TURNING A THEATRICAL LEMON
INTO FIZZY LEMONADE

Matthew Lombardo spins a true-life theatrical
disaster into a relentlessly funny backstage comedy

Beth Leavel

According to Nora Ephron, who turned her husband’s infidelity into a best-seller and screenplay for the novel and the movie Heartburn, “Everything is material.” But she didn’t say it should be hilarious material. If she had, her words might have been playwright Matthew Lombardo’s mantra as he turned a notorious fiasco into a non-stop shower of laughter in When Playwrights Kill, the world premiere of currently playing at the Huntington Theatre in Boston in a limited engagement through April 18.

Kevin Chamberlin, Matt Doyle, and Beth Leavel

In July of 2019, Lombardo’s one-woman play about Katharine Hepburn, Tea at Five, was in tryouts at Boston’s Huntington Theatre. Faye Dunaway, who had returned to Broadway after a 37-year absence, was cast in the lead, but the problems were numerous. According to multiple reports, Dunaway required an earpiece so a prompter could feed her lines she had never learned (reportedly 98 percent of the script). There were claims that she was abusive to staff—demanding they scrub the floor of her dressing room on their hands and knees and pelting them with mirrors, combs, and other objects. Following the alleged slap of a crew member, according to a New York Post article at the time, Dunaway was fired. But despite her shortcomings, it was Lombardo’s play that came under attack. According to a review in Boston’s Arts Fuse, the play was not worthy of Dunaway and a poor choice for her comeback, though the reviewer acknowledged that Dunaway did not know her lines.

Kevin Chamberlin, Adam Heller, Matt Doyle, and Marissa Jaret Winokur

With When Playwrights Kill, Lombardo has taken these events and carried them to their logical conclusion. Like so many interpersonal disasters, comedy can be found in the retelling, and Lombardo has indeed transformed what were a series of setbacks into two hours of nearly nonstop laughter.

In When Playwrights Kill, the Playwright (Matt Doyle) has written a play called The Return, the story of a fictional movie star trying to revive her career after being blacklisted. After offering the Playwright a shot at Broadway, the Producer (Adam Heller) insists that the lead be played by the notoriously difficult Brooke Remington (Beth Leavel), and the Director (Kevin Chamberlin) backs him up. Hawkins is given no choice but to accept the casting decision, one he is sure spells disaster.

Beth Leavel and Marissa Jaret Winokur

Remington is indeed a disaster. Not only is she unable to memorize her lines, she is unable to remember or follow the simplest of stage directions—like picking up a ringing telephone before saying hello.

Even the level-headed Stage Manager (Marissa Jaret Winokur) and the campy prompter-cum-drug dealer (Tomás Matos) are unable to keep the production on track once Remington’s irrational demands and drug-addled inability to perform at the most basic level kick in. Leavel does a wonderful job of milking maximum laughs from Remington’s repeated efforts to get her lines and her stage directions right.

Matt Doyle, Tomás Matos, and Adam Heller

Doyle, Chamberlin, and Winokur amplify the ridiculousness with facial expressions, body language, and timing that emphasize their sense of frustrated helplessness in the face of Remington’s incompetence. The Prompter—flamboyant and with a prison record—somehow comes across as the most sane and balanced of the bunch.

Adam Heller, Matt Doyle, and Kevin Chamberlin

In a desperate effort to save the production and his professional reputation, our Playwright comes up with a plot to get rid of Remington. Actually, multiple plots, because his first effort fails. This all makes for good comedy, despite the script’s reliance on insider knowledge for many of its jokes. Audience members who have never been part of Actors’ Equity are likely to scratch their heads, while those who don’t know about the Dunaway debacle (recast in When Playwrights Kill as a conflict between Neil Simon and Mary Tyler Moore) will miss the layers of irony.

Kevin Chamberlin, Adam Heller, Matt Doyle, and Marissa Jaret Winokur

But none of this seemed to matter the night I saw the show. Leavel is a master of comedic embodiment, and the laughter kept coming… and coming… and coming. The audience was laughing at her and at all the other fine actors, but also at that all-too-familiar sense of helplessness in the face of infuriating ineptitude—in a theater or in life. In the end, the only way to deal with that frustration is to contemplate murder—or enjoy the absurdity.

Matt Doyle

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photos by Jim Sabitus

When Playwrights Kill
visiting production at the Huntington Theatre
264 Huntington Ave, Boston
2 hours with intermission
ends on April 18, 2026
for tickets ($29-$199), call 617.933.8600 or
visit When Playwrights Kill or Boston Theatre Scene

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston

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