Pictured: From Left - MaxRoll, Jonathan Acosta. Photo by Adrian VanStee.

Good Night, Oscar, directed by Peter Amster and currently onstage at Asolo Repertory Theatre, is a good show.

It’s a fun night at the theater full of quick wit and familiar tropes, a comforting message and some absolutely stellar musicianship. There’s even a legitimate argument to be made that Max Roll’s performance as the titular Oscar Levant—real-world American pianist and composer with demons and skill in equal proportion—is flat-out great, complete with a show-stopping turn at the ivories that puts the audience on silent. (Like their cell phones should be.)

But while Good Night, Oscar is a diverting hour or so at the theater, it’s also not much more than that. Audiences will be entertained but rarely challenged, as the plot goes precisely where they predict and even the rough edges—a cunnilingus joke, oh no—are padded to prevent injury.

The setup is as such:

It’s minutes to curtain at the Tonight Show and host Jack Paar can’t exactly promise his studio executive boss, Bob Sarnoff, that tonight’s guest is in the building. Or when he will be. Or if he’s pseudo-escaped from a mental institution and battling hallucinations of Gershwin between desperate bids for more pills. (It’s that last one.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Levant plays the Appropriately Despairing Wife and Oscar’s orderly escort questions every decision in his life that led to abetting a patient’s unauthorized appearance on national television. The ensuing comedy of errors, complete with an angry studio exec and an endlessly quippy Oscar—and buoyed by Asolo Conservatory’s own Jonathan Acosta, in a hilarious turn as the starstruck Max Weinbaum—plays out as you’d expect, punctuated by moments of drama that ultimately pull their punches.

Within this structure, there are themes and questions at play, of fame and exploitation, genius and mental illness, touched on but not explored, and the bones of what could be a compelling character study, if perhaps taken one step further. But, like Oscar, the play often uses humor to deflect these probing impulses, and the characters in the protagonist’s orbit remain largely two-dimensional dialogue-delivery vehicles for jokes and exposition. And when those moments of drama and transformation arrive, they’re refreshing but often feel unearned.

Much earned kudos, however, to the production design team and stage crew, for not only brilliant set design that evokes the era without overstating or complicating, but some of the most creative scene transitions around.

Currently onstage at Asolo Repertory Theatre, Good Night, Oscar runs through April 26.

Pictured: From Left - MaxRoll, Jonathan Acosta. Photo by Adrian VanStee.

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