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. 

Steve **

If you arrive early at the Signature Center for the New Group’s production of Mark Gerrard’s dramedy Steve, you will find Malcolm Gets already onstage playing show tunes on an upright piano. He is joined by four other cast members for an enjoyable 15-minute Broadway songfest. At play’s end, there’s a charming musical curtain call. Unfortunately, between those two points there is the play itself which, for me, wore out its welcome long before its 90 minutes had passed. Although there are strong superficial similarities with the recently opened Dada Woof Papa Hot — both plays deal with a gay couple approaching middle age who are raising a child, their fears about losing attractiveness, their worries about infidelity and their relations with another gay couple, the play that Steve really reminded me of was Matt Crowley’s 1968 hit The Boys in the Band. Both begin with a birthday party that turns out badly. Despite all the ways that gay life has changed in the intervening years, the characters’ mode of relating to each other has not made much progress. If anything, modern technology has increased the possibility of bad behavior. There was no sexting in 1968. Steven (Matt McGrath, so good recently in The Legend of Georgia McBride), once a chorus boy and singing waiter, has just turned 47. His partner Stephen (Gets) is a successful attorney. Steven is now a stay-at-home dad raising their unseen 8-year-old son Zach. (For some reason that have not chosen to marry.) When Steven retrieves his partner’s cellphone from Zach, who has “borrowed” it, he finds a sexting exchange between Stephen and Brian (Jerry Dixon), the partner of Steven’s oldest friend Matt (Mario Cantone). The fifth guest at the birthday dinner is Carrie (Ashlie Atkinson), their terminally ill lesbian friend whose lover abandoned her when she became sick. Their waiter is a hunky Argentinian named Esteban (Francisco Pryor Garat) who keeps turning up at various locations throughout the play. Just to round out the name game, there is a fourth Steven, Brian and Matt’s prodigiously endowed trainer, who is unseen but much commented upon. Any attempt at meaningful communication is short-circuited by turning either to show-queen bitchiness or raunch. One scene is instantly replayed with a different ending, but that device goes nowhere. There is a funny scene where Stephen is juggling texts, sexts and a phone conversation with his mother. The capable cast does their best to animate characters that aren’t well-developed. Allen Moyer’s set is elegantly simple and Tom Broecker’s costumes are fine. Director Cynthia Nixon plays a weak hand well. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Blood from a Stone ***

This over-the-top blue-collar family drama with comic flashes, now at the Acorn Theater in a New Group production, has already extended its run before it even opens. The box-office draw is probably Ethan Hawke as the damaged elder son Travis, a former war hero who returns to his small-town Connecticut home before Christmas to try to sort out some family problems before taking off for the West Coast. His character is the glue that holds the play together: he has a scene alone with each of the other characters. The excellent cast includes Gordon Clapp and Ann Dowd as parents who are locked in constant combat, Thomas Guiry as the younger brother who is a gambler and chronic liar, Natasha Lyonne as the sister who has struggled with some success to escape the toxic pull of her family, and Daphne Rubin-Vega as the sexy married neighbor whom Travis beds whenever he is in town. Tommy Nohilly is an actor turned playwright and the juicy roles he has written here give each actor a chance to shine. Director Scott Elliott is in good form as usual. Derek McLane's set of a house in disrepair appropriately mirrors the play's chaos. There really isn't anything new or revelatory, some of the scenes run a bit long, some of the motivation is a bit unclear, but the play is full of energy and very well acted. I overcame my initial lack of interest in these characters and eventually got caught up in the action. I"m not sure you'll like it, but I doubt that you'll be bored.