For the late Charles Nelson Reilly, a man who spent most of his life on Broadway, it must have been bemusing to be known primarily for the campy caricature of himself he created for the world of television game shows. Then again, he was also a man well aware of the power of laughter, and the absurd version of himself he projected on The Match Game and Hollywood Squares cemented his role as first and foremost an entertainer. In his later years, Reilly created a one-man show, Save it for the Stage, which recounted all the years — from childhood through adulthood — that made him the figure the public knew and loved. The Life of Reilly is a recording of Reilly's very last performance, interspersed with black-and-white film clips that act simultaneously as flashes of memory and tangible glances into his past.
Where YouTube video clips of The Match Game paint a one-dimensional picture of Reilly, Save it for the Stage — a phrase Reilly's mother actually used to employ when her son asked questions she deemed too probing — is all nuance and feeling and, above all, an answer to what made Reilly tick. The audience learns of Reilly's racist mother, who spent most of her life browbeating her son and husband into submission; his father, a great artist who was eventually institutionalized after being overcome by a combination of regret and alcohol; a lobotomized aunt; an entire cast of crazy characters that seem even crazier for being real. Reilly takes the stage, empty but for a set of chairs, and adeptly summons an entire span of existence that leaves the audience hushed and heartbroken. And then, while all are on the edge of their seat, he just as adeptly cuts that mute tension with a look or a throwaway comment that brings both belly laughs and relief. The Life of Reilly may be a poor substitute for the man himself. But for those who never had the chance to sit taut and silent in that dark theater, it is a treasure. — Steph Auteri