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Review: Cellino V. Barnes is a Fun Match for Audiences
August 9, 2024, 6:27.38 pm ET

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By Brian Scott Lipton

Most Americans can name at least a few prominent lawyers: Clarence Darrow, Johnnie Cochran, Elle Woods. But who doesn’t remember Ross Cellino Jr. and Steve Barnes (even if you never knew their first names)? These famous (or infamous) jingle-meisters are now having their 30-year partnership recounted with great humor in “Cellino v. Barnes,” a 75-minute sketch of a play now entertaining audiences at Asylum NYC.

There’s plenty of credit to go around for the show’s unlikely success, starting with a smart-yet-silly script by Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes, and the clever co-direction of Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse, who make excellent use of the theater’s small playing space (which features smart scenic and prop design by Riw Rakkuchon, even if it gave me unhappy flashbacks to my brief career as a practicing litigator.)

Still, much like another recent two-hander, “Gutenberg” (minus the songs, the ever-switching baseball caps, and the surprise celebrity cameos), the show relies most heavily on the seemingly effortless chemistry between the two leads: Hollywood-handsome Eric William Morris is consistently hilarious as Cellino, a nepo-baby (whose Daddy doesn’t even love him) who shouldn’t be anywhere near a courtroom or a client thanks to his extraordinary lack of both legal knowledge and morals, while Noah Weisberg gets his fair share of laughs as the much smarter (if equally amoral) Barnes, who lets dollar signs cloud his eyes – and dollars fill his wallet.

As the script deftly acknowledges, some of what you “learn” about the pair, who became the country’s most successful personal injury attorneys, could just as easily be found on their Wikipedia page. Unsurprisingly, though, Breen and Rafailedes have decidedly taken liberties with some of the actual facts, embellishing or completely making up aspects of the lawyers’ partnership. For example, was Cellino’s major contribution to the firm really choosing the color of the office toilets?

And while it’s true the pair descended into sending each other passive-aggressive emails during their demise, I doubt they were the same ones cooked up by Breen and Rafailedes (who stress that Cellino clearly doesn’t understand what passive-aggressive means), which are part of one of the play’s most amusing sequences.

Unlike that famous jingle (“Cellino & Barnes/personal injury attorneys/ call 1-800-888-8888), “Cellino v Barnes” won’t stick in your mind for more than a day or two at most, but it’s a welcome diversion from the more serious issues facing our country or even our local stages.

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