NEW YORK – John Mulaney's second trip to Broadway took little convincing. He didn't even need to look at the script before signing on.
“I was like, ‘OK, well, send it to me. I’ll read it.’ And they sent it to me. I didn’t read it. I just agreed immediately,” the actor-comedian says.
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What Mulaney signed up for was “All In: Comedy About Love,” a stage adaptation of his friend Simon Rich's short stories that's charming Broadway audiences this winter with a starry cast.
Joining Mulaney — who made his Broadway debut in 2016 with “Oh, Hello” — is Renée Elise Goldsberry, Richard Kind and Fred Armisen. They'll eventually be replaced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jimmy Fallon, Aidy Bryant, Nick Kroll, Tim Meadows, Chloe Fineman, Andrew Rannells, David Cross, Annaleigh Ashford and Hank Azaria.
“All In” opens with the surreal story of a guy who walks into a bar that has a 12-inch piano player and then goes on to feature personal ads from dogs — “Full disclosure: I'm neutered but no complaints yet,” reads one — a love triangle involving The Elephant Man, an aging talent agent confronting Death and a history report from the 2070s.
“These are such meticulously, beautifully written pieces,” says Mulaney, who befriended Rich when both worked at “Saturday Night Live.” “Because they so naturally lend themselves to performing, it’s very fun to take it off the page.”
Director Alex Timbers first approached Rich, the son of noted critic Frank Rich, with the idea of transferring some of his short stories to the stage.
“Our first reading was 4 1/2 hours long so it took some process of elimination, but we eventually found a batch of stories that we felt were not just thematically linked, but would lend themselves to powerful performances by talented actors,” says Rich.
Once they found the right stories, attention went to presenting them: How many actors should there be? How much of a production should the 90-minute play be? Should there be costumes and sets?
They landed on minimalism and four actors, which offered both a chance to showcase each's versatility and make the play more intimate. The show is enlivened by original illustrations from New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake and the band The Bengsons playing love songs from The Magnetic Fields' catalog.
“What was going to serve the material best was the purest communication of it to the audience,” says Mulaney. “I’m sorry to use a drug thing, but mainlining the material versus taking it in a dissolvable.”
Two of the stories — a pair of passive-aggressive pirates who abandon their rough ways to raise a young stowaway and a noir detective tale told by babies — features children and child-rearing, something both Rich and Mulaney can now relate to.
“It all is greatly enhanced by my own life,” says Mulaney, the “touring, stand-up comedian, ‘Saturday Night Live’-writing, complete night owl, Dracula-like creature who now has two kids and lives in the California suburbs.”
The original four cast members will give way to four more but Rich and Mulaney think the structure is sound and can take changes. It helps that each performer sits in chairs for the entire show and has a script in their lap should they need it.
“So many people can find a way into these stories that I am sure anyone coming in to do any of these pieces will be able to bring themselves to it and rise to the occasion of how good the writing is,” says Mulaney.
The replacements won't slip into the exact performer's spot just vacated — Rich says they'll scramble the parts up. “It’s exciting for me to imagine how not just new individual performances will change things, but new pairings as well,” he says. “So many of the stories live in the scene work between two cast members and that’s another thrilling thing for me to imagine is those shifting dynamics.”
The audience at the Hudson Theatre during one recent performance was notably younger than for most Broadway shows and Mulaney and Rich hope they can do some theatrical recruitment with “All In.”
“I think we are finding that there are some first-time theatergoers or new theater goers that are coming and we’re thrilled by that,” says Rich. “We hope that comedy fans will enjoy this experience and that it’ll help convert them into theater fans and maybe they’ll see this show and want to check out more.”