Bob's Theater Blog

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If the goal of Steven Levenson (The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, book for Dear Evan Hansen) was to write a play that would elicit lively discussion afterwards, his new play at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre is a success. While at its core an intimate family drama, the play connects the personal to a wider arena of religious, political, sociological and philosophical concerns. We meet the three Fischer siblings, all in their forties, in July 2000 at the family’s longtime home in a middle class Washington neighborhood. They are gathered to celebrate their recently widowed father’s 75th birthday. The middle child Michael (the superb Jeremy Shamos), although an atheist, is a professor of Jewish studies at a New York area university where he has just been recommended for tenure. He mentions in passing that he is faculty advisor to Students for Nader. He and his gentile wife Ellen (Tasha Lawrence) have an emotionally troubled college-age daughter Abby who is currently on a trip to Israel. Michael was opposed to letting her go because peace talks between Arabs and Israelis have just collapsed and he fears for her safety. Elder daughter Holly (the assured Kate Walsh from TV’s Private Practice), a dilettante who fancies herself an interior decorator, has a bratty teenage son Joey (Seth Steinberg) and a shallow but wealthy lawyer husband Howard (Gary Wilmes) who is Joey’s stepfather. The younger daughter Sharon (Renata Friedman, u/s for Maria Dizzia), an unmarried teacher, who has borne the brunt of caring for her late mother and her ailing father, never fails to remind her siblings of that fact. Sharon has recently broken up with her boyfriend after finding him in bed with the [female] cantor. We learn that Michael has just completed an incendiary book called Forget the Holocaust that suggests that American Jews should stop using the Holocaust as a reason to give Israel a free pass for some of its actions. (If you think it unlikely that a professor would publish a controversial book likely to damage his career while he is awaiting tenure, just google Norman Finkelstein.) Although Michael sent his father Lou (Larry Bryggman) a manuscript of his book to read six month ago, Lou has never said a word about it. In a moving scene near the end of the first act, Lou describes what it was like to liberate Dachau. The second act takes place six months later, not long after the Supreme Court has interceded to elect Bush. Lou has suffered a stroke. Michael’s book has had consequences. The family has gathered to decide what to do about Lou’s care. Lou’s only asset is his former clothing store, now leased to a Guatemalan family at a below-market rate. Sharon’s opposition to selling the store because it is the family legacy has another less noble motive. Holly’s plan to rent the store for her own nonexistent design practice is mysteriously not supported by her husband, who turns out to have an unsavory secret. Michael pushes hard to sell the store, betraying some confidences in the process. At play’s end Joey asks Michael about his cousin Abby’s condition. We learn that she had an experience in Jerusalem that was either transcendent or symptomatic of her worsening mental condition. The play shifts gears from naturalistic to expressionistic in its final scene, which didn't work for me. One can fault the play for being overstuffed; there’s enough plot for three plays. On the positive side, the play presents a compelling picture of family dynamics, fortunately relieved by frequent flashes of humor. It raises important questions about Jewish identity in America today that seem even more relevant in the light of recent headlines. The dialogue is sharp and the cast is excellent. Derek McLane’s revolving two-level set and Jess Goldstein’s costumes serve the play well. Daniel Sullivan (Proof, Rabbit Hole) directs with his usual skill. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including intermission.

It’s almost exactly two years since John Pollono’s play “Small Engine Repair” made a big splash at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. That testosterone-driven tale of three working stiffs in Manchester, NH and the college boy who crossed their path packed quite a wallop. (And it made my 10 best play list for 2013.) The new play, also produced by MCC Theater, could almost serve as a bookend. We are back among the working class in southern New Hampshire, but this time it’s the women who hold center stage. During a nor’easter that has made driving perilous, sharp-tongued Maggie (Piper Perabo), who is struggling to hang onto a place in the lower middle class, discovers that her 10-year-old Honda is missing. When she reports the theft to the police, they alert her cop ex-husband Lou (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) who turns up uninvited with his annoyingly perky second wife Penny (Meghann Fahy). Linda (Tasha Lawrence), Maggie’s equally foul-mouthed mother, who lives with her, repeatedly demonstrates her skill at getting under people’s skin. It turns out that the car thief is none other than Maggie and Lou’s teenage daughter. The set rotates from Maggie’s modest house to a motel room in Connecticut where we meet a pair of high school classmates who have run off together. More specifically, the brassy girl (Lizzy Declement) has talked the innocent boy (Josh Green) into driving her to Florida for a rendezvous with her much older boyfriend. He has reluctantly agreed because he has been smitten with her since second grade. The scenes alternate between Maggie’s house and the motel room. Maggie and Lou learn that the Honda has been involved in a major highway accident, but the power goes out before they can learn how their daughter is. Back at the motel, things have turned romantic. I won’t reveal the outcome except to say that there is a tricky development near the end that I have mixed feelings about. Two of three theater-savvy friends who attended the same performance missed it, so I think director Jo Bonney needs to do something to make the ending clearer. I wish the actors didn't need to struggle so hard with the New England accent. Richard Hoover’s revolving set and Theresa Squire’s costumes capture the correct ambience. While this play is not as good as “Small Engine Repair,” it’s consistently involving and entertaining. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have little taste for plays set in trailers. Once again, I am reminded why by this latest work of playwright Samuel D. Hunter, chronicler of marginalized Idahoans. Although his previous play, The Whale, won many prizes, I found its characters too grotesque to care very much about, much as I admired Shuler Hensley’s fantastic performance in that play.  The three characters in his new play, now at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, are far less extreme and easier, at least for me, to feel compassion for. They are Bryan (Michael Laurence), a former trucker who founded a newspaper for lonely truckers, his high school friend and lover QZ (Tasha Lawrence) and a needy effeminate teenager Matthew (Jacob Perkins, u/s for Gideon Glick) who has helped QZ (no explanation for her strange name is given) run the newspaper since Bryan abruptly disappeared four years ago after the funeral of their trucker friend and newspaper co-founder Jim. In Bryan’s absence, QZ has turned the newspaper, called “The Few,” from a financial flop into a barely viable entity by shedding its content to concentrate on personal ads for truckers. Matthew, Jim’s nephew, who has been rescued by QZ from an abusive family, hopes that Bryan’s return will restore the glory days of the newspaper, when its office, the cluttered double-wide trailer skillfully realized by Dane Laffrey’s set, will once again be a welcoming oasis for alienated truckers. Gradually — very gradually — we learn the reason’s for Bryan’s departure and his sudden return. I felt that a viable one-act play had been stretched to make an evening of it. The acting is first-rate and Davis McCallum’s sympathetic direction shows the material to best advantage. Jessica Pabst’s costumes are fine too. Some of the telephone recording of trucker personals are amusing. I liked it better than The Whale, but that isn’t saying a lot. Running time: 1 hr 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: I must confess that I really do not like attending plays at The Rattlestick. There is no handicap access, the stairways within the theater are rickety, the absence of an aisle on one side of the theater is a safety hazard, the seats are barely more comfortable than rocks, and the offstage bathrooms make the starting time dependent on people’s bladders. I try hard not to let the decrepit surroundings influence my opinion of the play, but I wish a wealthy benefactor would favor Rattlestick with the money to bring the place into the 21st century.