Jerry Schiff is having a bad day: trying to avoid a mob of reporters, he ran into Martina Navratilova's electrical fence, helicopters passing over his Malibu home have rattled pictures off the wall and worst of all, Arnold Schwarzenegger's humvee is blocking his driveway. Today, Jerry is witness to perhaps the greatest California media spectacle since Al Cowlings took to the Los Angeles freeway -- the wedding of Barbra Streisand to James Brolin. As Streisand's neighbor, Jerry experiences all the wedding's commotion from an uncomfortably close perspective. And to make matters worse, Jerry wasn't even invited.
In his playwriting debut Barbra's Wedding, Daniel Stern plays with the contrast between the rich and famous and the almost famous, making a number of funny observations on superstardom throughout the play. But as the play progresses, the world of Hollywood celebrities becomes background noise as Stern focuses on the Schiffs' relationship. As the media whips into a frenzy outside his door, Jerry's insecurities are quickly exacerbated. While he achieved moderate success in the canceled sitcom Everything's Peachy, Jerry has since failed to find work as an actor. "I'm an out-of work actor. That's what I do," he tells his wife Molly. The strain of the wedding on Jerry quickly threatens his own marriage. Molly, obstinately supportive of her husband, attempts to draw him away from the allure of Hollywood, but Jerry remains hopelessly idealistic and self-absorbed. Bunkered inside their home for the day, both are forced to battle one another in order to save their relationship.
Stern's play works best in its development of the marital tensions between Jerry and Molly. He adeptly captures the feelings of inadequacy in the unemployed actor, and John Pankow, portraying Jerry, genuinely seems both pained and thrilled by the experience of watching celebrities pass his window. Molly, played by Julia White, vividly expresses the increasing feeling of exasperation in dealing with her neurotic husband. Moreover, by setting the entire play in the Schiff's living room, Stern further conveys the sense of entrapment which Jerry openly expresses.
The single setting, however, reminds one of a sitcom, and Stern's oft heavy-handed writing contributes to the sitcom-like feel of the play. Barbra's Wedding moves from joke to joke in a formulaic fashion. Some jokes are noticeably overextended, while transitions are often uneven, making the play at times feel more like a conglomeration of segments than a cohesive piece.
Despite this, Barbra's Wedding succeeds in adding substance to a rather novel idea, all the while including some pretty funny jokes -- all from a playwriter one hopes to see more from in the future. Still, during the play, it's at times difficult to shake off the sense that you've watched something similar to it on a Thursday night, thirty-minute, primetime special -- minus the commercials, of course.
