Rinse, Repeat

B-

With seemingly increasing frequency, Pershing Square Signature Center has been renting space to outside productions, including this unfortunately titled drama written by and starring Domenica Feraud. A “problem” play about an eating disorder, it would have fit more comfortably as a disease-of-the-week offering on the Lifetime channel. Debilitated by a severe case of anorexia, Rachel had to take a leave from her senior year at Yale to enter a residential treatment facility where she has spent the last four months. The action takes place during a trial weekend at her family home in Greenwich, CT which will determine whether she is ready to be discharged. Her svelte mother Joan (Florencia Lozano; Placebo, Privilege) is a second-generation Latin immigrant who is now a high-powered lawyer in a top law firm and the family’s main breadwinner. Her father Peter (Michael Hayden; The Lady from Dubuque, Cabaret) is a preppy, not very successful architect who has burned through a trust fund. Her younger brother Brody (Jake Ryan Lozano; Sweat) is a high school jock who tries to avoid his family as much as possible. Her caseworker Brenda (Portia; In Arabia We’d All Be Kings) has given Rachel’s parents strict instructions that Rachel must not be left alone during the weekend, a caveat that you can be sure will soon be ignored, with consequences that reveal deep rifts within the marriage and a secret about Joan. The depiction of Rachel's struggle with food is vivid and one feels for her. She has a brief nude moment justified by the plot. However, I was so drawn in by the toxic family dynamic that I wondered more about the future of the marriage than about Rachel. The production is lavish with a kitchen set by Brittany Vasta (Octet, Life Sucks) sure to evoke envy and excellent costumes by Nicole Slaven. Kate Hopkins’s (Cost of Living, After the Blast) direction is assured. With its topic and its infelicitous title, it is not an easy play to market, which probably explained the sparse audience. That’s a shame, because it has many absorbing moments and some fine acting, particularly by Florencia Lozano. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

Placebo *

I very much enjoyed the Playwrights Horizons production of “This,” the first play I saw by Melissa James Gibson several years ago, but it’s been downhill since then. The second play I saw, “What Rhymes with America” at the Atlantic, left me cold. Now Gibson has returned to Playwrights Horizons with “Placebo,” which might be subtitled “Four Characters and a Vending Machine in Search of a Play.” Louise (Carrie Coon) is a graduate student in female sexuality, earning money by working with patients enrolled in a double-blind study of an experimental drug to increase female libido. Mary (Florencia Lozano) is one of the patients who is eager to know whether she is receiving the new drug or the placebo. Louise has lived for four years with Jonathan (William Jackson Harper), a 7th year graduate student in Classics who has hit a brick wall in his dissertation on Pliny the Elder. (The fact that Jonathan is played by a black actor seems to be of no significance to the plot, such as it is.) Louise tells her dying mother the white lie that she and Jonathan are getting married soon. Jonathan does not find Louise’s attempts to be supportive helpful. Tom (Alex Hurt), who works for another study at the hospital, becomes friendly with Louise. The game they play with a vending machine is the liveliest scene in the play. The experimental drug study and the placebo abruptly disappear from view and the action shifts to the troubled relationship between Louise and Jonathan. The play ends with a very long, often ludicrous scene of them breaking up — or not. I found the characters little more than collections of tics despite the efforts of an appealing cast to breathe some life into them. The play is not helped by David Zinn’s dreary and confusing set which uses the entire width of the theater to represent both the hospital and Jonathan’s apartment. I’m not sure what more director Daniel Aukin could have done with this material. Gibson seems to appeal to the younger generation; the audience included a group of twenty-somethings who whooped and hollered at every opportunity. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: Why the sudden spate of one-word play titles beginning with P— Pocatello, Posterity, Placebo, Permission?