Laura Benanti, one of today’s musical comedy all-stars, understands that human fallibility is at the root of genuine hilarity. In her autobiographical show, “Nobody Cares,” which completed its four-day run at the Wallis on Sunday and now heads to South Coast Repertory for another four-day gig beginning Thursday, she does her clownish best to make herself look bad.
She spills some of her most shameful secrets, such as the time a guy proposed to her and rather than offend him she told him she couldn’t accept because she had cancer. Years later, she searched for this ex on Instagram to confess her sin. Turns out, she came clean to a complete stranger who told her, “LOL, you’re going to hell/ But sorry your name doesn’t ring a bell.”
This anecdote is delivered in song, which somehow makes the humiliation worse — and more savagely humorous. Benanti co-wrote her show’s original songs with multi-hyphenate playwright, songwriter and performer Todd Almond, who serves as music director. He also pinch-hits as her gay “straight-man,” setting her up for punchlines that she delivers in the persona of a spotlight-hogging diva.
“Nobody Cares,” directed by Annie Tippe, takes some time to come into focus. It’s not a musical memoir in the manner of “Everyday Rapture,” the charmingly touching show Sherie Rene Scott wrote with Dick Scanlon that is overdue for a revival for its medley of “Mister Rogers” numbers alone.
Nor is it a traditional cabaret, where a singer reveals herself through songbook reinterpretations. (The songs here are an extension of her comic monologues and not designed for a long afterlife.)
Benanti spends much of her time making wisecracks at her own expense, but I wouldn’t call it a stand-up act either. Joan Rivers would have loved her routine about the baggage of being a thrice married, twice divorced woman. But Benanti’s comic gifts flourish in layered scenes and sharply drawn sketches. (The reason clips of her satirical impersonation of Melania Trump on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” went viral was because her deadpan portrayal was so cunningly exact.)
Based on the Audible Original version of the show, “Nobody Cares” is all of these things and none of them. You can call it a hybrid, but I think of it more as an amuse-bouche — tantalizing yet not to be confused with a full meal.
The songs, contemporary pop sprinkled with disco pixie dust, are of a piece with the tone of Benanti’s self-skewering comedy. There’s a number about perimenopause and another about motherhood called “Mama’s a Liar” that’s both funny and sneakily touching.
I longed, however, for a little more emotional depth from the music. Benanti jokingly apologizes to any audience members who were expecting selections from “My Fair Lady,” one of her lauded Broadway outings. I wouldn’t have minded a song or two from her Tony-winning turn in “Gypsy” starring Patti LuPone. But the real issue is that the new musical material doesn’t bring out the best of her Broadway talent.
Dressed in a pink satin suit, she sometimes resembles an off-duty Rockette whose legs are staging a mutiny. She crouches, she splays herself, she jiggles her bum to prove what a desperate people-pleaser she used to be. Thankfully, she never risks a pratfall as dangerous as the one that left her with a broken neck when playing Cinderella in a Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.” But she describes in squirming detail the lengths she once went to for approval.
Even when letting one of her creepy old boyfriends have it, Benanti can’t resist socking it to herself: He winds up dumping her. Yet her determined self-deprecation only makes us love her more.
“Nobody Cares” tracks the stumbling journey of a musical comedy dervish belatedly coming into her own power as a woman and as a performer. It’s more of a vehicle than a fully developed solo work. Yet how could anyone object to spending 65 minutes with a zany Broadway star who has learned to turn her shame into shared laughter?
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