The Comeuppance

 C

My reaction to the works of playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins has been mixed. Three enthusiastically received plays that I enjoyed very much (Appropriate, An Octoroon, Gloria) were followed by two that I did not (War, Everybody). It has been six years since he has had a new play on a New York stage. Now he is winding up his Signature Theatre residency with this puzzling play now in previews at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre. In it we meet five friends who, except for one, are celebrating their 20^th high school reunion. These four, the membership of the self-styled Multi Ethnic Reject Group, have gathered for a pre-reunion get-together on the porch of Ursula (Brittany Bradford, Bernhardt/Hamlet), an underdeveloped character distinguished mainly by the fact that she has become a recluse since losing her sight in one eye. Her female friends are the childless Caitlin (Susannah Flood, Birthday Candles), who married a bigoted cop with two children and Kristina (Shannon Tyo, Regretfully So the Birds Are), a doctor who got her medical education in the military. A good Catholic with five children, Kristina has seen a lot, both in the military and in the pandemic, and eases her pain with booze. She has unexpectedly brought along her cousin Paco (Bobby Moreno, 72 Miles To Go) whose military service left him with a bad case of untreated PTSD. Emilio (Caleb Eberhardt, Choir Boy), a trendy artist living in Berlin who is back in the States briefly to supervise an installation of his work at the Biennale, has not seen the others in 15 years. There is another character as well. Through electronically modified voices, each character, at some point in the play, takes on the role of Death. By the third go-round, I had to stifle a giggle, which I don't think was the desired effect. The play touches on a checklist of traumas that the group has experienced, including Columbine, 9/11, and January 6. Furthermore, many underlying tensions within the group surface as the play progresses. The problem for me was that none of the characters or situations was sufficiently interesting to justify rambling on for two hours and twenty minutes without an intermission. The actors were all fine and the direction by Eric Ting (The Far Country) was fluid. Arnulfo Maldonado’s (A Strange Loop) set creates the cozy front porch of a small house, complete with swing, Adirondack chair, lots of plants and a bug zapper. Jennifer Moeller’s (Camelot) costumes are all suitable to their characters. I was disheartened when Jacobs-Jenkins decamped for the greener pastures of Hollywood to become showrunner, executive producer and writer for a Hulu series. Alas, his new play does not make his return to the stage cause for celebration.

Make Believe

A-

Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds, Continuity), one of our most promising young playwrights, is in top form with this bracing new work about a dysfunctional family, now at Second Stage Theater. Wohl bravely entrusts the first half of the play to child actors who play the Conlee family’s four children—Chris (Ryan Foust; Mary Page Marlowe), age 12; Kate (Maren Heary), age 10; Addie (Casey Hilton), age 7; and Carl (Harrison Fox), age 5. When we meet them, they are at play in the enormous playroom that takes up most of the attic of their suburban home. Their usual after-school snacks are missing and their mother is inexplicably absent. As their father is away on business, they find themselves unexpectedly on their own. They have been instructed never to answer the phone, but they learn from a series of voice messages that they avidly listen to through the floorboards that their mother has not shown up for her beauty salon appointment or her book club. As they play house to pass the time, they reveal their understanding of their parents’ toxic marriage. Chris alternates between bully and protector, at one point showing up with two bags of food and a six-pack of beer that he has mysteriously acquired. Kate fantasizes that Princess Grace is her real mother. Addie lavishes attention on her Cabbage Patch doll. Carl contentedly plays the family dog. Eventually we see them all dressed up to leave with their father for an unknown occasion. The action smoothly shifts about 30 years forward when four adults—Kate (Samantha Mathis; 33 Variations, Nomad Motel), Addie (Susannah Flood; Love and Information, Tribes), Carl (Brad Heberlee; A Life, Small Mouth Sounds) and Chris (Kim Fischer; Then She Fell)—are gathered for a funeral. In an extended scene we observe how their adult versions relate to their childhood. We get a clearer understanding of what actually happened before and a few surprises about one of the siblings. We see how each person deals with loss, which, in one case, is extremely moving. I will say no more because I don’t want to spoil the experience. Wohl skillfully knits together the story with humor, suspense and sympathy. There are a few missteps; a close analysis would turn up some holes in the plot, but while you are watching, it is completely absorbing and affecting. The actors, both children and adults, are uniformly strong. The production values are top-notch. The playroom designed by David Zinn (Choir Boy, Torch Song) is inviting and the costumes by Emilio Sosa (On Your Feet!, The Light) are apt. The lighting design by Ben Stanton and sound design by Bray Poor make substantial contributions. Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Parallelogram) negotiates the play’s rapid shifts and moods skillfully. It is by far the most interesting play I have seen this summer. Running time: 85 minutes; no intermission.

The Effect **

My hopes were high for this London import that garnered the Critics Circle Award for Best New Play for its 2013 National Theatre production. I much admired playwright Lucy Prebble’s clever Enron and have almost always enjoyed David Cromer’s work as a director (Tribes, Our Town). Furthermore, the topic certainly sounded intriguing — an experimental study on an antidepressant that might act as a love drug. Nevertheless, something seems to have been lost crossing the pond, because I fail to see what the fuss was about. I note that the running time at the National was 45 minutes longer than the version now at Barrow Street Theatre — 2 3/4 hours vs. two hours — so it’s possible they trimmed too much. However, even at its present length, it seemed at times repetitive. We meet two of the experimental subjects, Connie (Susannah Flood), a rather straight-laced psychology student, and Tristan (Carter Hudson), a free-spirited drifter, who are supposed to spend 4 weeks under observation as they take the drug in a double-blind study with a control group on placebos. They are supposed to forgo sex and cellphones. It comes as no surprise that they break both rules and fall in love. The question is whether it is “real” or just the effect of the drug and whether the answer actually matters. We also meet Dr. Toby Sealy (Steve Key), the big pharma honcho who has hired the depressive Dr. Lorna James (Kati Brazda) to run the study. As it turns out, they have a history. I mostly enjoyed the first act, but was disappointed when the playwright turned to melodrama midway through the second. The play raises many interesting questions such as whether pharmaceutical experiments justify deceit, whether antidepressants are a good or bad thing, and what it is that makes us us, without providing easy answers. Hudson and Brazda are both superb. I found Flood’s alternately nasal and shrill voice hard to listen to. Key seemed to change affect too suddenly. The set design by Marsha Ginsberg is flexible and looks just like a hospital. Sarah Laux’s costumes are unobtrusive. Cromer’s staging leaves some actors awkwardly frozen in position during a rather lengthy scene for others. This play is certainly an improvement over last year’s somewhat similarly themed Placebo at Playwrights Horizons, but that is faint praise. NOTE: Avoid seats in row B; there is no elevation over row A.

Scenes from a Marriage ***

A clever friend referred to Ivo van Hove as a “destination director.” When he directs a play, the main attraction for many people is to see what he has done with the material rather than to see the work itself. Although his relationship with New York Theatre Workshop goes back to 1996, I have thus far avoided seeing any of his productions. Perhaps I have an innate suspicion of directors who think they know better than playwrights or filmmakers. In any case, his adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s superb television series and theatrical film was on my NYTW subscription, so I attended today’s preview. Van Hove’s first directorial stroke was to assign the roles of Johan and Marianne to three different couples portraying them at different stages of their marriage — Alex Hurt and Susannah Flood at the 10-year mark, Dallas Roberts and Roslyn Ruff a few years later, and Arliss Howard and Tina Benko at the moment they separate. Act One consists of three scenes roughly corresponding to the first three chapters of the filmed version. The gimmick is that the three scenes are performed simultaneously in three different areas of the theater. The audience moves from area to area in the order prescribed by the color of the wristband received upon arrival. I was in the pink group and saw the scenes in 3-1-2 time sequence. This was unfortunate because each scene had less impact than the preceding one. Howard and Benko are by far the strongest couple and, I thought, Roberts and Ruff are the least effective and have the weakest scene. Since the partitions are not soundproof, the audience hears snippets of dialogue and slamming doors from the other two scenes. No doubt this was a directorial choice. After a 30-minute intermission, the entire audience returns to the full theater, now configured in the round. Act Two follows the course of their post-separation relationship. Van Hove’s next distraction is that the opening scene of Act Two is played with all three couples on stage, sometimes speaking in unison, sometimes fugally, and sometimes changing partners in mid-sentence. Tripling the roles did not serve any purpose to me other than to demonstrate the director’s cleverness. The final two scenes are much more conventional and even touched by tenderness. The question I was left with at play’s end was “Why?” The film is regarded by many as a masterpiece and the acting by Erland Josephson and Liv Ulmann was incredible. Although much of the acting here is fine and the production is never boring, nothing approaches the film’s level, so I must again ask “Why mess with success?” The only answer I can think of is that the director wanted to. Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes including 30-minute intermission.

Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play **

Your reaction to Anne Washburn’s innovative play, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, may hinge on whether you are an avid fan of the animated TV series The Simpsons. Your familiarity with the characters will give you a head start in appreciating the plot. Washburn uses this popular cartoon series to show the important role pop culture plays in binding our society together. Much of the action focuses on an episode from the series’s fifth season called “Cape Feare,” a spoof of the twice-made Hollywood thriller. During the first act, survivors of a recent nuclear disaster sit around a campfire and pass the time by remembering lines from the show. In the second act, set seven years later, rival bands of roving performers survive by reenacting episodes from TV shows, complete with commercials. In the third act, set 75 years later, we see a stylized version of the “Cape Feare” episode in music and verse, presented as an inspirational pageant. The play was commissioned by The Civilians, a self-styled center for investigative theater; most of the cast (Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Susannah Flood, Gibson Frazier, Matthew Maher, Nedra McClyde, Jennifer R. Morris, Colleen Worthmann, Sam Breslin Wright) are associate artists of the group and director Steve Cosson is their artistic director. The play is enlivened by Michael Friedman’s music and Sam Pinkleton’s choreography. Neil Patel’s sets and Emily Rebholz’s costumes hit the mark. There is a terrific two-part theatrical effect at play’s end. I wish the first two acts were tightened up a bit: it’s a long slog to intermission and a smattering of people did not return. The final act ties many loose ends together, but it’s a long wait to get there. In case you were wondering, Mr. Burns is the name of Homer Simpson’s boss, the owner of the nuclear power plant responsible for the disaster. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes, including intermission.