Susan Granger’s review of “Lucky Guy” (Broadhurst Theater, 2012-1013 season)
Beloved author Nora Ephron was right when she ruefully noted that there would be no “Lucky Guy” without two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks, making his Broadway debut. Sporting a gray-flecked moustache, Hanks’ portrayal of problematic journalist Mike McAlary is the heart and soul of her prickly eulogy for the frantic, insular, testosterone-propelled New York tabloid newspaper business of the 1980s and ‘90s.
Ephron was working with Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe right up to the time of her death last year. Like Woody Allen, who framed “Broadway Danny Rose” with talent agents swapping stories at the Carnegie Deli, Ephron gathers McAlary’s inebriated cronies singing “The Wild Irish Rover” at a local pub, starting in 1985. As his longtime editor/friend Hap Hairston (Courtney B. Vance) tells it, ambitious McAlary was in the right place at the right time, beginning as an outer-borough reporter at Newsday and then bouncing between the Daily News and the Post. Cleverly cunning and cocky, he was a natural muckraker, wheeling and dealing crime and police corruption scandals with the help of lawyer Eddie Hayes (Christopher McDonald) and the forbearance of his long-suffering wife Alice (Maura Tierney). Then, after botching a Brooklyn rape story, recovering from a near-fatal car crash and while undergoing chemotherapy for advanced colon cancer, McAlary got the scoop of his life – the sadistic sodomizing of Haitian émigré Abner Louima (Stephen Tyrone Williams) by NYPD officers – for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, just before his death at age 41.
Problem is: arrogant, attention-hungry Mike McAlary was not a likeable human being, and only a consummate actor like Tom Hanks could infuse his complex, often ambiguous character with the innate decency and charming likeability necessary to ingratiate himself to the audience. And, whenever Ephron’s episodic, unconventional, anecdotal narrative wavers, Wolfe’s taut staging and savvy use of newsreel projections bring it back into focus – with credit also going to his technical production team and stalwart support from McAlary’s boozing, foul-mouthed colleagues played by Peter Gerety and Peter Scolari (Hanks’ “Bosom Buddies” co-star).
Since Tom Hanks has agreed only to a Limited Engagement, consider yourself ‘lucky’ if you can snag a ticket to this often hilarious yet heart-breaking play.