from The City Paper

“Bench Marked”

By Trey Graham
The City Paper

…What makes the evening almost poignant is that Nat, the least successful Benchley by the measures our celebrity society likes to employ, is an actor of broader range than his grandfather, who felt no less pigeonholed as a stage and screen performer than as a writer. Here, he’s low-key and empathetic as he lays out his family’s history, droll and disarming when he takes on Robert’s persona, and witty in his own right as he sketches little portraits of Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and the other social terrorists who anchored the Algonquin.

Nick Olcott directs the transitions from one element to the next with a steady and all-but-invisible hand; there’s nothing showy here, just quietly accomplished stagecraft that makes the most of what was clearly a lean budget….