The Young Man from Atlanta

C

When I saw the original production of Horton Foote’s drama in 1995, I was disappointed. When it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, I was surprised and puzzled. In the years since, I have enjoyed several plays by Foote, including The Trip to Bountiful, Dividing the Estate and The Orphans’ Home Cycle. When Signature Theatre announced this revival, I was curious to see whether I had somehow underestimated the play the first time around and whether my greater exposure to Foote’s work might change my mind. Unfortunately, I think I got it right the first time. Of the plays by Foote I have seen, I would have to place this one at the bottom of the list. Even when it was new, it seemed dated and it hasn’t improved with age. Furthermore, the current production is flat-footed (pun intended). As Will Kidder, the 61-year-old Houston businessman whose American dream collapses in an instant when he is fired from his long-time job, Aidan Quinn (A Streetcar Named Desire, Fool for Love) is believable but not memorable. As his cosseted but emotionally starving wife Lily Dale, Kristine Nielsen (Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) is miscast. Her performances in comic roles are always a treat to see, but here she seems to be fighting too hard to suppress her natural exuberance. Six months prior to the time of the play, their 37-year-old son Bill, who fled Houston for Atlanta at his earliest opportunity, drowned in a Florida lake while on a business trip. Although both Will and Lily Dale suspect it was suicide, they cannot even broach the subject with each other. The title character is Bill’s Atlanta roommate Randy, unseen in the play, who, as Will tells it, cried more at Bill’s funeral than Lily Dale. Will is suspicious of Randy’s motives and forbids Lily Dale from contacting him. She disobeys, with dire consequences. Lily Dale’s stepfather Pete (Stephen Payne; Straight White Men), of whom she is very fond, has just moved into their home. His grandnephew Carson (Jon Orsini; The Nance), who conveniently lived in the same boardinghouse as Bill and Randy, turns up for a visit and says that everything Randy has told Lilly Dale is a lie. We question whether Carson might perhaps be the liar. We also meet Will’s boss Ted (Devon Abner; The Trip to Bountiful, Dividing the Estate), Will’s subordinate and soon-to-be successor Tom (Dan Bittner; The Vertical Hour), the Kidders’ maid Clara (Harriett D. Foy; Once on This Island) and their maid thirty some years before, Etta Doris (Pat Bowie; The Trip to Bountiful). Her recollection of Bill as a child and her forthright expression of religious belief should be transformative for the Kidders, but it wasn’t impactful, at least not for me. There are other subplots including a puzzling confession of a misdeed from 20 years ago by Lily Dale and her doubts about whether Pete had serially mistreated women. In a rather heavy-handed metaphor, Lily Dale is obsessed to find out the truth about the Disappointment Club, which she is convinced Eleanor Roosevelt has started to lead maids to accept jobs and then fail to show up on the first day, just to spite Southern women. The themes of the hollowness of the American dream, the relentlessness of change, the power of denial, the use of money either to avoid intimacy or to seek it and the decreasing relevance of small town virtues in the big city all are touched upon. Three of the characters — Will, Lily Dale and Pete — appeared in The Orphans’ Home Cycle. Perhaps I would have felt more for them if I had had their earlier versions fresh in mind. Perhaps not. Director Michael Wilson (The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Incident at Vichy) has a sterling track record with Foote’s work, so I am puzzled why things did not come together better here. Van Broughton Ramsey’s (The Trip to Bountiful) costumes enhance the production greatly. On the other hand, Jeff Cowie’s (The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Incident at Vichy) set is problematic. In what is supposed to be a $200,000 (1950 dollars) home, the elegant living room has matching short stairs with no risers but pipe railings at either side of the room. It seems unlikely that a 1950 Houston house would be built around a central courtyard or that you would need to open a door to get from one wing to another, but that’s what we see. It’s just a symbol of the many ways this production misses the mark. The bottom line is that, no matter what the Pulitzer judges thought, this play is not top-drawer Foote. The brief catharsis at play’s end is too little reward for all that precedes it. Running time: two hours, 15 minutes.

Straight White Men

B-

Young Jean Lee's family drama with comic overtones was first presented at the Public Theater a few years ago. Its move to Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater, with a star-studded new cast, a new creative team and two new characters, marks the first time a female Asian-American playwright has been produced on Broadway. The performance gets off to a very bad start: the theater is filled with the sound of ear-splitting hip-hop accompnied by colored lights flashing on the tinsel curtain. Two non-binary “persons in charge” dressed in festive metallic costumes, trans woman Kate Bornstein and Native-American trans man Ty Defoe, step before the curtain to give a brief lecture on the need for greater acceptance of gender fluidity and diversity. They add that the music was deliberately intended to make most of the audience uncomfortable. The two appear briefly between scenes and at play’s end for no apparent reason. I do not think that their contribution to the play merits their inclusion. When the play proper begins, we are in the family room of a retired, widowed Midwestern engineer Ed (Stephen Payne; Of Mice and Men) whose 40-ish eldest son Matt (Paul Schneider; “Bright Star”) has moved back in with him. Matt’s two younger brothers. Jake (Josh Charles; The Antipodes, “The Good Wife”) and Drew (Armie Hammer; “Call Me by Your Name”), have come home for a family Christmas. Jake is a prosperous banker, recently divorced from his African-American wife. Drew is a successful author and college professor. Although Matt was the brightest and most idealistic of the three and had a Harvard education, he has never found his purpose in life, still has huge college debts, and is presently working in a temp job at a social service organization. The three brothers revert to adolescence with much competitive horseplay. They play a board game called “Privilege” that their late mother had adapted from a Monopoly set to teach them positive values. As they enjoy their Chinese takeout Christmas dinner, Ed relates that, unlike his sons, he always felt the course of his life was laid out for him with a clearly delineated path. Jake and Drew become upset when Matt suddenly begins weeping during dinner. While they deeply care for him, they feel that Matt’s lack of achievement is a betrayal of the advantages he has enjoyed. Their competing diagnoses of his problem and their misguided attempts to shape him up provide both humor and pathos. The play ends on an ambiguous note. The ensemble acting is terrific; while the actors look nothing alike, they show a real chemistry. Payne, a late replacement for Denis Arndt who in turn was a replacement for Tom Skerritt, looks uncannily like Skerritt. The scenic design by Todd Rosenthal (August: Osage County) is appropriately generic. Suttirat Larlarb’s (Of Mice and Men) costumes are spot-on, especially the Christmas pajamas. Faye Driscoll’s choreography and Thomas Schall’s fight direction add a lot to the production. Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, This Is Our Youth) directs with assurance. The title promises too much; the characters are a very specific, atypical subset of straight white maledom. While the play offers much to enjoy, it does not go that deeply into the questions it raises and the ending provides no satisfactory resolution. Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission.