(Mike Chiodo/Mikiodo Media)

Given how spoiled we've been with numerous invites to soirées and galas of late, the novelty of a charity event set in a bowling lane—a bowling lane!—seemed just delightful, a real opportunity to let our hair down. And there was still a generous helping of celebrities in the crowd who had come to support Our Time, a charity aimed at helping young stutterers. Fronting the event was genial film star Paul Rudd, who took time out of his acclaimed Broadway play Grace to lend a famous face to the event.

Bowling may not be considered the pinnacle of athleticism, but that didn't quell the competitive streak of several guests.“I can see you getting into a challenge with a kid tonight,” speculated the charity's founder Taro Alexander to Mr. Rudd, who made no attempts to deny the accusations. “If it happens, I welcome it,” he laughed, before insisting, “I've brought my own wrist guard, balls, shoes and a bottle of Purell.” We can only hope he was joking.As is often the case with these charity shindigs, the children honored outshine the celebrities by a mile, and last night stayed true to form. One of the real success stories in attendance was 10 year old Saadiq Wicks, who had overcome school bullies and started up his own charitable foundation after being inspired by the work of Our Time and Mr. Alexander. His mom Kimberley gushed: “I’m super proud, he’s really courageous. He did a presentation at school for National Stuttering Awareness Day to his fifth grade class, and his poise amazes me.”

Someone who made less of an impact on the kiddy winks was yesteryear's English X Factor runner up Olly Murs, who was all smiles in spite of admitting that “nobody here has a clue who I am.” Well, it was nice of you to show up.

After the ubiquitous foyer schmooze fest (“do you know Danny? Danny's so great, isn't he? Danny loves you!”), a kind of bongo circle time ensued, with everyone gathering round to play a game of Hype. Cheering away on the sidelines was RENT actor Anthony Rapp, another committed Our Time supporter whose bowling prowess was rather hit and miss. “I either hit strikes or gutterballs, but I never know when I get up there how it's going to turn out.” How prophetic.  His former co-star Jesse L. Martin was down to attend but failed to show, scuppering our fantasies of an impromptu scene from RENT being acted out between the lanes. Some people are just so selfish. But everyone seemed to be having good wholesome fun— much to the dismay of several youngsters lingering near the bar— and we were tucked up in bed nice and early, ready for school the next morning.

Shannon, Arrington, Rudd and Asner in Grace.

Polished and uniformly riveting, the four actors in Grace, a new play on Broadway by Craig Wright, directed by Dexter Bullard at the Cort, provide the grace an otherwise benign and disappointing play does not. The playwright had a runaway success off-Broadway with Mistakes Were Made. History and good fortune did not repeat themselves uptown. However, the estimable Michael Shannon has graced both plays, and for that, Mr. Wright can count his blessings. That goes for the rest of us too.

A treatise on theology and faith, with all the doubt and distrust, hope and salvation such weighty subjects inspire, Grace picks at scabs instead of fully addressing them. If you’re looking for answers to earth-shattering questions raised by Sunday-morning television evangelists looking to raid your soul for profit, you will go away empty. But you will spend 90 edgy minutes (without intermission) in the company of a few vainglorious actors, good and true, while you make up your mind. On a characterless revolving set by designer Beowulf Boritt—who is also currently flooding the stage of the Laura Pels with the water-soaked horror If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet—two identically ugly Florida condos next door to each other occupy the same space. On one side live Steve and Sara (Paul Rudd and Kate Arrington), a couple of attractive born-again Christians from Minnesota who have just arrived to start their own chain of evangelical gospel hotels, ever-mindful of their prayers, always thanking God and his son Jesus. (“Keep holding us, Lord, always forward, deeper and deeper. Amen.”) Steve is devout, but greedy. Sara is reserved, but needy. He wants money, success and power. She just wants a baby. On the other side, there is Sam (Mr. Shannon), a depressed, wounded and deeply cynical atheist with a face scarred by near-fatal burns from an automobile accident that killed the woman he loved. Grace opens with Steve, barefoot in a white suit and waving a gun, walking in and pumping bullets into his wife and their next-door neighbor, then turning the weapon on himself. Blackout. The play begins.

That is not a spoiler. A lot of plays end with a murder. This one gets the action out of the way in the first scene, beginning with two murders and one suicide, then takes 90 minutes of explanation while the corpses rise, compose themselves, and re-enact (sometimes in reverse order) the events that led to the tragedy and violence. Mr. Rudd’s Steve is the same cut of obnoxious brat he’s played in a score of rude comedic movies, but with a more sober and devotedly mature resolution. He really believes capitalism is not just kid stuff, but divinely inspired. Sam is a reclusive NASA scientist with half of his face covered by a mask, like the phantom of the opera. He is not only skeptical of everything his neighbors do and say, but their church music is seeping through the walls and driving him wild. Steve sweats and frets over $9 million in promised financing for his hotel project to be wired from a mysterious investor in Zurich; what Sam labels a “predicament,” Steve calls an “opportunity.” Through his work in the space program, Sam already knows what’s in the sky, and it does not include God. Sara befriends her miserable neighbor out of a combination of compassion and mutual loneliness. While her husband is being sued by the bank for fraud with a most un-Christian-like fervor, she tests her own divine values. They find grace differently, and some never know it at all.

Meanwhile, coming and going through their homes like a toxic fume, there is the gruff building exterminator, played by the legendary Ed Asner with a German accent, rotund, with white whiskers and looking rather like Santa Claus in black shorts, a canister of pesticide around his waist, spraying for bugs. A Polish-born cynic whose family hid Jews during the Holocaust and witnessed terrible atrocities, he believes only three things: there is no God, there is no Jesus and if you shut up and mind your own business, everything will work out. The more Steve and Sara try to rationalize religion, the more Sam and the exterminator denounce the existence of a deity. The walls that divide the two living spaces are invisible, so there is only one room representing two homes. The inhabitants move in and out simultaneously without seeing each other, sometimes sitting at the same table. Is that clear? I know. It confused me, too.

There’s nothing perplexing about the quartet of actors who dominate and inform the proceedings, though. Everyone has a monologue that is delivered magnificently. Mr. Rudd is a carefully considered jangle of faith and frustration, ready to snap like a dry twig. Ms. Arrington is a ruptured vision of lonely expectation. Mr. Asner provides the comic balance. And you can’t take your eyes off Mr. Shannon for fear that you might miss something. He’s played so many psychos, hit men and schizophrenics, it is refreshing to see him so sensitive. There is nothing conventional about his looks. Sometimes he’s a twitching mask of pain—the real deal, not some wacko parody of phony emotion like Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. A moment later, pallid and dead, he looks like his face has been erased. Then it begins to move, with a voice pliant and expressive, pensive and restrained. The uneven writing gives him lines that border on bathos, yet he breathes the honesty of life into every human moment. Describing the death of all he held dear in the past, then showing a reluctant surrender to new feelings of awakening that might enrich his future, he makes you hang onto every word. The lack of conflict in Grace makes it a dull place to hold attention, but Michael Shannon is an actor whose innocence and purity, combined with both strength and purpose, gives him the power to lift a mediocre play into another dimension.

rreed@observer.com

Paul Rudd (Getty Images)

We just can’t get enough of Paul Rudd—no matter how hard he tries. The inescapable camera actor (Our Idiot Brother, This is 40 and Wanderlust on the silver screen, Parks and Recreation on the smaller one) returns to Broadway with the evangelism drama Grace. It’s his first time back since that Three Days of Rain production, way back when Julia Roberts and her Cheshire-cat grin drew stage-door crowds. It’s opening night, and Mr. Rudd, along with costars Ed Asner and Michael Shannon, plans to celebrate with a post-performance bash at a Midtown watering hole. We’ll be there with our autograph book!

Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, performance at 6:45, tickets and information can be found at graceonbroadway.com.

Paul Rudd

Tonight, we’re dropping in on a preview of the latest big-star-on-Broadway show, to see the acting-for-screen tics that’ll get ironed out by opening. The ubiquitous Paul Rudd (last season of Parks and Recreation, this winter’s new Judd Apatow flick, This Is 40, along with every other Apatow comedy, and Julia Roberts’ Broadway play, back when he was just a mini-star) stars in Grace alongside Michael Shannon, Kate Arrington, and Ed Asner. Mr. Rudd plays one half of a couple that moves to Florida to pursue their dream of opening a chain of religiously themed motels (guess they have, like, multiple Gideon Bibles?).

Grace is in previews at the Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, 8pm, tickets and information can be found at graceonbroadway.com.

- Rob Lowe, Stephen Colbert, and the cast of Modern Family will be filling in for Robin Roberts on Good Morning America this week while the ABC host undergoes a bone marrow transplant. Hey, we'd take a soggy piece of bread over last week's substitute, Jessica Simpson.

- Would you like to go bowling with Paul Rudd, Rashida Jones, Denis O'Hare, John Oliver, and not one but two stars of a Law&Order franchise? Of course you do. We don't even need to mention that the whole thing's for charity. You were already sold.

- Candace Bushnell keeps having to resettle the same old lawsuit with former manager (and alleged Stanford inspiration) Clifford Streit. She keeps giving him money for his part in helping her get Sex and the City on HBO, and he keeps telling her its not enough. She should just stop and ask herself, WWCBD?

-Alec Baldwin's dream Portlandia role: "A meat salesman with all kinds of charts and graphs of the loins and the sections of the pig and the cow and the organs." Just no pig, please...we're keeping kosher this week.

'Grace' star Paul Rudd

Chaplin

Barrymore Theatre

Opens September 10

In the footsteps of the Judy Garland biographical play End of the Rainbow tramps Chaplin, a musical about the life of Chaplin. Unlike other attempts to illuminate the lives of showbiz legends--a subgenre that also includes Master Class’s portrayal of Maria Callas--Chaplin is to have a cast of 22 in what surely will be splashy musical numbers. Rob McClure, previously of Avenue Q and, well, the La Jolla out-of-town tryout for Chaplin, takes on Charlie in a production that is likely to showcase every element of the actor’s legendary film career but for the silence.

Grace

Cort Theatre

Opens October 4

Paul Rudd, suddenly more prolific than he’s ever been with TV and film gigs, is headed back to Broadway. (He previously played second fiddle to Julia Roberts in Three Days of Rain--but now he’s the star!) Mr. Rudd is to play one-half of an innocent couple moving to Florida in order to start religious-themed motels; his better half is to be played by Kate Arrington, whose real-life partner, Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, joins the fracas as the pair’s new neighbor, while legendary TV fixture Ed Asner plays an exterminator. (With all these mainstream stars, is this a Broadway show or the SAG Awards?)

Cyrano de Bergerac

American Airlines Theatre

Opens October 11

It’s been five years since the last Broadway production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and theater writers have been storing up nasal puns since then. (Who nose if this will be a success? We’ll be sniffing for hints from the producers! Etc.) Tony-winner Douglas Hodge straps on the prosthetic nose for the title role of the lovesick, prohibitively ugly French nobleman, while Clémence Poésy is to allure as Roxane, the not-so-obscure object of desire, and onetime Spider-Man villain Patrick Page makes us all glad he survived that production as he plays Cyrano’s erstwhile ally Comte De Guiche. We smell a good night at the theater!

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Booth Theatre

October 13

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Edward Albee’s rollicking domestic nightmare, the New York stage welcomes a production by way of Chicago and Washington. Tracy Letts, who moonlights as a Pulitzer-winning playwright, is to take on George, while Steppenwolf star Amy Morton (previously, too, a Tony nominee for Mr. Letts’s August: Osage County) has been honing her piercing shriek as Martha. Both actors appeared in the original production, which earned raves from local critics--and surely they’re ready for the big time--the three-hour play is the sort of marathon you can only really train for by two years and three cities’ worth of practice.

'Dead Accounts' star Katie Holmes

The Heiress

Walter Kerr Theatre

Opens November 1

Taking over the role of Olivia de Havilland and Cherry Jones? That’d be ultra-fast-rising starlet Jessica Chastain, who, like Paul Rudd, is taking a break from her prolific film career to portray Catherine Sloper. Catherine, originally a character in Henry James’s novel Washington Square, possesses that Jamesian fragility, shyness, and moth-to-flame attraction to callous villains; the character is set to inherit an enormous fortune, but is so taken aback at the love of a churlish fellow that she may just squander it all. Ms. Chastain’s Broadway debut will be watched closely by all those who love and/or envy her, but with support including castmate David Straitharn and director Moisés Kaufman, Ms. Chastain may not return to her day job anytime soon.

Annie

Palace Theatre

Opens November 8

Little girls of New York, begin beseeching your parents for tickets. After a long search, the producers of what may become the season’s most lucrative revival found their girl--preteen brunette Lilla Crawford is to strap on the red wig and belt out “Tomorrow” in the latest Annie. Though it’s toured the U.S. frequently, the saccharine show hasn’t been seen on Broadway since its 1997 revival. It’s not entirely for kids: James Lapine, a frequent collaborator of Stephen Sondheim’s, is to direct the production, while two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran assays the role of Miss Hannigan. Ms. Crawford, get former red-wig-wearer Sarah Jessica Parker on the phone to discuss how to be deal with newfound fame!

Glengarry Glen Ross

Schoenfeld Theatre

Opens November 11

Al Pacino, who starred in the film production of Glengarry Glen Ross as young, robust Ricky Roma, is showing his age: he’s coming to Broadway this season as Shelley Levene. Levene, scholars of David Mamet will surely recall, is the once-great real estate salesman who has grown unable to generate good leads (much as an actor of Al Pacino’s caliber has, for years until just now, been unable to get a lead on a role that required much more than senseless bellowing). The cast is rounded out by the high-toned likes of Bobby Cannavale and Richard Schiff; the “Coffee’s for closers” monologue is from the film and not the play, but we can dream it’ll be included.

Rebecca

Broadhurst Theatre

Opens November 18

Daphne du Maurier via Alfred Hitchcock via Christopher Hampton! The well-loved playwright and screenwriter has adapted into English the book of a musical that played Vienna in the mid-2000s, recounting the twice-told tale of a second wife who must confront the ghost of her new, controlling husband’s former wife. As in du Maurier’s novel, the naive protagonist is never named but for “I”; Jill Paice is to attempt to make a name for herself in the role. The directors are about as prestigious as Mr. Hampton; Michael Blakemore won two Tonys for directing a play and a musical in the same year back in the day, while Francesca Zambello is an opera director with, one presumes and hopes, a flair for the dramatic.

Dead Accounts

Music Box Theatre

Opening Date November 29

When we think about Broadway’s breakout ingenues of the past decade, our minds don’t immediately leap to Katie Holmes’s turn in All My Sons in 2008. She was... fine? Certainly her time in New York, and exposure to paparazzi therein, engendered a high-water mark in the sales of “boyfriend jeans” nationwide. But the stage is apparently a safe place for Ms. Holmes, as it’s to Broadway she returns for her first new role post-extremely-notable-divorce. The midwestern woman trying to start over while living with her parents is to play a midwestern woman trying to start over while living with her parents. Well, Ms. Holmes is from Toledo and her character’s from Cincinnati. And her parents, we read, are in off and on. No matter--the play’s by super-prolific Theresa Rebeck, and could allow for a Kidmanian career renaissance.

The Anarchist

Lyceum Theatre

Opens December 2

A new work on Broadway playing blocks away from a revival of his best-loved work, and a daughter who’s one of those TV Girls? Could things get sweeter for David Mamet? Well, there was the little matter of actress Laurie Metcalf dropping out of the role of a women’s-prison warden in The Anarchist, the newer of his two currently produced plays--but no matter. Debra Winger removed herself from exile to drop in for the role, and Patti LuPone, playing a radical prisoner pleading for her own parole. Mr. Mamet’s neoconservative bent may well inform just how we see the role of the anarchist played out onstage, but we’d forgive Mr. Mamet anything!

ABC, bastion of decency, has refused to air an ad for The Weinstein Company's Our Idiot Brother. The ad depicts discussion of drug use as well as a depiction of urination using a juicebox. This is far less scandalous than the scene at the film's rooftop Cinema Society screening (during which the film's stars in attendance reportedly watched nude hotel guests at the nearby Yotel) as well as ABC's own Bachelor Pad.

At least, as spotted by Videogum, there's one press outlet that won't shy away at all from promoting Our Idiot Brother.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Rudd.

Ever since he broke out in the 1995 Jane Austen-goes-to-the-Valley romp Clueless, earning teen idol status for the somewhat questionable act of kissing his underage onscreen step-sister, Paul Rudd has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as the go-to hapless everyman. Most of his roles fall into two categories: the hapless, disarming romantic lead (I Love You, Man, How Do You Know), and the hapless, hammy sidekick (Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wet Hot American Summer). But in Our Idiot Brother, a warm and witty comedy from brother-sister team Jesse and Evgenia Peretz, Mr. Rudd has found a perfect role that showcases his considerable charm and comic talent without robbing him of his hap.

This is not to say that Ned, the titular “idiot brother,” isn’t occasionally very unlucky. A laid-back biodynamic farmer fond of Crocs and Fair Isle sweaters, Ned finds himself in jail after naïvely selling pot to a uniformed police officer, only to return home a few months later to find that his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn, sporting a head full of dreadlocks and an air of delightful, deluded self-righteousness) has taken a new lover/farmhand and wants him gone. Robbed of his paycheck, his dignity and his beloved golden retriever, Willie Nelson, Ned moves back in with his mother (Shirley Knight), but soon prevails upon his three Manhattanite sisters to put him up while he figures out his next step. One by one, he unwittingly ruins their lives with his granola-crunchy goodwill.

The oldest sister, Liz (Emily Mortimer), is a mousy, insecure, stay-at-home mom married to pompous documentary filmmaker Dylan (Steve Coogan, in a role that seems to be a send-up of first-time screenwriter—and real life documentarian—David Schisgall). Dylan reluctantly agrees to give Ned a low-paying production assistant job in exchange for free childcare, but neither works out well. To Liz and Dylan’s horror, Ned allows their son, River, to watch The Pink Panther after bedtime and teaches him mixed martial arts after noticing how badly River wants to join a karate class instead of the all-girls modern dance class his parents have enrolled him in. And at work, Ned walks in on Dylan in flagrante with his prima ballerina subject (ever the innocent, Ned buys Dylan’s excuse that nakedness encourages uninhibited interviews).

When Liz and Dylan send him packing, Ned takes up residence on the couch of middle sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, playing a variation of her ruthlessly ambitious, utterly narcissistic 30 Rock character), a neurotic Vanity Fair staffer—just like co-writer Evgenia Peretz!—on the verge of her big break: a feature interview with an heiress fresh out of a scandalous relationship that’s been the toast of the tabloids. But Miranda doesn’t have the grace or guts to ask tough questions, coming away with a puff piece about the socialite’s pet charity. It’s only the gregarious Ned who’s able to unwittingly coax the real story out of the buttoned-up, P.R.-wary subject, and Miranda wastes no time in attempting to exploit her brother’s knowledge for professional gain. But Ned’s good intentions get in the way of his sister’s agenda—in addition to sabotaging her article, he meddles in Miranda’s personal life, trying to make sparks fly with her next-door neighbor and best friend, Jeremy (Adam Scott)—and soon he’s pounding the pavement once again.

The final, youngest sister, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), is a struggling stand-up comedian in a loving lesbian relationship with a woman named Cindy (Rashida Jones, forced for some reason by the costume designer to dress like Peewee Herman) who maintains a dangerous flirtation with a male artist friend (Hugh Dancy). When Natalie makes an impetuous mistake with life-altering ramifications, Ned is there to support her—until he accidentally spills the beans to Cindy. Now all three sisters aren’t speaking to him, he still misses Willie Nelson, and he’s back in jail thanks to an ill-advised heart-to-heart with his parole office (turns out you’re not supposed to tell them when you get high with the kid across the street).

With his Jesus beard, earnest eco-friendliness and childlike naïveté, Ned is unquestionably a stereotype (think The Big Lebowski’s The Dude merged with Tom Hanks in Big), and in the hands of any other actor, his hippie-dippy, laissez-faire follies might become unbearable after the first 30 minutes. But Mr. Rudd imbues Ned with an easy, charming sweetness and unpatronizing wisdom that make him seem simply guileless, not stupid. Indeed, the greatest flaw of Our Idiot Brother is in making Ned too saintly—despite the title, it’s clearly the sisters who are the morons. Petty, vapid and criminally self-absorbed, they blame Ned for being the only person to identify the problems keeping them from being happy … until they realize, in a neat, somewhat lazy wrap-up that qualifies, in Oprah-speak, as an “aha moment,” that by ruining their lives, Ned actually has fixed them. Oh, well. It is to the credit of the filmmakers that they manage to recoup and give the movie an ending that’s as winning and winsome as its star.

Our Idiot Brother may not be perfect, but, Crocs and all, Paul Rudd’s performance is idiot-proof.

ulamarche@observer.com

Running time 90 minutes

Written by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall

Directed by Jesse Peretz

Starring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer

3/4

Gabourey Sidibe (Patrick McMullan)

Last night's Cinema Society- and Altoids-sponsored Our Idiot Brother screening, Precious star Gabourey Sidibe was raving about the film's star, Paul Rudd.

"I love Clueless!" she told us. (A photographer, shortly after, announced that Mr. Rudd's Clueless co-star Alicia Silverstone was in the building.) She particularly loved Mr. Rudd's role in The Ten. We decided to ask about world events--it's August, and there's not too much to discuss. Would Ms. Sidibe sell the rights to her wedding as Kim Kardashian had? "No, I would prefer something more private."

We asked if the actress had any advice for the Brooklyn-bound celebutante, and a publicist chimed in: "We're not going to discuss any other celebrities."

Okay, then, how about Libya? "I don't know about that!"

Other guests at the party were occupied: Law & Order's Richard Belzer, hanging out with 30 Rock's Judah Friedlander, was playing with a small pup and in so doing knocked over a wineglass; Kirsten Dunst skipped the red carpet spent the evening huddled with two pals.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_