‘Not Ready for Prime Time’ nails SNL’s early years chaos. The narrative? Still in rehearsal.

By Lindsay B. Davis

Live from New York… I am seated inside the Newman Mills Theater, where the year is 1975. The stage is set as the famed Studio 8H, and a live band warms up the Not Ready for Prime Time audience with disco. Unaffiliated with but drawing inspiration from SNL and its lightning-in-a-bottle early years, this new Off-Broadway play explores the uninhibited eccentricities and darker vulnerabilities of its OG cast—among them John Belushi (Ryan Crout) and Gilda Radner (Evan Rubin). It’s a wild ride.

Seen through the ambitious eyes of Lorne Michaels (an earnest Ian Bouillion) under network pressure to “not piss off the president,” we’re introduced to the young ensemble’s high stakes world of work plus a hurricane of hard partying and drug addiction, sex and love triangles, ego clashes, and resentments that explode after the show’s breakout star, Chevy Chase (Woodrow Proctor), lands on the cover of New York Magazine.

Jared Grimes and Garrett Morris and Caitlin Houlahan as Jane Curtin in "Not Ready for Prime Time." — Jared Grimes as Garrett Morris and Caitlin Houlahan as Jane Curtin in “Not Ready for Prime Time.” Photo by Russ Rowland.

Deeper struggles emerge as the show’s only Black cast member Garrett Morris (a brilliant Jared Grimes) contends with racial tokenization, Jane Curtain (Caitlin Houlahan) faces writers room sexism, and Radner’s eating disorder coincides with a cancer diagnosis, deftly handled by Rubin. Co-writers Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sothers pepper SNL’s iconic sketches and characters throughout (presumably within the bounds of IP and fair use), including Weekend Update, Baba WaWa, and The Coneheads as conceived by Laraine Newman (Taylor Richardson) and Dan Aykroyd (Kristian Lugo) during a makeout session.

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The cast is wholeheartedly committed, but if you are looking for a clear, central narrative, you won’t find one: Not Ready for Prime Time neither insists upon nor drives towards any specific event or conclusion. That said, it is a really fun hang to be with these lunatic legends staged like controlled entropy under Conor Bagley’s direction. The roller coaster of highs and lows leaves you breathless at times before effectively climaxing with a tear-jerking halt, and the Blues Brothers dance party that follows is the perfect chaser.