All the Fine Boys

F

Maybe I would have reacted less harshly to this new play at The New Group had it not been the second play I had seen in a week dealing with inappropriate sex between adults and the underage. Maybe not. It is awful enough in its own right. We meet two 14-year-old girls, Jenny (Abigail Breslin, who played Little Miss Sunshine in the film) and Emily (Isabelle Fuhrman), hanging out in Jenny’s basement with a stack of videos for a sleepover. Although he play is set in 1980’s South Carolina, there is little sense of time or place. At least we are spared ersatz Southern accents. Their inane conversation drags on and on with he girls discussing the various boys at school, and Jenny observing that the ones Emily likes are beyond her reach. The play then alternates scenes of Emily and Adam (Alex Wolff), an artsy high school boy she has a crush on, with scenes of Jenny and Joseph (Joe Tippett, of Indian Summer and Familiar), a man twice her age that she inexplicably goes home with. One girl gets more than she set out for; the other gets less. The most glaring flaw in the play is the cartoonish depiction of Jenny as a grotesque figure with an unlimited appetite for junk food. The long scenes of her and Joseph are hard to watch. The staging is awkward with characters from the previous scene lingering on the set until after the next scene begins. It’s a stretch to believe the two women are teenagers, but that’s probably a blessing. I admire their gutsiness in taking on their roles. The set by Amy Rubin is appropriately ugly with dark deep-pile carpeting covering the floors and the walls and a much-used sofa. Tom Broecker’s costumes are apt. Playwright Erica Schmidt can’t blame the director for the outcome: she directed. Running time: one hour 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: If the play weren’t bad enough, the seats in the Ford Studio at Signature Center are wood laminate with no upholstery. 

This Day Forward *** B-

It’s good to have another Nicky Silver play onstage at the Vineyard Theatre, which has nurtured his work for over 20 years. Few playwrights can spin hilarity out of tragic circumstances as well as Silver. Perhaps his most popular play is The Lyons, with its deeply dysfunctional Jewish family that included an overbearing mother (a role Linda Lavin was born to play), a tyrannical father, a conflicted gay son and a less-than-appreciated daughter. If you enjoyed The Lyons, you will feel right at home here. The first act, set in 1958 in a room at the St. Regis, features a bridal couple whose wedding night is thrown into disarray by the revelation of a secret. In the second act, we learn how the consequences of that night have played out 46 years later. The dialog is often brutally funny. To say more would be to reveal too much. The entire production is topnotch. The cast of six (Andrew Burnap, Michael Crane, Holley Fain, Francesca Faridany, June Gable and Joe Tippett), some doubling roles, are all superb. The sets for both acts, by Allen Moyer, are perfection. Kaye Voyce’s costumes suit their characters well. J. David Brimmer’s  fight direction is worthy of note. Longtime Silver collaborator Mark Brokaw directs with a sure hand. With Silver, the style sometimes threatens to overwhelm the substance, but that is a flaw I can accept. Running time: 2 hours, including intermission.

Indian Summer **

Gregory S. Moss’s new play at Playwrights Horizons has a lot going for it -- three appealing young actors — Owen Campbell, Elise Kibler and Joe Tippett — and a first-rate production with an attractive set design by Dane Laffrey featuring an inviting beach, apt costumes by Kaye Voyce, great lighting by Eric Southern and smooth direction by Carolyn Cantor. There’s a fourth actor, Jonathan Hadary, whom I usually find annoying, but in this case appropriately so, because his character is also annoying. Daniel (Campbell) is an awkward scrawny 16-year-old whose mother has dumped him for an indefinite period on his step-grandfather George (Hadary) a recently widowed eccentric, who lives in a shack in a small Rhode Island beach town. On the beach, Daniel meets Izzy, a scrappy, sexy townie. It is obvious that their initial hostility will soon change. Izzy’s boyfriend Jeremy, 10 years her senior, is a martial arts master who has developed his own private philosophy. Fortunately, Jeremy is played by Tippett (Familiar), who brings humanity to a cartoonish role. As Izzy, the stunningly gorgeous Kibler knows how to hold our attention even as the lines she must spout become increasingly implausible. I wish that the actors had not been forced to struggle with a Rhode Island accent. What starts as a simple summer idyll goes seriously off course in the second act with a bizarre scene between George and Izzy. George’s hijacking of the play’s ending is the final misstep that wiped out my early good feelings. The mostly-subscriber audience, probably relieved at not having to confront anything too edgy, loved it. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Familiar ***

This lively, overstuffed new play by Danai Gurira (Eclipsed) now in previews at Playwrights Horizons runs the gamut from sitcom to high drama in its two plus hours. The action takes place in real time late in the afternoon before the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of the Chinyamwira family’s 34-year-old daughter Tendi (Roslyn Ruff). Tendi and her Caucasian fiancé Chris (Joby Earle) are members of a charismatic Christian church who have vowed premarital abstinence. Tendi’s parents Donald (Harold Surratt), a successful attorney, and Marvelous (Tamara Tunie), a scientist/professor who has assimilated to American ways with a vengeance, left Zimbabwe over 30 years ago and are living the good life in a suburb of Minneapolis. Clint Ramos’s finely detailed two-level set presents a house worthy of a home design magazine, sure to evoke real estate envy in the heart of every New Yorker. Tendi’s younger sister, Nyasha (Ito Aghayere), a singer/songwriter/feng shui consultant based in New York has just returned from a trip to Zimbabwe to get in touch with her roots, but her family doesn't express much interest in her trip. Margaret (Melanie Nichols-King), Marvelous’s depressed younger sister with a drinking problem might well have wandered in from a production of “A Delicate Balance.” A crisis develops when Marvelous’s elder sister Anne (Myra Lucretia Taylor) arrives unexpectedly from Zimbabwe, determined to perform roora, an ancient bridal price ritual, over the strenuous objection of Marvelous. Sibling rivalry is strong in both generations of sisters. When he learns that the roora ceremony requires the groom to have an intermediary, Chris hurriedly recruits his slacker younger brother Brad (Joe Tippett), with hilarious results. During the second act, the mood gradually darkens and the revelation of a shocking family secret changes everything. The play’s many extremely funny moments make the darkward turn all the more unsettling. Director Rebecca Taichman has nimbly steered the actors through the change of tone. The strong ensemble acting succeeds in making the specific seem universal. Susan Hilferty's costumes contribute greatly to the production. The humanity and good humor went a long way toward making me willing to overlook some of the holes in the plot. It’s far from perfect, but well worth seeing. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Airline Highway *

Playwright Lisa D’Amour was a Pulitzer nominee for Detroit. Chicago’s Steppenwolf is a multi-award-winning ensemble theater company with an enviable record of successful transfers to Broadway including August: Osage County. Joe Mantello is a two-time Tony Award-winning director. Julie White is an excellent actress. Putting them all together for this Manhattan Theatre Club import must have seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t. Despite the talented cast of 16, the splendid scenic design (by Scott Pask) and the evocative costumes (by David Zinn), the results are curiously flat. The play takes us through one day at the Hummingbird Hotel, a place that has seen better days and that is now frequented mostly by people who live on the margins of society. We meet a pill-addicted hooker (White), a stripper (Caroline Neff), an unhandy handyman (Tim Edward Rhoze), a wise drag queen (K. Todd Freeman), a poet (Ken Marks) and the hotel manager (Scott Jaeck). At the request of Miss Ruby (Judith Roberts), the dying former strip club owner who serves as materfamilias to the residents and who wants to enjoy her own funeral, they are planning a party for her in the hotel parking lot. Bait Boy (Joe Tippett), a former club employee who was swept off by a wealthy older woman from Atlanta three years before, has returned for the party. In the play’s most unlikely device, he has brought along his gal pal’s teenaged daughter (Carolyn Braver) to interview the denizens of the hotel for a high school report on subcultures. The playwright’s point of view is obscure. The play offers not much heat and very little light. In no way does it provide the emotional payoff of Lanford Wilson’s far-better models, Balm in Gilead and Hot l Baltimore. Surprisingly few people near me failed to return after intermission. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.