Cost of Living

B+

After a successful run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival last summer, Martyna Majok’s (Ironbound) powerful four-character drama has arrived at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I at City Center. The lead character, Eddie (Victor Williams, Luck of the Irish), begins the play with a well-written and well-performed 10-minute monologue that reveals that he is a long-distance truck driver who recently lost his wife. Next we meet Jess (Jolly Abraham, Coram Boy), an attractive woman in her twenties who is applying for a job as helper to John (Gregg Mogzala), a Harvard-educated grad student with cerebral palsy who is confined to a wheelchair. Jess works as a barmaid and needs the extra income. In a flashback, we meet Eddie’s wife Ani (Katy Sullivan) who lost her legs in an accident and is a bundle of rage. Two of the play’s most moving scenes take place in bathrooms where we see Jess shaving and showering John and Eddie giving a bath (and possibly more) to Ani. The play's strengths include  not portraying the disabled characters simplistically and in giving equal time to the needs of their caregivers. Each character is vividly sketched to the point that I wished I knew more about them. Until the final scene, each character interacts with only one other character. In that scene a new heartbreaking connection is made. I wish the author had omitted a brief manipulative reversal at the very end. The entire production is first rate: the acting, the revolving set by Wilson Chin (Aubergine, My Mañana Comes), the character-appropriate costumes by Jessica Pabst (The Ruins of Civilization) and the smooth direction by Jo Bonney (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark). I read that the author expanded this work from a two-character play and the opening monologue. The combination was not totally successful; some of the stitches show. Nevertheless, seeing it is a worthwhile, if painful, experience. Running time: one hour 45 minutes, no intermission.

Lost Girls ***

It’s almost exactly two years since John Pollono’s play “Small Engine Repair” made a big splash at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. That testosterone-driven tale of three working stiffs in Manchester, NH and the college boy who crossed their path packed quite a wallop. (And it made my 10 best play list for 2013.) The new play, also produced by MCC Theater, could almost serve as a bookend. We are back among the working class in southern New Hampshire, but this time it’s the women who hold center stage. During a nor’easter that has made driving perilous, sharp-tongued Maggie (Piper Perabo), who is struggling to hang onto a place in the lower middle class, discovers that her 10-year-old Honda is missing. When she reports the theft to the police, they alert her cop ex-husband Lou (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) who turns up uninvited with his annoyingly perky second wife Penny (Meghann Fahy). Linda (Tasha Lawrence), Maggie’s equally foul-mouthed mother, who lives with her, repeatedly demonstrates her skill at getting under people’s skin. It turns out that the car thief is none other than Maggie and Lou’s teenage daughter. The set rotates from Maggie’s modest house to a motel room in Connecticut where we meet a pair of high school classmates who have run off together. More specifically, the brassy girl (Lizzy Declement) has talked the innocent boy (Josh Green) into driving her to Florida for a rendezvous with her much older boyfriend. He has reluctantly agreed because he has been smitten with her since second grade. The scenes alternate between Maggie’s house and the motel room. Maggie and Lou learn that the Honda has been involved in a major highway accident, but the power goes out before they can learn how their daughter is. Back at the motel, things have turned romantic. I won’t reveal the outcome except to say that there is a tricky development near the end that I have mixed feelings about. Two of three theater-savvy friends who attended the same performance missed it, so I think director Jo Bonney needs to do something to make the ending clearer. I wish the actors didn't need to struggle so hard with the New England accent. Richard Hoover’s revolving set and Theresa Squire’s costumes capture the correct ambience. While this play is not as good as “Small Engine Repair,” it’s consistently involving and entertaining. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) ***

On the basis of this first installment of Suzan-Lori Parks’s nine-part epic about the African-American experience from the mid-19th century to the present, now at the Public Theater, it is easy to understand why this highly original playwright won both a Pulitzer and a MacArthur grant. In “A Measure of a Man” Hero (Sterling K. Brown), a slave on a Texas plantation, must decide whether to follow his master to war in exchange for a promise of freedom. His wife Penny (Jenny Jules), his father figure The Oldest Old Man (Peter Jay Fernandez) and his oft-time rival Homer (Jeremie Harris) weigh in with their opinions and The Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves make bets on his decision. Parks’s mashup of Greek drama, poetic language, anachronisms, music and humor somehow works. In “A Battle in the Wilderness,” the most naturalistic of the evening’s plays, we meet Hero’s master (Ken Marks), now a Confederate colonel, and the Union soldier he has captured (Louis Cancelmi). The two of them spar over the nature of slavery. The colonel is allowed to display a soft side and the captured soldier reveals a couple of surprises. Hero and the soldier find a common bond. In “The Union of My Confederate Parts” we return to the plantation many months later. Only Penny and Homer are left of the original slaves. Three runaway slaves who are hiding at the plantation try to persuade Homer to run off with them, but he is unwilling to leave Penny, who is tormented by nightmares about Hero. Word reaches the plantation that both the master and Hero are dead. However, Odyssey (Jacob Ming-Trent), Hero’s long lost dog, arrives and tells of Hero’s imminent return. When Hero, who has renamed himself Ulysses, arrives, he reveals previously unseen aspects of his character that are far from heroic. The question of what freedom costs remains open. Parks's incidental music and songs are beautifully performed by Steven Bargonetti. Jo Bonney’s direction is exemplary. The simple set by Neil Patel is effective and Esosa’s deliberately anachronistic costumes are a hoot. Parks proves that dealing with serious subjects can still leave lots of room to be entertaining. I hope the remaining six parts maintain the high level of these three. Running time: 3 hours, including one intermission.

Small Engine Repair ****

For the first 45 minutes or so, John Pollono's play at MCC Theater appears to be just one more raunchy blue-collar buddy reunion comedy, albeit one with unusually well-written dialogue and well-differentiated characters.  Frank (playwright Pollono), the mid-30's owner of the titular repair shop in Manchester, NH, has tricked his two oldest friends, the slight, sensitive Packie (James Ransone) and the commitment-phobic ladies' man Swaino (James Badge Dale), into coming over to the shop after work. Although their friendship dates back to childhood, Packie and Swaino have become estranged and the three have not spent time together in years. Frank plies them with beer, scotch, weed and the promise of the drug Ecstasy, soon to be delivered by Chad (Keegan Allen), a college boy from Boston, who deals on the side. I don't want to give too much away, but I don't think it will hurt to mention that the perils of social interaction in the internet age come into play. When there is a sudden shift from comedy to thriller, it comes as a real jolt. Rarely have I seen an audience more engrossed than during the climactic scene. I will grant that the play is manipulative, but sometimes it's fun to be manipulated. The resolution may be politically incorrect, but it has the ring of plausibility. The actors are all sensational. The set by Richard Hoover is terrific and the costumes by Theresa Squire are wonderful. Jo Bonney's direction is assured. Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission.

The Mound Builders **

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Allegedly Lanford Wilson named this play as his personal favorite. Judging from the current revival at Signature Theatre, it is difficult to understand why. During the lengthy first act, we meet August Howe (David Conrad), a famous professor who is conducting an archeological dig in 1975 in southern Illinois on the site of a vanished pre-Columbian culture. As the play's framing device, Howe is recording his notes on the disastrous events of the previous summer for his unseen secretary to transcribe. His comments are interspersed with slides photographed by his wife. The dig is a race against time, because the site is soon to be inundated and obliterated by a new dam and interstate highway. He shares a house at the site with his wife Cynthia (Janie Brookshire), their daughter Kirsten (Rachel Resheff), his colleague Dr. Dan Loggins (Zachary Booth) and his pregnant wife Jean (Lisa Joyce) who is on leave from her job as a gynecologist and who, as a child, had a nervous breakdown after winning the national spelling bee. They are frequently visited by Chad Jasker (Will Rogers), the son of the site's owner, who has dollar signs in his eyes anticipating the wealth that will be generated by the upcoming construction. Jasker is also sleeping with one of the wives and lusting after the other -- and possibly her husband too, which would be more plausible if Rogers displayed a scintilla of sex appeal and didn't come across as the village idiot. This motley crew is suddenly augmented by the arrival of August's sister D.K. (Danielle Skraastad), a former novelist and present addict. As the lady next to me aptly remarked: "She must be a visitor from a more interesting play." In the second act, the underlying conflicts erupt tragically, but not without leaving time for several lyrical speeches. One does not have to dig very deep to unearth a slew of metaphors about society, academic hubris, greed and the high cost of failure to focus on the people closest to you. The actors do not seem to have an affinity for Wilson's language and Jo Bonney's direction fails to keep them all on the same page. Neil Patel's simple set is evocative and Theresa Squire's costumes are fine. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.

An Early History of Fire [zero stars]

(Please click on the title to read the full review.)
To say that David Rabe's first new play to be seen in New York in a decade is a disappointment is a gross understatement. While this alleged drama set in 1962 in middle America may have deep meaning for the playwright, its trite half-baked ideas and half-developed characters did not hold my interest for even five minutes. I will not force you waste your time reading about the many ways it fails. While I can't recover the time I lost on this dud, I can at least warn you away. The cast (Gordon Clapp, Erin Darke, Jonny Orsini, Devin Ratray, Dennis Staroselsky, Theo Stockman and Claire van der Bloom) and director Jo Bonney do their best to breathe some life into this New Group production,  but you can't light a fire with wet matches. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.