The Nap

D

Since I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Bean’s hilarious One Man, Two Guvnors, I was looking forward to this play at Manhattan Theatre Club even though I was unfamiliar with and uninterested in its focus — snooker, a variety of billiards popular in England. Allegedly a comedy-thriller, it comes up short on both laughs and thrills. Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer; Sticks and Bones) is a working-class bloke from Sheffield who has a chance to win the World Championship tournament which is conveniently being held in his home town. Bobby Spokes (John Ellison Conlee; Murder Ballad, The Madrid) is his father, an ex-con drug dealer who has trouble with math and movie titles. Dylan is alienated from his mother Stella (Johanna Day; Sweat, Proof), a grifter who is currently selling fake handicap parking permits. The shady Waxy Bush (Alexandra Billings), Dylan’s sponsor and Stella’s lover before her gender change, rivals Mrs. Malaprop with her fractured vocabulary.  Tony DanLino (Max Gordon Moore; Saint Joan, Describe the Night) is Dylan’s flashy manager with a taste for pastel suits. Danny Killeen (Thomas Jay Ryan; The Crucible, 10 out of 12) is Stella’s smelly current boyfriend. Shortly before the tournament, Dylan is visited by Mohammad Butt (Bhavesh Patel; Present Laughter, Indian Ink), an official with the snooker authority, and Eleanor Lavery (Heather Lind; Incognito, Of Good Stock), an attractive police officer, who warn him about suspicious betting activity. Subsequently, Dylan must face a painful choice between throwing a game or jeopardizing the life of a loved one. This setup takes up the very long first act, which ends on a jarring note. The second and livelier act has many reveals and not one but two scenes of snooker with Dylan against Abdul Fattah and Baghawi Quereshi (both played by real-life champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed). An overhead view of the snooker play is projected on a large screen. The author has allegedly written two endings, depending on who wins. On the night I attended, Dylan won. The characters are little more than one-note tics and their interactions just aren’t that funny. The romantic subplot is half-hearted. At no point does the play even remotely approach the inspired slapstick farce of Bean’s earlier play. The direction by Daniel Sullivan (The Little Foxes, Good People) seemed a bit listless. David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me, Lobby Hero) set is a transforming wonder and Kaye Voyce’s (After the Blast, Mary Page Marlowe) costumes go a long way to defining the characters. Once again MTC has lavished first-rate production values on second-rate material. I was very disappointed. Running time: two hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Indian Ink ***

It took almost 20 years to get here, but Tom Stoppard’s 1995 play (based on his 1991 radio play “In the Native State”) has finally reached New York in a first-rate production by Roundabout at the Laura Pels Theatre. One can speculate on the reasons it took so long — its large cast (15), its relative lack of the playwright’s customary intellectual showmanship, and its appearance between the flashier “Arcadia” and “The Invention of Love.” In any case, we should be glad it has at last arrived. The central character is Flora Crewe (a fine Romola Garai), a free-spirited young British woman whose erotic poetry has caused a bit of a scandal and who has gone to India early in 1930. Her alleged purpose is to give a lecture tour about the British literary world, but actually she has traveled for health reasons. While in Jummapur, she meets an Indian artist Nirad Das (Firdous Bamji,) who paints her portrait, and is wooed by a British colonial functionary David Durance (Lee Aaron Rosen). Shortly after leaving Jummapur for the Indian highlands, she dies. Although her work was scorned in her lifetime, 50 years later she has become all the rage. Her younger sister Eleanor (the always wonderful Rosemary Harris), now in her late sixties, is visited by an American professor Eldon Pike (Neal Huff) who is publishing her collected letters and is far more interested in unimportant details than in the truth. She is also visited by Anish Das (Bhavesh Patel), the painter’s son, who is trying to discover what transpired between Flora and his father. The action alternates between India in the early 1930s and England and India in the 1980s. Sometimes characters from both time periods are onstage at the same time, but there is no possibility of confusion. The play touches upon contrasting aesthetic traditions, the common bond that art provides and some of the effects of imperialism. The pace is unhurried, but if you are patient you should find the emotional payoff in the final scenes gratifying. The supporting cast is excellent. Neil Patel’s set design and Candice Donnelly’s costumes are attractively effective. Carey Perloff’s direction is straightforward and uncluttered. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including intermission. NOTE: There is a brief moment of full frontal female nudity.