You can tell that Theresa Rebeck has worked in network TV. There’s a tidy sense of structure to her plays and an earnest desire to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Her latest play, I Need That, is a three-hander that you can imagine as an extended pilot for a CBS dramedy.
Danny DeVito stars as a crotchety retiree who’s retreated like a hermit into his suburban New Jersey house with all the stuff he accumulated during his marriage to his late wife. He’s a borderline hoarder and his living room (wonderfully designed by Alexander Dodge) is piled high with the detritus of life: board games, books, suitcases, a broken TV, an unplayed electric guitar, display plates, etc. There’s only one place for him to sit: an armchair with a crocheted throw over it. While the neighbors have called the authorities and a fire inspector visit is imminent (partly because he refuses to go outside and the lawn is an overgrown mess), Sam maintains that his messy home is not a health hazard to himself or to others. “My kitchen is spotless, why doesn’t that count?” he tells his pal, Foster (Ray Anthony Thomas). “I have a lot of dishes in there, that’s true, but they’re all clean.”
His grown daughter, Amelia (Lucy DeVito), is exasperated by her father’s unwillingness to face the reality that he may be evicted unless he starts to let go of a not insubstantial amount of the stuff he’s accumulated. And Foster, a financially strapped retiree and Sam’s only regular contact with the outside world, was also unaware of the brewing legal threat. The reasons for his foot-dragging are pretty obvious — an unwillingness to move past his grief for his late wife, a trait that he seems to share with a daughter who it turns out is all too eager to deflect from her own issues with attachment.
Rebeck doesn’t dig too deep into the psychology of her characters, but the surface charms are more than enough to sustain a dramedy that runs about 100 minutes. After all, this is the kind of old-fashioned entertainment where it’s best not to question too deeply why these characters have waited so long to express themselves as openly as they do here. Thomas works the hardest with a role that seems more of a sounding board than a flesh-and-blood buddy of Sam’s.
The chief draw here is DeVito — appearing in only his second Broadway show at the age of 78 (he’ll be 79 next month). Wearing a cardigan and an unruly ring of white hair nearly to his shoulders, DeVito tromps about the cramped set like a lab rat who’s all too accustomed to the maze he must navigate. Rebeck’s script and Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s direction make great use of his sharp wit and tendency to comic exasperation, as well as to his flair for spinning meandering narratives about the past. But the highlights are his solo moments on stage, playing a game of Sorry! with himself while imagining the fights he’d have with his siblings back in the day or manipulating an ancient TV antenna to try to pick up a clear signal. It’s easy to imagine how this man, with such a rich inner life, could spend so many hours entirely in his own company. These are throwaway bits of physical comedy, but in the hands of a master like DeVito they are hilarious moments to be treasured, hoarded and not tossed away at any cost.
Culture Sauce 
Hello Thom! I love seeing theater vicariously through your reviews. Thanks for that! When I interviewed Theresa Rebeck last week, she told me that she wrote I Need That with the DeVitos in mind, including the scene where Danny plays Sorry! with himself. That surprised me — seems so rare to write a play for a specific actor these days. She also told me that she gave a lot of thought to why some of us save things that we can’t throw out. Of course, I did push her toward that topic since my podcast is called I Couldn’t Throw It Out (in case you want to hear it, throwitoutpodcast.com). Anyway, thanks again for your reviews, which remind me of the old days at EW.com!