforementioned Coward with a smart anthropological interest in where Americans find themselves in the new millennium. Langella's character, Tobi, has led a hedonistic, self-absorbed life as a dancer/
choreographer. Lisa (Adams) is interviewing him about that life, particularly the period during the late 1950s, for a dissertation. But why has she brought her sullen, monosyllabic husband along? With a sharp jawline that looks ready to cut Langella's throat, Liotta is like a young Clint Eastwood, and the contrast between the two men threatens to turn into sitcom.
Give Belber credit, though. He asks good questions about free-wheeling self-realization (Langella) vs. a disciplined sense of responsibility to others (Liotta), and the answers are not as cut-and-dried as the imbalance in the roles and performances would suggest.
On the other hand, while a critic's sense of fair play prohibits a more detailed description of the plot, it is fairly easy to see where all this is going long before it gets there. Belber lets the audience get too far ahead of his characters, which is usually death in drama.
Fortunately his talents -- along with Martin's and those of the actors -- are what carry the day. It is not every play that offers such a tender and beautifully timed discussion of oral sex between a male and female character.
Belber, in fact, mixes the tender and the tough very skillfully in the second act. Picture Neil LaBute married to Neil Simon."Match" could use a little more meat on its bones and a little less predictability, but when you consider the dearth of nonmusicals on Broadway, this is one tasty Great White Way meal.
Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com. 
