GetOut Magazine

Couple shows true colors in ‘It Had to Be You’
By MAX McQUEEN
Get Out
Dec. 5, 2002

One can only guess where Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor end and their characters start in It Had to Be You.

First off, the long-married acting couple wrote and directed this slight romantic comedy, so its easy to suspect theres more than just a smidgen of their relationship salting and peppering the material.

This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that its only Bologna and Taylor on stage in Theater Leagues last-minute replacement for JoAnn Worleys Dear Sheldon. Theres not so much as a delivery man to distract us from the plays two solitary figures, a ditsy actress and a brusque producer.

That Bologna and Taylors characters talk, walk and act just like weve seen Bologna and Taylor talk, walk and act on film, TV, stage and talk shows, we have little choice but to assume theyre not putting on an act here. Instead, theyre just doing a slight variation of who they really are.

If you like Taylors nasal, button-pushing comedian and Bolognas gruff nice guy, then youll take to It Had to Be You like Taylors meddling mom on The Nanny takes to big hair. First-nighters on Dec. 3 did just that, apparently not minding the plays paper-thin plot (if you can call it that) and its spartan production.

As seen in last springs If You Ever Leave Me, Im Going With You, the Bolognas are likable enough. For about an hour. But two hours is pushing it, particularly in a play that could easily come in as a filling 90-minute one-act instead of a stretched-thin two-act. Tuesdays performance had the hesitant feeling of a cautious rehearsal, as if the couple werent quite sure if the 20-year-old play that secured their fame would still play.

It does. And it doesnt. It does because Bologna and Taylor seem to genuinely love working with each other. They could probably read the phone book to each other on stage and thoroughly enjoy it. For the first time, the twos give-and-take reminded us of George Burns and Gracie Allen, with Bologna as the flummoxed straight man (minus cigar) to Taylor as the tell-it-like-it-is, logic-defying airhead.

The romantic high jinks start at an audition in which Taylors clueless actress named Theda (after silent screen star Theda Bara) blows any chance of a job. Bolognas producer takes pity on the quirky dame, never suspecting where his undue attention will lead. It, of course, leads straight to Thedas apartment, where hes all but held hostage by a gal who has decided shes found her man.

For two hours, It Had to Be You is essentially about Bolognas so-called trapped man trying to leave the clutches of a clingy woman. In asides to the audience, Theda says if he really wanted to leave, he would. So the plays undercurrent is that maybe this mean ol producer guy really is the man for this flighty gal whos luckless in love, work and even playwrighting. The latter is a running joke as Theda forces draft after draft of a bad play on Bolognas hapless chap.

Unlike If You Ever Leave Me, It Had to Be You doesnt play up Bologna and Taylors different ethnic backgrounds. He being a New York-raised and -bred Italian; she being a true-blue New York Jew. True, opposites attract, but here its more about clashing personalities than colliding cultures. By the time the curtain falls, the couple manages to overcome their differences, not in great, big gushing heaps, but in little ways that were enough of a payoff for receptive first-nighters.

With 9,000-plus subscribers, Theater League producer Mark Edelman has a captive audience for the kind of thing he does. Part of that is catering to transplanted New Yorkers and Chicagoans who readily relate to Bologna and Taylors skewed big-city view of modern romance. On their part, they do convince us that it takes work to make relationships work. In that, It Had to Be You clearly hit home with the Dec. 3 crowd, despite its bargain-basement production.

It Had to Be You

Who: Theater League
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 203 W. Adams St., Phoenix
When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday
How much: $26.50-$32.50
Info:
Grade: B-