Throwing splitters

Jack Gallagher’s strong suit is the humorous confessional, drawing on his perspective on his own life and his well-honed skills as a standup comic. It’s a combination of autobiographical storytelling and joke delivery … since Gallagher likes baseball, let’s describe him as an experienced pitcher, maybe not the flashiest, but solid—relying on savvy craft more than sheer power.

Audiences here and elsewhere remember Gallagher for his popular, oft-revived ’90s show Letters to Declan—a warm and gently self-deprecating monologue about becoming a father in his 40s, with sidelights on other family relationships and a showbiz career.

Gallagher’s new show, Just the Guy, uses a similar sure-handed first-person narrative, but toward a somewhat different goal—an account of his brush with celebrity as the star of a TV series that almost made it into the prime-time schedule.

Interleaved with this inside view of the seductive but high-pressure life within the mindless meat grinder of Hollywood are flashbacks to the blue-collar positions Gallagher held in his youth: construction worker, Zamboni operator and (primarily) a gritty job making hot-dipped anodized nails. The back-and-forth sequence between his life as an entertainer and as a regular guy seems a little choppy at first, but evolves into a telling contrast of the hazards of each.

Gallagher speaks from the heart, and Just the Guy is a well-constructed piece, even though it is still in development. It will be interesting to see if this new show develops the kind of “legs” that the long-running Declan enjoyed—the perils of fame being a less-universal experience than fatherhood.

Just the Guy was commissioned for the B Street Theatre’s new B-2 performance space, which opened (barely) on a temporary permit issued by city authorities scarcely three hours before Gallagher’s show opened on July 5. B-2 is a cozy space, with under 100 seats, but the semi-thrust stage and high ceiling offer elbow room for two-story sets and technical effects that aren’t possible in the cramped quarters of the B Street’s main stage.