Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares review – eyebrow-raising cringe comedy from a recovering people pleaser
A grab-bag of awkward ‘lessons learned’ by a middle-aged entertainer reflecting on her journey, the US comic’s song-filled show has savour and schmaltz
Among Americans, Tony award-winner (“and four-time Tony award loser,” as she self-deprecates here) Laura Benanti is a well-loved Broadway doyenne. But prior to national treasure status (boosted by her popular Melania Trump skits in recent years), she was a blushing innocent, performing on the Great White Way aged 18, being propositioned by bigshot producers and breaking her neck in a revival of Into the Woods. A “pathological people pleaser,” she didn’t raise a fuss, and the injury was covered up.
This eyebrow-raising history contains quite enough to justify a 65-minute solo show about being, in Benanti’s words, a “recovering ingenue”. And when that’s what Nobody Cares is, it’s at its strongest. Delivered with musical director Todd Almond plus two-piece backing band, the show is cringingly funny about the younger Benanti’s conflict avoidance, as she lurches from one disastrous relationships to another and squirms out of a marriage proposal in the least appropriate way imaginable.
That latter episode inspires a droll song, recounting grownup-Benanti’s equally cringy effort, years later, to make amends. This conceit, of middle-aged mum in dialogue with her hapless younger self, gives the show a real savour – but it’s diluted in the second half, as our host recounts her later life. An anecdote about sourcing the paperwork for her two divorces rests on the curious assumption that those divorces are shameful. We get tales of her children’s birth, and a heartfelt section on the pressure to breastfeed.
What becomes clear is that this isn’t a show about being a recovering ingenue, it’s a show about being Laura Benanti, a grab-bag of “lessons she’s learned” and things she thinks are worth sharing. These include the sentiment “our kids are so funny …” (one of her daughter’s put-downs gives the show its title), which inspires a fun song about the lies we tell our children, which in due course devolves into schmaltz. The show’s closing stages then circle back, a little clunkily, to Benanti’s childhood, before rounding off with a clarion call to confused ingenues everywhere. For them, Nobody Cares is a must-see – while being merely charming and enjoyable for the rest of us.