At the rehearsal, between reps of a scene set around the hospital deathbed, he was restless, chewing gum, shifting his weight from side to side, pacing in circles, removing his corduroy jacket, stretching his scarf behind his head as if it were a TheraBand, and making trips to a table on which he had an array of things to put in his mouth: a pack of Trident White, a box of licorice Altoids, a yellow tin of Rescue Pastilles lozenges. “But then I thought, Why couldn’t we give him a rack of clothes at his hotel? He said, ‘Yeah, I don’t like getting undressed in places.’ ”ĭavid in rehearsals for Fish in the Dark last week.ĭavid is lanky and kinetic. Why can’t he just be wearing the first of his five or six costumes when he arrives? “At first, I thought it was the silliest question,” Shapiro says. David has already drawn her into his reality bubble, asking her, for instance, why he needs to change his clothes when he gets to the theater. ![]() ![]() The producer ultimately paired David with Shapiro, who’d proved her ability to take non-theater animals like Chris Rock, in The Motherfucker With the Hat , and Tavi Gevinson, in This Is Our Youth , and make them Broadway-ready. It wasn’t David’s intention to star in it, but Rudin persuaded him that audiences would want him in the role (his fellow cast members include Wilson, Rosie Perez, Ben Shenkman, Lewis J. He went off and wrote Fish in the Dark.Later, he got an email from the producer Scott Rudin: “You wrote a play? Hello?” But David had also been intrigued watching his friend Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy , imagining the thrill of live audience laughter. For one thing, the limited number of settings-hospital room, shiva, etc.-suggested a stage production. Larry says, ‘It’s a Broadway play.’ ” One might wonder why David, having mastered the half-hour sitcom as co-creator of Seinfeldand auteur of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, immediately thought of doing a play. We start talking about how it’s incredible material. “We’re sitting shiva,” Braun recalls, “and Larry’s over the first day at my house, and I was telling him a whole bunch of stories of what had gone on for the last few days, because some were crazy and hilarious, like a relative flying in from wherever ’cause they want to be in show business. David got the idea for the play two years ago from his friend Lloyd Braun, an entertainment executive whose father, a powerful music lawyer in Beverly Hills, had just died after a three-day hospital vigil. ![]() It was a recent Thursday afternoon, and David, Wilson, and the rest of the cast were rehearsing Fish in the Dark , David’s debut as both playwright and, excepting fifth- and eighth-grade turns in school plays, stage actor.
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