Eric McCormack & the cast of ‘The Cottage’ frolic, smoke & booze their way onto Broadway

The Rundown

For all the recent politicizing of the queer community’s lack of moral decency, The Cottage, which opens at Broadway’s Hayes Theater on July 24, is having a great time with extramarital merriment, heavy drinking, and more cigarette smoking than even the Marlboro Man could endure.

Playwright Sandy Rustin (whose stage adaptation of the film Clue is one of the most-produced plays in the U.S., according to her biography) delivers a period farce set in 1923 pastoral England and stars one of the early aughts’ most famous gay-for-pay actors, Eric McCormack.

Jason Alexander, who played the famously neurotic George Costanza on Seinfeld for nine seasons, directs a seasoned cast that climbs an uphill battle to excavate witty banter from a predictable plot that rarely stays ahead of the audience.

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No Tea, No Shade

Beau (McCormack) and Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy) have stolen away to his mother’s summer cottage for their annual fling, leaving behind their spouses — a very pregnant Marjorie (Lilli Cooper) and Beau’s brother Clarke (SNL’s Alex Moffat). But when Sylvia reveals she’s sent a telegram professing her love for Beau, the jilted spouses descend on the cottage to wreak havoc.

Paul Tate dePoo III’s gorgeous scenic design offers an eyeful, so when the plot thickens like an overcooked pottage, one need simply to divert their eyes to the richly upholstered settee, brocade curtains, and if you’re lucky enough to be sitting house left, the offstage trophy room.

It’s not long before Dierdre (Dana Steingold) — Beau’s other lover — arrives, followed by her anxious and potentially murderous husband Richard (Nehal Joshi), amplifying the action to a sextet of slamming doors, swift embraces, and more backstory than a Charles Dickens novel.

Regular theatergoers may feel the ghost of playwright Noël Coward hovering in the rafters. Rustin even quotes the famously witty gay author in her forward: “It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”

Therein lies the rub.

Despite a stage full of actors revving their engines, Rustin’s play never quite gets off the ground. McCormack’s comic timing, honed during 11 seasons of Will & Grace, is impeccable, as is Moffat’s, whose elastic physicality comes to full form when not constrained by his regular late-night TV gig. The women also have their moments, particularly Bundy, who originated the role of Ellie Woods in the Jerry Mitchell-helmed musical adaptation of Legally Blonde, though dubbing the play a “feminist farce” feels like a stretch.

Let’s Have a Moment

Harkening back to an era when smoking indicated a sign of sophistication, this cast leaves no fag unlit. de Poo III’s set provides plenty of unsuspecting cigarette holders and lighters. To reveal them would spoil the fun, but let’s say even a miniature Statue of David gets in on the action, with a flame emanating from an exceptionally well-crafted appendage.

The bit eventually wears thin, and one wonders what direction the action might take if they smoked something stronger.

The Last Word

“Comedy’s hard,” Alexander told the New York Times while the play was still in rehearsal. “To make something light is heavy lifting.”

Rustin, meanwhile, referenced two of the great queer comedic writers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. “Every single actor is walking onto the stage as if they are in a legit Noël Coward play, they’re in an Oscar Wilde play,” she said. “And then it kind of comes off the rails.”

And while The Cottage does “kind of” come off the rails, it never reaches the apex of reimagining the genre. In a subtle nod to polyamory, Sylvia tells her husband, “It isn’t all or nothing. Love can be calibrated.”

In theory, so too can farce. But The Cottage‘s makeover clings to remnants of the past like someone smoking that final cigarette before going cold turkey.

The Cottage plays on Broadway through October 29, 2023.