A potent midlife crisis

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NEW YORK -- "What is it, a little midlife crisis?" asks Robin (Euan Morton), as he happens upon the title character on a park bench looking rather ragged in his expensive suit in "Howard Katz," which opened off-Broadway last week.

"Yeah, but it's bigger than me," responds Katz, played by Alfred Molina (known to moviegoers for his role in "Frida" as artist Diego Rivera and to younger film fans as the villainous Doc Ock in "Spider-Man 2").

There are many plays about the male midlife crisis. And there are many plays about one man's search for his soul. Yet what keeps "Howard Katz," produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, from feeling like warmed-over territory is a fairly sharp script, tight staging and a flawless performance by its star.

"Katz," which opened at London's National Theatre in 2001, was written by Patrick Marber, a recent Oscar nominee for best adapted screenplay for "Notes on a Scandal." Mike Nichols turned Mr. Marber's previous play, "Closer," into one of the sharpest relationship films of recent years. "Katz" isn't nearly so shattering -- or as good -- as that brutal work, but it has the same intelligence, still committed to honesty, behind it.

The play opens with Katz on a park bench contemplating suicide. The rest of the drama explains, in a series of flashbacks, how he got there.

Katz is a London talent agent, with a fouler mouth -- and perhaps an even fouler mind -- than Ari Gold on HBO's "Entourage."

"I'm the bastard so you look sweet," he tells a client. "It's called representation."

The problem is that Katz isn't a bastard just when he must be. As his boss points out, he's gone through 12 assistants so far this year -- and it's only June. He's got a cynical view on his business ("It's Sodom and Gomorrah out there, but without any scenery," he reasons), but he can't imagine he'd belong anywhere else.

The workaholic lifestyle, of course, creates friction at home. He tells his wife Jess (Jessica Hecht of "Sideways") he's bored, but doesn't know why. ("Cheer up," he tells her. "Misery's my job.") Katz wants to raise his son (10-year-old Patrick Henney) well, but is ill-equipped for the job. That relationship, with the only person who doesn't accuse him of selling out, seems to be his only comfort. "This ordinary miracle, this strange little soldier come home from the war," he says of his son's birth, in one of Mr. Marber's particularly poetic lines.

Katz soon loses that comfort, along with everything else, when his cynicism catches up to him.