GUY WALKS INTO A BAR...

John Mulaney Hilariously Takes Over Broadway in ‘All In’

“All In” is a series of short stories by writer Simon Rich, in which a rotating cast including Mulaney play toddlers, detectives, dogs, pirates, and more.

What are toddlers really thinking? Could it be that they see the mysterious, coming-in-and-out-of-focus world around them as if through the eyes of a hardboiled, noir-era detective? That is one of the very funny conceits New Yorker writer Simon Rich comes up with in one of the stories in the Broadway celebrity comedy charabanc All In: Comedy About Love (Hudson Theatre, booking to Feb. 16, 2025).

This 90-minute show, directed by Alex Timbers with Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels as an executive producer, is less a play than an evening of amiable short storytelling starring well-known actors—its inaugural cast features John Mulaney, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Richard Kind, and Fred Armisen. (Jimmy Fallon, Aidy Bryant, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Andrew Rannells are among the celebrities who will take their places in the four seats as the run continues.)

All four actors sit on chairs facing the audience, playing a gallery of different characters featured in each story, such as the little boy in “The Big Nap” imagining himself as the put-upon Chandler-esque gumshoe, surveying dark shadows and malign intent everywhere, while Rich makes clear to the audience it’s the little boy’s grandma just taking care of him and his baby sister Zoe (Goldsberry) while their parents are away: “We still don’t know why Mama and Dada went away this weekend, or where they went, or what they did there. We don’t know why they go to work, or what work is, or why they both have glasses.”

In another story, Mulaney—a brilliant comic performer with his crisp, dry monotone and excellent timing—narrates “Guy Walks Into a Bar,” a weird and wonderful stream of absurdities set around a miniature, 12-inch pianist, and a genie who keeps mishearing people’s wishes.

In another story, “Learning the Ropes,” Mulaney and Armisen play pirates whose murderousness is offset by the demands of unexpected parenting that a young female stowaway necessitates. Here, the laughs don’t just come from the pirates reciting the familiar grumbles of modern childcare, but their beginning each sentence with an “Arrrr.”

In “Case Study,” the marvelous Richard Kind plays the physician treating Joseph Merrick, aka the Elephant Man (Armisen).

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The doctor’s mounting insecurities and fury as Anne (Goldsberry) forms a close bond with the legendary figure—just how close are they, what is the nature of their intimacy?—make for an excellent showcase for Kind, whose body pretzels up as his stress mounts. The humor, as with other stories, contrasts the bizarre, vintage setups with the modern language of the therapist’s couch or magazine article.

Kind’s physician ends up wondering if the Elephant Man could be gay (he wears a cape, but wait: so do lots of straight guys now!), and therefore not a threat to his marriage. Armisen plays the latter as a cool guy, who—nevertheless—absents himself from situations with a flourish of his cape to hide his bodily deformities.

In “New Client,” Kind as agent Albie Katz desperately needs a new client, but can he persuade Death (Armisen) to be that client, after the latter reveals the frustrated theater kid within?

The stories are supplemented by softly effective lighting (Jake DeGroot), sound (Peter Hylenski), and video design (Lucy Mackinnon), and original illustrations by the New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake. There is tuneful, but completely unnecessary accompaniment to break the evening up a bit by indie band The Bengsons playing love songs by Magnetic Fields.

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Other stories feature the imagined advertisements dogs might place in a “missed connections” column, which combine winsome sudden sightings (“I saw you out the window of my owner’s car, during a traffic jam. We barked at each other for a while. I thought you made some interesting points”), with the plainly stated desire to mate, now: “At one point I managed to mount you and we sort of had sex for a couple of seconds. You shook me off, though, and ran away.”

All four actors are excellent, but Goldsberry—and whoever is ‘the woman’ on the nights when she leaves the show—deserve a better slice of the comedy pie than they are given.

The final story, “History Report,” a showcase for Goldsberry, comes beamed in from some time in the future, 2074, and Rich’s great-granddaughter writing an essay about how he met his wife in an era of nervous back-to-my-place? viewings of Arrested Development, and how old-school intimacy was lost along with the natural world.

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It is the most earnest, laugh-free of all the stories, and underlines the predominant theme of the show. Despite the stories’ wryness and arch wit, Rich ultimately seems a sunny-eyed idealist—not just about individuals, but also in how we should treat each other. Rich’s vision of love, and our capacity to love, is a mark of triumph, a salve, and also a salvation—“all-in,” as the title says: good for us, and good for the world around us.

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Tim TeemanSenior Editor and Writer

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