The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Grove House Productions‘ Not Ready for Prime Time

By Ross

At the Newman Mills Theater, a comedy legend is retold with little comic spark, and for a play about the creation of “Saturday Night Live“, Not Ready for Prime Time should feel like a live wire on fire, chaotic, combustible, and utterly and impossibly unpredictable. Instead, Grove House Productions’ New York premiere production, written by Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sothers and directed by Conor Bagley, fails to ignite. It plays it slow and safe, plodding along more like a nostalgic timeline than a theatrical revelation. The play strolls the streets like a tourist who hasn’t found the city’s rhythm. Although it does give us an affectionate tribute to television’s most anarchic experiment, affection alone does not create electricity, excitement, or engagement. What should be a manic backstage carnival filled to the brim with laughs and authentic connection often unfolds as a dutiful reenactment of greatest hits, slowed down to a speed that even a toddler (who shouldn’t be up that late) could comprehend.

The show’s conceit seems like the greatest of ideas, tracing the early days of “SNL” through the eyes of its controlling producer, Lorne Michaels (Ian Bouillon- Shed’s King Lear). It promises insider intrigue but rarely delivers any narrative tension beyond quick snapshots of addiction and anorexia that are only played with but never actually explored. Each scene lands like another bullet point in a cultural scrapbook, with the ‘should-be’ title of every scene being: ‘and then this happened.‘ From writers’ room arguments, with small, ignoring nods to systemic racism and misogyny, to live-on-air jitters, battles, and oversized egos, the play moves forward, not too briskly and without much momentum. The script seems determined to check off the major moments, like Chevy Chase’s overdone pratfalls, John Belushi’s manic excesses, Gilda Radner’s sweetness and internal discomfort, but never lingering long enough to make any of them matter beyond note-taking.

The cast gives it their all, often with uncanny mimicry. Ryan Crout finds flashes of bullish charm and danger as Belushi, and Evan Rubin’s Gilda Radner captures her warmth and extreme emotional fragility. Woodrow Proctor’s Chevy Chase gets the arrogant smirk right, even when the dialogue gives us little to like in him. Jared Grimes as Garrett Morris, Taylor Richardson as Laraine Newman, Kristian Lugo as Dan Aykroyd, Nate Janis as both Dick Ebersol and Bill Murray, and Caitlin Houlahan as Jane Curtin lend welcome texture, although they are all somewhat underused and sidelined into stereotypes and pathways to points required. Each and every one of them could have been so much more than the simple caricatures they’re given to play, but they become pieces of a board game moved around by distracted players unwilling to focus. Unfortunately for all of the Not Ready for Prime Time players, there is a ceiling on emotional investment when no single perspective anchors the story. And the result is an ensemble of cardboard cutouts, well-cast and competently drawn, moving through scenes (ever so slowly) that feel airless despite all the focused work of the company.

Even its most dramatic beats, such as Belushi’s overdose or Gilda’s illness, fail to land with the gravity they deserve. A late scene in which Belushi appears at the top of a staircase asking Gilda if she is ready to join him is framed for heartbreak but achieves only a kind of sentimental pantomime. It is emblematic of a play that too often mistakes reference for resonance. You can feel the writers’ admiration and their desire to honor these icons, but reverence is not drama. It actually creates distance, and unfortunately, numerous moments of bland boredom.

There is a certain irony that a show about the mess and brilliance of “Saturday Night Live” ends up mirroring its namesake’s most familiar rhythm: a few bright sketches surrounded by a lot of filler. Not Ready for Prime Time wants to celebrate a revolution, but it feels like it is waiting for one instead.