Under My Skin OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF Under My Skin

  

  Good to Be Alive Again, but What’s This Body? ‘Under My Skin,’ a Comedy at the Little Shubert Theater

  Laura Collins-Hughes

  May 14, 2014: When an underinsured office temp from Staten Island and her entitled billionaire boss die in an elevator accident in Under My Skin, the new body-swapping comedy at the Little Shubert Theater, an angel from Eternal Affairs restores them to life, each in the other’s physique. Do not be alarmed if this scenario brings on flashbacks from your cinematic past, circa the Reagan administration: Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin in “All of Me,” Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in “Trading Places,” Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl,” Tom Hanks in “Big.” There’s a reason those movies succeeded as entertainment. Under My Skin — written by Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, television veterans whose credits include the sitcoms “Who’s the Boss?” and “The Nanny” — is a comfortable diversion. Directed by Kirsten Sanderson, it treads familiar ground: income inequality and the gender divide, played for laughs and a lesson in empathy.

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• NY DAILY NEWS REVIEW OF Under My Skin

  

  ‘Under My Skin’: theater review

  Joe Dziemianowicz

  May 14, 2014: Fueled by "Freaky Friday" fantasy and actual health-insurance angst, Under My Skin is a body-swapping comedy with preexisting conditions — creaky bones and lameness. Credit married co-writers Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, who spent the 1980s and ’90s grinding sitcom sausage on “Who’s the Boss?” They also developed “The Nanny,” about a Queens hairdresser who gets inside a rich producer’s life. Their Off-Broadway debut follows Staten Island temp Melody (Kerry Butler), who really gets inside the life of wealthy Amalgamated Healthcare honcho Harrison (Matt Walton). Mel and Harrison unwittingly trade bodies, thanks to a stumblebum angel (Dierdre Friel). The setup is well-worn, the characters one-note and no one in the cast comes off especially well. Kirsten Sanderson’s stiff direction doesn’t help matters.

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• NEW YORK POST REVIEW OF Under My Skin

  

  ‘Under My Skin’ more cornball than classic comedy

  Elisabeth Vincentelli

  May 6, 2014: The subject of the new comedy Under My Skin is very “now”: The sucky unfairness of health insurance. But the show’s cornball style is stuck in the ’80s or ’90s — which isn’t surprising since it’s by Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, who wrote for “Who’s the Boss” and developed “The Nanny.”

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• TIME OUT NEW YORK REVIEW OF Under My Skin

  

  Under My Skin: Theater review by Raven Snook

  Raven Snook

  May 14, 2014: If the words body-switch comedy don’t make your heart sink, discovering that the married playwrights behind Under My Skin are best known for their work on Who’s the Boss? and The Nanny might. The piece plays like a rejected ’80s-sitcom pilot, with references to Obamacare and selfies cut-and-pasted in. Melody (Kerry Butler, talent fully wasted) is a Staten Island working girl stuck in a dead-end job at a health-insurance company with a 9 to 5–style sexist, egotistical, bottom-line boss (Matt Walton). After both die (temporarily!) in an elevator crash, a bumbling angel (Dierdre Friel, getting laughs through sheer force of will) returns their spirits to the wrong bodies.

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