Want to spend a dollar a minute to see a cute little sitcom? It's Broadway; it's $70 a seat; it's 70 minutes long: The Smell of the Kill by Michele Lowe. The boorish, idiotic husbands of three well-to-do women are trapped in the meat freezer in the basement. Should the wives let them out? That's the play. And it does start cute. Then it gets dumb; then it segues into real stupidity, with a sprinkling of good sitcomish jokes. It's all really one joke, though. It tries to be a black comedy but doesn't have the bite of an Orton, a Pinter (or anybody).
The set, an upper-crust kitchen, by David Gallo is inspired, costumes by David C. Woolard work perfectly, and the three actresses, Lisa Emery, Claudia Shear and Jessica Stone, are all excellent. Director Christopher Ashley gets whatever can be gotten out of the writing, but you can't turn a sitcom into a Broadway silk purse. Maybe a second act, showing the husbands in the freezer might help. It couldn't hoit...
