“Cellino v. Barnes,” the raucously hilarious play about New York’s most notorious injury attorneys has extended four times and become a bona fide (not to mention rare) off-Broadway hit. Thanks to positive audience buzz and exuberant critical reviews, the show has been playing to packed houses since the fall.
Originally set for a limited run through October 13, 2024—and now running through March 30, 2025—the irreverent comedy features Eric Willam Morris as Ross Cellino and Noah Weisberg as Steve Barnes, the duo whose ubiquitous TV commercial and earworm jingle made them household names in the early 2000s. The delightful pair are skilled actors, handling the brisk pace and physical comedy expertly.
The play, written by Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes and directed by Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse, follows the pair as they form their infamous partnership in the late 1990s through the contentious dissolution of the firm twenty-two years later.
Morris, a versatile triple threat whose past credits include roles in “King Kong” on Broadway, “White Girl in Danger,” “Mamma Mia!” and TV’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Meisel,” among many others, gave us a glimpse into his journey with the show and some of his past projects.
Cellino v. Barnes has been a hit off-Broadway with great word of mouth and multiple extensions. Are you surprised that it’s managed to find an audience?
Yes! It’s been a true surprise and a delight to go on the journey with this show. We only thought we’d be doing this until mid-October, and here we are, still at it.
What was it about this script that spoke to you and made you want to do the play? And what is it about their story that makes it perfect for farce?
I grew up in New Jersey in a small suburban NYC adjacent town. The TV commercials and the jingle for “Cellino and Barnes, injury attorneys, 800-888-8888” haunted my dreams. When I first saw the title of the play, I thought… “why.” And then after reading the first 20 pages I thought, “oh okay, this is wonderful, I gotta throw my hat in the ring.” This story is handled with such a wonderfully playful and heartwarming touch by our writers (Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes) that I felt like all of the farce and physical comedy was very earned.
Did you do a lot of research into the real Ross Cellino? Why or why not?
Nope. None. No research.
The play is so giddy and absurd, the two characters on the page really have nothing to do with the real people they’re based on—at least personality-wise. While a lot of the facts of the show are real, the dynamic we’ve decided on is fictional and lives in a very farcical world.
Talk a little about working with Noah Weisberg in bringing these characters to life, in particular some of the physical comedy. Is it carefully choreographed or do you go with the flow each night?
Noah is a real genius. It’s been a blast. After over 200 performances (wait…what???), there is a shorthand between us. While all of the staging has been set, we have a lot of freedom to play with it every night….and we do.
Cellino and Barnes were icons of early 21st century NYC culture. Yet a large part of your audience are younger people – why do you think the show is delighting audiences of all ages?
I was actually just thinking about this while I was onstage last night: We have a play that was written by two people who were primarily in their twenties when they wrote it, directed by two people in their thirties, and performed every night by two people in their forties. Generationally, we had a lot of bases covered when we put it all together. And the dynamic feels, to me, as fresh in 2025 as it would’ve back in the vaudeville days. The classic clown-duo-comedy-dynamic still seems to register to young people today, and that’s been great to see.
Do you think the location and bar has something to do with it?
I think the bar for sure! Ha! And the location is really great, it’s not too far from the theatre district. And people love a show that’s under 90 minutes. All good things we have going for us.
Speaking of younger audiences, for many years, you have collaborated and appeared in shows by composer Joe Iconis. Can you talk a little about him as a composer and why you think he has such a devoted following, particularly by younger theater fans?
I’ve been collaborating with Joe for almost 20 years now (yikes). We keep getting older and somehow, our audiences remain…young. It’s remarkable. He seems to have his finger on the pulse of something universal. He’s so revealing and vulnerable in his music and his storytelling, and I think young people pick up on that. It’s been a major joy of my career to get to be a part of “The Family.”
We are huge fans of King Kong musical, which opened on Broadway in 2019, in which you played Carl Denham, and which had the most stunning puppetry ever put on a stage. What was it like to bring one of the most iconic stories in pop culture to the stage? As an actor, how did you adapt to working with an animatronic co-star?
It was breathtaking. There’s a video on YouTube of the first time our cast got to see the puppet in action. The face I’m making in that video is genuine, complete awe. It was shocking. And making it come to life every night was pure theatre. The puppet was animatronic in some aspects, but it was also a marionette being maned by 10 actors onstage every night. That puppet was alive and it was really magical.
And likewise, with Cellino V. Barnes, the environment is low-tech, which must put more of the burden on the two actors. In your experience, is a small two-hander easier or harder to work on/rehearse than a large Broadway spectacle like King Kong? Can you talk about the challenges/rewards of doing Off-Broadway?
It’s funny, when I started the run of Cellino V. Barnes, I thought, “Oh this will be easy. No singing. 75 minutes, no intermission.” I was wrong. The fun challenge of this piece is that it truly is just two people up on stage for 75 minutes straight, no breaks. And we’re so close to the audiences that we’re basically in their laps. It’s staged in a full thrust, so we’re almost fully surrounded by the audience, which is thrilling. It demands that Noah and I stay focused and engaged with each other at all times. Funnily enough, this absurdly farcical and silly play has made me a better actor. I’m sure of it.
The difference with something like this and something like King Kong was really in the rehearsals of the whole project. It took us an entire month of technical rehearsals to get King Kong together. We had a day and a half of technical rehearsal for Cellino V. Barnes. But once a show is up and running, it all feels remarkably similar.
Your resume shows plays, musicals, concerts, movies, and an impressive amount of TV appearances – is there one genre that you particularly love and hope to do more of?
The magical thing about living in NYC is that all of these things are readily available to actors here, and I truly love them all. I find as much fulfillment in being on camera as I do in being on stage. I will say, though, the great thing about acting in theatre is that you get to go through the entire arc of the character you’re playing at every performance. There’s a feeling of “a job well done” that I get after doing a piece of theatre that is unlike anything else.
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Cellino V. Barnes plays through March 30 at Asylum NYC, a venue on E. 24th Street known for hosting comedy and variety shows. Audiences can arrive early and enjoy the upscale bar. Tickets at: https://asylumtix.com/asylumnyc/cvb
