Howard Katz

Howard KatzA broken man is no stranger to the stage. It is what makes the mean break, and how he does it, that makes him and his show compelling.Unfortunately, those elements are missing from Howard Katz, which is currently playing at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. Patrick Marber’s play tells the story of a talent agent who, after quickly losing everything he holds dear, is considering suicide. Told in a series of flashbacks, Marber’s script offers a look into Katz’s life and the series of unfortunate events that leave him with nothing in his pockets and a gun in his hand.Katz is married and has a young son. He is a talent agent with a fondness for yelling at people and bragging that he knows what is best. He is arrogant and self-satisfied, and not altogether likeable. After losing one of his most profitable clients, his wife leaves him, and he is released from his job. A series of personal and professional calamites follow, which result in Katz making gambles – with both people and the powers above – for his own life.Katz is played with a delicate malice by Alfred Molina, who gives the antihero every ounce of depth that he can. The man is clinging to the end of a rapidly fraying rope, and his hands are slipping more and more with each scene that passes, and what could have easily been overplayed as hysterical is instead underplayed as human. As his relationship with reality dissipates further he withdraws more, until he is alone on a park bench, consulting with a stranger about methods of suicide.Marber forgot one vital aspect of the show – to make his main character sympathetic. He gives us many scenes of Katz – as an agent, as a husband, as a father – failing miserably in each aspect of his present life. We know little to nothing about Katz’s past, and with that perspective missing from the play, it is easy to wonder if any or all of this is Katz’s own fault. Stunted by his own narcissism and indulgence, he refuses to admit that he is wrong in any way.Some scenes do offer a biting perspective of the world that Katz lives in, such the detailed ordering of customized coffees that takes place before his firing, and when a client tells him, “All of this losing your temper with people is sort of ‘90s.” One wonders how this world helped to create Katz, and how much of a victim he might actually be. It is when Molina raises his eyes and speaks deliberately to God that the true irony of the show is given justice. Katz’s story is not resolved, but one is able to understand it a bit more.