Table 17 Off-Broadway Reviews

Disclaimer to rom-com haters: “Table 17” is not for you. It is, however, for a lot of us — fans of the genre and anyone to whom theater of late has felt more arduous than entertaining. This is a play that wants you to have an amusing, untaxing evening out, and everything about Zhailon Levingston’s alluringly designed production, with its top-notch cast of three, is calibrated in service of that aim.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see a show like Table 17, which not only includes a program note of encouragement from playwright Douglas Lyons but actually succeeds in creating the welcome physically and theatrically. “Laugh openly …” Lyons writes. “When the characters ask you for advice, don’t be shy, talk to ’em.” On the page, that’s cute — but affecting that dynamic in a space takes a sharp, willing director and actors bold and charming enough to help audiences get psyched, and then flexible enough to take the curveballs when they come. Good thing Lyons has Zhailon Levingston (of Cats: The Jellicle Ball) calling the shots and the rock-solid trio of Biko Eisen-Martin, Michael Rishawn, and the unnervingly excellent Kara Young playing the game. Young — who just took home her first Tony on her third nomination for Purlie Victorious — is so magnetic, so expressive and instinctively comedic, and then so present and moving, that most bodies three times her size don’t contain a fraction of her firepower. (She’s five-foot-two and doesn’t reach Eisen-Martin’s shoulder while wearing four-inch heels, and I would trust her to lift a car.) Meanwhile, Eisen-Martin has plenty of his own charisma, but he’s also able to receive and convert her high-wattage energy with the grace of a good straight man — figuratively and also not: “Ugh, the straights,” sighs one of Rishawn’s characters, a mean-gay maître-d’ named River, with the kind of eye roll that could only be the result of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule.

“Never work with animals or children.” W.C. Fields delivered those words of wisdom to adult actors, and if the great screen comic were alive today, he might add to that short list of taboos a young actor’s name: Michael Rishawn. He walks away with the new Douglas Lyons comedy “Table 17” even though he’s a supporting player. The play had its world premiere Friday at MCC Theater.

On your way into the auditorium to see MCC’s Table 17 you may notice a sign on the wall quoting the playwright, Douglas Lyons, explaining his inspiration for the work. He referred to the “Black romcom cinema” of the 90’s and 2000’s as a thrilling movement that “permeated” his childhood. Sure enough, the play features a cast of endearingly quirky characters engaged in a romantic duel with sprinklings of humor amid the pathos of love lost and found. And I must say, Lyons and his terrific company did one better than the old romcoms. Table 17 is a deliciously heartfelt study of an ex-couple that’s as funny as it is profound.

These three actors have so much individual talent and group chemistry that it would have been an entertaining 90 minutes if they had been reading the phone book. But with Table 17, the honesty and the wittiness of the writing hook you immediately if the actors’ dynamism hadn't already. The excellent costume design (Devario D. Simmons) allows the characters to transition seamlessly between the present day to flashbacks in a club, on a plane, or at a Knicks game. Director Zhailon Livingston’s vision ensures the characters always feel three-dimensional, sometimes literally as they dance among the audience members seated at the other “tables.” The meet-cute, the proposal, the escalating fights - there’s something magical about getting lost in the formulaic.