Long Lost

C-

There seems to be something about Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I at City Center that inspires scenic designers. Some of the finest set designs I have seen in New York have been at that theater. For this production John Lee Beatty (Rabbit Hole, Junk) does not disappoint; the marvelous set he has designed for Donald Margulies’s (Dinner with Friends, Sight Unseen) new play has three revolves and creates four distinct attractive environments. Unfortunately, the “magic” effect of MTC’s Stage I on set designers does not seem to apply to playwrights. I have seen too many clunkers with great sets here, including this one. Margulies offers yet another version of the story of the black sheep returning to his family and stirring up trouble. In this instance the black sheep is Billy (Lee Tergesen; Rapture, Blister, Burn), a drug addict and alcoholic whose many misdeeds include “accidentally” burning down the family farmhouse with his parents inside. Billy turns up unannounced in the New York office of his younger brother David (Kelly AuCoin; The Wayside Motor Inn, “Billions”), a prosperous consultant married to Molly (Annie Parisse; Clybourne Park, Becky Shaw), an ex-lawyer who now runs a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. Their son Jeremy (Alex Wolff; All the Fine Boys) is home from Brown for Christmas. David’s first impulse is to kick Billy out of his office, but Billy tells him that he is dying of cancer and has no place to go. David reluctantly brings him home to their plush Manhattan co-op, much to the chagrin of Molly. Billy tries to establish rapport with Jeremy. Secrets are revealed, some of which are surprising, others not so much. The final scene takes us in an unexpected direction, but by then it is too late. The characters are so underwritten that it is hard to care much about their fate. The actors do a respectable job trying to breathe life into their roles. Daniel Sullivan’s (The Little Foxes, Good People) direction is fluid, but even he cannot elevate trite material. The costumes by Toni-Leslie James (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Come from Away) befit the characters well. Enjoy the sets; there’s not much else to engage you. Running time: one hour 35 minutes; no intermission.

The Country House ***

Donald Margulies’s new play at Manhattan Theatre Club could well bear the subtitle “Variations on Chekhovian Themes.” Characters and situations from “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya” are borrowed, tweaked and conflated to produce a clever mash-up that works more often than not. The action takes place in the Williamstown home of Anna Patterson (Blythe Danner), an acclaimed actress of a certain age who is in town to play the title role in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. For the first anniversary of her daughter Kathy’s death, she is joined by her granddaughter Susie (Sarah Steele), a senior at Yale; her daughter’s widower Walter (David Rasche), a successful Hollywood director who has his new girlfriend Nell (Kate Jennings Grant), an actress, in tow; and Anna’s unhappy son Elliot (Eric Lange), an unsuccessful actor and would-be playwright. The family are joined by a surprise guest, Michael Astor (Daniel Sunjata), a television celebrity who has come to town to play The Guardsman. As a young actor, he had appeared with Anna and had an affair with Kathy; he is still catnip to three generations of women. Eleven years ago, Nell and Elliot had acted together in Louisville, leaving Elliot smitten with unrequited love for her. All this is laid out cleverly in the first act with amusing dialogue. And then things head south. The second act seemed formulaic and the third act, which hews too slavishly to Chekhov, did not offer any sense of resolution. The play is peppered with droll observations on the state of theater and film. The cast are uniformly excellent, John Lee Beatty’s set is luscious, Rita Ryack’s costumes are appropriate and Daniel Sullivan’s direction is smooth and assured. Although the destination was a disappointment, it was an entertaining ride for most of the journey. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including intermission

The Model Apartment *

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Since I had been warned not once but twice that the Primary Stages revival of this early play by Donald Margulies was terrible, I was quite surprised to read the ecstatic reviews in the press. As a wise person once said, "Don't believe everything you read in the papers." The warnings were well-founded. While survival guilt and the corrosive effects of the Holocaust on survivors' offspring are certainly worthy of theatrical treatment, what Margulies has written seems to me a strange melange with characters that are more constructs than human beings. Lola (Kathryn Grody) and Max (Mark Blum), survivors who met and married in New York, are now a middle-age couple who have left Brooklyn for the expected refuge of retirement in Florida. Since their condo is not yet ready, they are forced to move temporarily into the development's model apartment where things are not as they appear. Metaphor, anyone? We learn that they have left behind their daughter Debby (Diane Davis), a morbidly obese, emotionally disturbed adult who tracks them down and bursts in on their intended idyll. Her mentally challenged, homeless boyfriend Neil (Hubert Point-du Jour) mysteriously arrives shortly thereafter. In several short scenes, they have at each other and their private ghosts. Even at 85 minutes, the play seemed repetitious. The emotional payoff that critics thought made the ordeal of sitting through the play worthwhile was insufficient for me. I think the play would have succeeded better as a shorter one-act without the character of Neil diluting the toxic family dynamic, or as a two-act play with greater character development. Lauren Helpern's set design perfectly captures the Florida condo aesthetic. The production's tone is wobbly, but the fault lies more in the writing than in Evan Cabnet's direction. Running time: one hour, 25 mintues; no intermission.