The primary time Lucy DeVito acted onstage — an electrifying flip as an ant in a second-grade play about bugs — her father, Danny DeVito, watched proudly from the again of the room. (DeVito, who had already starred within the tv sequence “Taxi” and appeared in movies like “Phrases of Endearment” and “Throw Momma From the Practice,” didn’t wish to pose a distraction.)
Now, as Lucy makes her Broadway debut, he has one of the best seat in the home: proper onstage together with her. Starring collectively in Theresa Rebeck’s new comedy, “I Want That,” they’re taking part in the roles they know finest: father and daughter.
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the play, in previews on the American Airways Theater, facilities on the widower Sam, a recluse and hoarder dealing with eviction. His daughter, Amelia, and his finest pal, Foster (performed by Ray Anthony Thomas), beg him to surrender and provides in — quit the stuff; give in to some assist — a lot to his chagrin, over the present’s 90 minutes.
In Midtown Manhattan not too long ago, the DeVitos sat in a rehearsal area, the detritus from a deli breakfast unfold out on a desk in entrance of them. The improvised set was a catastrophe, a small kitchen surrounded by piles of junk: board video games, file gamers, plastic bins, rubbish luggage, clothes, shoe containers. At one level within the present, Danny’s character finds a tv set from a number of layers of trash.
The script was nonetheless pliable, and each of them had been greedy to attain the fullness of their characters. Danny was memorizing his strains, trying up towards the heavens each time he drew a clean. (When he targeted, he curled into himself, hunched right into a hug, his backside lip out in consternation.) His riffs bejeweled each line: When the script referred to as on him to ask his daughter in for breakfast, he as a substitute laid out a menu. “You need breakfast? Espresso? Cereal? Eggs? Fruit? I acquired a very ripe plum!”
Lucy, alternatively, was extra studious and probing. Throughout her character’s apex within the present, the plea for her father to vary his life, her voice curdled from unhappiness right into a resigned anger. Whereas operating these strains, Lucy pulled over to ask for instructions from von Stuelpnagel: The place is her character, emotionally, proper now? Ought to she stay exhausting or retreat again into softness? They talked it via, Lucy smacking a tiny Rubik’s Dice into her palm to punctuate her factors. Her father seemed on, silent and smiling.
“She works lots. She’s actually, actually in there — she’s in there, digging, and that’s a part of the entire thought,” Danny mentioned a number of weeks later throughout a break from rehearsals. “She by no means lays down on it. She’s at all times on it.”
Danny, 78, started his appearing profession on the stage. Looking forward to one thing to do after graduating from highschool in Summit, N.J., he started working at his sister Angie’s magnificence store. She inspired him to coach as a cosmetologist on the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and as soon as he was immersed on the earth {of professional} theater, he determined to check out appearing for himself. After he graduated in 1966, DeVito acted in productions in New York, and in 1971 garnered consideration for his position as Martini within the Off Broadway manufacturing of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” He additionally reprised the half within the 1975 movie.
He quickly turned a bona fide star taking part in Louie De Palma, the tiny-but-mighty dispatcher on the sitcom “Taxi,” which ran for 5 seasons from 1978 to 1983. By the point the present ended, he had met and married Rhea Perlman, recognized for her position as Carla Tortelli on “Cheers.” Lucy, their first baby, was born in 1983. (The couple, now amicably separated, have two different youngsters, Jake and Gracie.)
Lucy, 40, carried out in class productions all through her childhood, appearing in performs like “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” by Christopher Durang. In faculty, she mentioned she lastly admitted to herself that she needed to be an actor. She didn’t anticipate it to be straightforward; if something, she ready for the other. Rising up so near the trade, she mentioned earlier this month, she was “very a lot conscious of the hardships and the way a lot disappointment there could be, how tough the enterprise is.”
After graduating from Brown College in 2007, Lucy moved to New York Metropolis, the place she performed an autistic lady in an Ensemble Studio Theater manufacturing of “Lucy,” by Damien Atkins, and starred in “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Seattle, on the Intiman Theater. In 2009, she co-starred alongside her mom in a run of “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” the play tailored by Nora and Delia Ephron from Ilene Beckerman’s memoir. (Lucy joined the present’s rotating forged first.)
In Hollywood, nepo infants, or celeb youngsters who coast off their household connections to get work they might not deserve, rule the display screen. In New York, they’re passé. When she first started appearing, Lucy fantasized about altering her final identify, not wanting her dad and mom’ reputations to precede her. (It doesn’t assist that she is an ideal, even break up of her dad and mom’ faces, strolling proof of the Punnett sq..)
She by no means acquired far sufficient to resolve on a reputation, although her father had some solutions. Why not Nicholson? “De Niro, even,” Danny quipped.
“Lucy has at all times finished the work,” Danny mentioned. “I don’t assume there’s ever been a time when both of us ever picked up a telephone.”
The Roundabout Theater Firm has now given each DeVitos their Broadway debuts. In 2017, Danny starred in a revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Worth,” for which he obtained a Tony nomination. (Danny needed to, amongst different issues, wolf down a hard-boiled egg whereas talking his strains throughout each efficiency.)
Rebeck’s play will not be their first time taking part in father and daughter. Within the 2022 animated FX sequence “Little Demon,” Danny was the voice of Devil and Lucy performed his daughter, the Antichrist.
“I Want That,” scheduled to open on Nov. 2, would be the pair’s second manufacturing directed by von Stuelpnagel. In 2021, they collaborated on the audio play “I Suppose It’s Value Pointing Out That I’ve Been Very Severe All through This Total Dialogue or, Julia and Dave Are Caught in a Tree,” written by Mallory Jane Weiss, for the theater podcast and public radio present “Enjoying on Air.”
Lucy requested von Stuelpnagel to maintain them in thoughts for future tasks, and he linked the household to Rebeck. After a number of lengthy consulting conferences on Zoom, Rebeck wrote “I Want That” with the household in thoughts, even integrating small particulars from their lives.
Von Stuelpnagel mentioned their interaction in rehearsals, in the identical mould as their characters’ relationship, sharpened the manufacturing. “Lucy is aware of her father’s inclinations for sure decisions he may make and she or he nudges him to return at it another way, and he listens with nice respect,” he mentioned. “That sort of collaboration is a particular factor to witness.”
In a single scene, Amelia reveals up at her father’s home to find that he has fallen and hit his head. She rushes to seize a bag of frozen peas for his head, checking his pupils, transferring with the love of a mom and the brusqueness of a drill sergeant. It felt like each a task reversal of a well-recognized scene and a preview of the longer term: Who takes care of whom?
Although their real-life relationship impressed the play, Danny and Lucy see the variations between them and their characters, agreeing that, as an actual household, they’re much less eccentric and fewer liable to yelling.
“You’re a really succesful human being, and Sam doesn’t depart his home,” Lucy mentioned to her father in the course of the interview. “You’re one of the social folks I do know. There’s a distinct sort of concern and exhaustion that comes from that.”
Danny agreed that he had “completely different issues” than Sam. “I really feel blessed that I’ve youngsters who care about me sufficient to not write me off,” he mentioned.
In the course of the rehearsal course of, the DeVitos sought to create a homey setting in a number of methods, together with, most significantly, by bringing in what Lucy referred to as “wonderful snacks.” Latest holidays on set have included cannoli Sunday, chocolate Monday and taco Tuesday.
“I’ve been on a weight-reduction plan since I used to be 10 years outdated, and I’m attempting to determine make everyone a bit of fatter than I’m,” Lucy mentioned. “If you happen to’re round me, often I’m bringing a sandwich or a pleasant hunk of provolone with some anchovies and a few bread.”
In rehearsals, it’s exhausting to inform whether or not Lucy is speaking to her father or studying strains. “They’ve precisely the form of chemistry you’d anticipate a father and daughter to have, and that comes with playfulness, love and a historical past of irritations,” mentioned von Stuelpnagel. “That familiarity breeds a very deep, dynamic relationship.”
