D+
2006 must have been a really dismal year for London theater if this tepid family drama by Simon Stephens could win the Olivier award. I will grudgingly express admiration to the Atlantic Theater for their commitment to bringing three of his plays to New York although I wasn’t too impressed with the other two -- Bluebird and Harper Regan — either. However, I liked them better than Punk Rock at MCC or Heisenberg at MTC. Even his Tony-winner The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was an adaptation of someone else’s novel and owed a lot of its success to its brilliant staging. Therefore, I approached the present play with low expectations. They were met. We meet three generations of the Holmes family of Stockport, the suburb of Manchester where Stephens grew up — grandparents Charlie (Peter Maloney) and Ellen (the always watchable Blair Brown), their son Peter (C.J. Wilson) and his wife Alice (Atlantic stalwart Mary McCann) and their two grandsons Alex (Ben Rosenfield) and Christopher (Wesley Zurick). There is also Alex’s girlfriend Sarah (Tedra Millan), his friend Paul (Odiseas Georgiadis), Peter’s client Susan (Amelia Workman) and Alice’s new friend John (Leroy McClain). We follow the Holmes family over the course of a year that is punctuated by tragedy. The play has a seemingly endless succession of short scenes that generated very little interest for me. I don’t require sympathetic characters, but I expect to feel some involvement which was lacking here. I looked at my watch often. There is lots of regret, missed opportunity and lack of communication. The fine cast, which struggles uncertainly with the accent, deserves better than this. The set design by Scott Park makes efficient use of space. Sarah Laux’s costumes are apt. Director Neil Pepe does his best with material that is basically inert. Running time: two hours 35 minutes including intermission. Seating advice: Avoid Row B at the Linda Gross Theater because it is not elevated above Row A.
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