The opening scene of Molly Smith Metzler's comedic play Close Up Space is the only good scene. But in fairness it does briskly and efficiently introduce our main character, his perspective on the world and his troubles in this new production by Manhattan Theatre Club.
The marvelous actor David Hyde Pierce is Paul, an editor at a boutique publishing house and he's lecturing us on editing by using plaintive emails from various heads of boarding schools as samples to dissect. Pierce deftly reduces these desperate pleas to come pick up his rebellious daughter (who is wandering campus naked and pulling off this or that unfortunate shenanigan) by red-lining them and eliminating the redundancies, poor grammar and rambling tone. It's funny, tight and delivers a lot of information.
From this opening, we learn Paul is an old school publishing editor (though in the slow-to-adapt world of publishing, his use of an overhead projector might seem daringly modern). He's precise and dedicated to his work. He doesn't suffer fools gladly. And his daughter is either troubled or a free spirit but definitely a handful.
Even this scene misses a joke. When the new intern he's lecturing tries to talk about the software she can use, Pierce says it certainly didn't help her write a coherent cover letter and shows the editing it needed, a nice visual gag. We immediately wonder why she got the job (out of 140 applicants)? If she'd asked, Pierce might have whipped out letters even more heavily red-lined or perhaps a pile of shredded documents and said, "This was the competition." It hardly matters, given the confused nature of everything that follows.
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