Something Clean

B

Roundabout Underground, the company’s new play initiative housed in the Black Box Theatre below the Laura Pels, fills the important function of introducing New Yorkers to new playwrights. Roundabout’s acute eye for new talent has launched the careers of Stephen Karam, Steven Levenson, Lindsey Ferrentino and Joshua Harmon, among others. Their latest offering is this absorbing three-actor drama by Selina Fillinger that examines the fallout of a sexual assault from an unusual vantage point, that of the perpetrator’s parents. Charlotte and Doug are a suburban couple whose college son Kai is currently in prison for a campus rape he committed while drunk. The leniency of his six-month sentence led to protests and brought unwanted notoriety into their comfortable lives. Doug (Daniel Jenkins; Oslo, Kid Victory) has taken refuge in his work. When we meet Charlotte (Kathryn Erbe; The Father, Checkers), she has presented herself as a would-be volunteer at an urban sexual assault center headed by a young gay black man, Joey (Christopher Livingston; Party People, Peerless). In a rather heavy-handed metaphor, she tells Joey that she is good at cleaning, particularly at removing stains. She hides her real identity and motivation from Joey and conceals her volunteer work from Doug. Over the next few months, the relationship between Charlotte and Doug grows increasingly distant while a friendship blossoms between Charlotte and Joey. Charlotte’s attempts to relieve her sense of guilt also include implausible late-night visits to a campus alley where she whips out her rubber gloves to tidy up the dumpsters. While there she meets a campus cop played by Jenkins and a drunk frat boy played by Livingston. The play, which rapidly alternates scenes between Charlotte and either Doug or Joey, leads to an inevitable climax when the three meet and Charlotte’s subterfuge is exposed. The acting is consistently strong, with Kathryn Erbe’s performance being especially powerful. Reid Thompson’s (Too Heavy for Your Pocket) set design locates the bedroom and part of the kitchen of the couple’s suburban home at one end of the rectangular stage with one wall of the assault center at the other end; the large table in the center is used to represent both places. The size of theater and the division of the audience into two facing sides increase the sense of intimacy. Valerie Therese Bart’s (Too Heavy for Your Pocket) costumes befit the characters well. Margot Bordelon’s (Do You Feel Anger?, Too Heavy for Your Pocket) direction is fluid and unfussy. While the plot has a few weak spots, the play is consistently absorbing and my overall reaction is quite positive. Running time: 85 minutes, no intermission.

For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday

D

Among my many quirks is a longtime inexplicable aversion to Peter Pan and anything or anyone closely related to it, Mary Martin included. Therefore, I probably should have skipped the Playwrights Horizons production of this play based on Sarah Ruhl’s memories of growing up in a large Irish Catholic family in Iowa. However, since I have enjoyed some of her plays (Stage Kiss, The Oldest Boy, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play) and have been a keen admirer of both Kathleen Chalfant (Wit) and Lisa Emery (Marjorie Prime, Six Degrees of Separation), I decided to take a chance on it. Big mistake. The play is structured as three long scenes. After a charming monologue by Chalfant in front of the curtain, we move to the hospital room where five middle-aged siblings played by Chalfant, Daniel Jenkins, Keith Reddin, David Chandler and Emery have gathered for the impending death of their father (Ron Crawford). Because Chalfant’s relative age reads older, it took me a while to realize that she was their sister and not their mother. The excruciating death scene seemed interminable, even without the long pauses that director Les Waters has inserted. The long middle scene presents the five siblings sitting around a table drinking Irish whiskey and reminiscing. Whenever sharp political differences threaten to intrude, younger sister Wendy (Emery) restores the peace. This scene also has a fantastical element which I will not divulge. In the long final scene, the siblings have been transported to Neverland as Peter Pan, Wendy, the Lost Boys and Captain Hook. Allusions to reluctant adulthood and mortality abound. Also, there’s a well-staged sword fight and some neat flying. The acting is strong. The set by David Zinn opens up nicely for the final scene. Kristopher Castle’s costumes are apt. Since the play clearly has deep personal meaning for Ruhl and was written as a gift to her mother, who actually played Peter Pan in her youth, it pains me to be so negative about it. Nevertheless, at no point did the play really engage me. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission. It seemed much longer.

Kid Victory

C

One look at Clint Ramos’s deliberately dreary set design featuring a cluttered basement with a set of chains hanging on the wall put me on edge even before this very dark musical at the Vineyard Theatre began. It is hard to say much about it without spoiling the experience, but I will try. Luke (Brandon Flynn) is a teenager who has returned to his God-fearing Kansas family after disappearing under murky and possibly sinister circumstances for almost a year. Readjustment is difficult for all concerned. Luke’s mother Eileen (Karen Ziemba) wants to sweep everything under the rug and proceed as if nothing happened. Luke’s quiet father Joseph (Daniel Jenkins) appears to Luke to be avoiding him. Emily (Dee Roscoli) is a free-spirited shop owner Luke can be open with because she did not know him before his disappearance. Gail (Ann Arvia) is a well-meaning church member with an unusual approach to healing. Michael (Jeffry Denman) is a former history teacher with whom Luke shares an interest in boats. Suze (Laura Darrell) just wants Luke to be her boyfriend again. Mara (Darrell again) is Emily’s estranged daughter. Detective Marks (Joel Blum) thinks that Luke is withholding information. Andrew (Blake Zolfo) is a young man that Luke briefly meets. The story is told in fragments that move back and forth in time. To my surprise, I liked Greg Pierce’s book far more than John Kander’s music. In general, I did not think the music either heightened emotions or advanced the plot. There is a dance number that is wildly incongruous with the rest of the show. There are two or three characters that could easily be dispensed with. I really think the material would have worked better as a play without music. There are many strong points — fitting together the pieces of a complex story, keeping the audience waiting for the title character to burst into song, throwing in a few surprises, ending with a genre-defying scene. The cast is uniformly strong and the story is consistently interesting. Liesl Tommy’s direction is mostly assured, but occasionally leaves characters doing nothing for long periods. I admire Kander and Pierce for taking on such a difficult subject, but am not sure that musicalizing it was the best approach. Running time: one hour 45 minutes; no intermission.

Oslo ***

Playwright J.T. Rogers is certainly not reluctant to take on complicated geopolitical topics. His 2011 play at Lincoln Center Theater, “Blood and Gifts,” was about American policy in Afghanistan. Now he is back at the Mitzi E. Newhouse with “Oslo,” an ambitious look at the story behind the secret negotiations that led to the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993. Happily, several people associated with that production have also returned: director Bartlett Sher, set designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer Catherine Zuber and actors Jefferson Mays and Michael Aronov. The story revolves around Terje Red-Larsen (Mays), director of a Norwegian think tank devoted to applied social sciences, and his wife Mona Juul (Jennifer Ehle), an official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, who come up with the idea of initiating and facilitating secret “back door” talks between two representatives of the PLO and a pair of economics professors from Haifa who, officially at least, have no ties with the Israeli government. Larsen and Juul have to win over the Norwegian foreign minister (T. Ryder Smith) and his deputy (Daniel Jenkins) to their risky efforts. The initial meetings between the PLO officials (Anthony Aziz and Dariush Kashani) and the Israelis (Daniel Oreskes and, doubling roles, Jenkins) are prickly, but they soon begin to make progress, lending support to Larsen’s theory that private, personal, incremental negotiations might succeed where public, impersonal, comprehensive talks have failed. The Israeli professors are eventually joined by and then supplanted by Uri Savir (Aronov,) Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Joel Singer (Joseph Siravo), an attorney. We also meet the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Bellin (Adam Dannheiser) and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Oreskes, also doubling). There are several other minor characters for a total cast of 14 actors in 21 roles. There are many complications and obstacles along the way. A play with three acts is a rarity today. The first act is intricately structured while the second act is more straightforward. The final act loses some steam in summarizing many of the events that have occurred since 1993. The cast is consistently strong, the simple but attractive set is enhanced by unobtrusive projections (by 59 Productions), the costumes are excellent and the direction is smooth. Be prepared to concentrate on a complex narrative for three hours. I found the end result more admirable than enjoyable. I kept thinking that it would make a fine miniseries. Running time: 3 hours, including intermission.