Review: Off-Broadway's Gene and Gilda Charts the Romance of Wilder and Radner

Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner were daring comic performers, who took big risks and swings in their scenery-chewing characterizations. In bringing their love story to life onstage, playwright Cary Gitter, in contrast, plays it safe. But if Gene and Gilda at 59E59 offers a predictable sturdiness that Wilder and Radner might have preferred to upend, it’s still a sweet and persuasive depiction of a tragically short-lived Hollywood romance.

Gitter introduces Gene (Jonathan Randell Silver) as a guest on The Dick Cavett Show, a reimagining of an actual interview that took place two years after Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989. (The real Dick Cavett recorded a voiceover for this production.) Gene’s reluctant to talk about his late wife, but Gilda (Jordan Kai Burnett) appears — a ghost or a fantasy — and coaxes him to go ahead: “Let’s tell him our story once and for all,” she urges. So, he does, in a series of flashbacks that chart their tense first impressions on the set of Hanky Panky through to their tentative courtship (Gilda’s still unhappily married, initially) and onwards to their creative collaborations and, eventually, the specter of illness.

The boilerplate structure leaves space for the actors to dig into the zaniness of these comedy titans, and they do. “We complement each other’s craziness,” Gilda tells Gene on the first night they spend together. “A match made in mishegoss.” Burnett really does capture something of Radner’s singular spark. Perhaps it’s a diabolical twinkle in the eye that suggests Gilda’s always on the precipice of doing something impetuously mischievous and probably shockingly funny.

And though Silver uses too much caricature for what Wilder described in real life as his own “reservoir of hysteria” — Gene weepily clings to a comfort handkerchief, a la his Leo Bloom in The Producers — he’s still a tender foil for Burnett, especially in tracing how falling for a boundary-free extrovert broke down some of Wilder’s firmest walls.

As in past works like The Sabbath Girl and especially his lovely one-act How My Grandparents Fell In Love, Gitter is most at home in writing charming contemporary banter with a gentle edge, a specialty that keeps most of Gene and Gilda above water. Joe Brancato, the artistic director of Penguin Rep Theatre (which also produced Gitter’s musical The Sabbath Girl last season), stages Gene and Gilda animatedly enough against a looming wall of screens which light up with Brian Pacelli’s glittery projections.

Biographical playwrights so often fall into the trap of Wikipedification, setting up scenes in such a way to justify characters blurting out fun facts from their career or childhood. Gitter, for the most part, avoids this by emphasizing the quirky love story over the Hollywood atmosphere, but there are some bursts of trivia that could probably be better tamed. Right in the middle of opening up about her disordered eating, for example, Gilda takes a tangent to share that her nanny was the inspiration for her SNL character Emily Litella.

More invasive is the psychoanalyzing of both subjects. Gilda keeps reminding Gene that she isn’t his shrink, but it sometimes seems as if Gitter’s got them both on his chaise longue. Gene and Gilda is too brisk and chipper a play to explore the lasting impact of Gene’s experience of sexual abuse at boarding school with sufficient care, try as it might.

Gitter’s on surer footing when delving into the professional tensions between Gene’s desire to do more serious acting and Gilda’s reassurance that their comedic gifts are more than enough: “What we do is a public service,” she insists.

She’s right, and there’s some level of service in offering the reminder that these actors’ screen work is always accessible. Just try to avoid the post-show temptation to rush to YouTube to catch up on her SNL sketches or his greatest lines as Willy Wonka or Victor Frankenstein. Amid the myriad genre tropes, Gene and Gilda still serves as a much-appreciated reminder that some comedy — much like Willy’s gobstoppers — is everlasting.